In addition to my dead DVD player, I now have an iPod which no longer syncs properly, won’t restore to the defaults, won’t do anything other than hang to the point of requiring me to force quit iTunes. I now officially have no day-to-day wherever-I-go access to my music.
I had a similar problem; the sync would start and then timeout partway through. I had to disconnect the iPod and force quit to stop it. Turns out it was a bad cable only — you might try that first.