beginning to feel like a broken CD here

It's probably not broken, it's more likely just a smudge. If you give it a good cleaning with a lint-free cloth you'll be able to get past your little problem.

Different from is, as you noted, based on the construction differs from. There's probably other versions of this analogy that don't work; the best I can come up with offhand is varies from/variant of.

Different to is based on the synonymous construction dissimilar to and different than on the synonymous construction other than.