Power turns off at start

Question

At first the power would come on and the DVD would spin and be identified as akai on the TV. Then it stopped. After a couple of retries I smelled amonia (odd - I thought). Then it would power up and down more quickly. Now it turns itself off within a few seconds and never gets to the load DVD step. Smell no longer evident. I unhooked the system and tried the player by itself - same results. Seems like a power supply problem to me but I'm not Tech.