Posted on 08/30/2020 9:01:54 PM PDT by BradyLS
Looking for advice from FReeper A/V gueus on how to approach a player problem.
I bought new a Live Good (LG) Blue-Ray/DVD player, model BP350, from Best Buy. It was fairly inexpensive ($79). Really, my first purchase of this sort of device. I'm a newb that way. My collection of video consists solely of DVDs (nearly all bought used) for now.
I've been testing it all afternoon on perhaps five movies/shows and noticed something rather aggravating: one DVD (300) freezes midway through and won't play the last half of the movie. Another (A Bridge Too Far) plays most of the movie but will freeze and move forward in the scenes periodically. These two DVDs are scratch/fingerprint free, by all appearances. I've never had problems when I played them on my computer (and I'd still watch 'em that way but my computer gave out. I've taken a cloth to the balky DVDs with no change in performance.
On the other hand, a visibly (but lightly) sratched copy of Team America and an unquestionably scratched copy of Apollo 13 play and navigate flawlessly with no interruption. A DVD of old episides of the old TV The Avengers (no blemishes) also performed equally well. I'll note these last experiences took place after the first.
If all my media behaved badly, I'd fault the player. But because it skips and freezes on a couple of reasinably pristine DVDs but will sail through a couple visibly scratched ones baffle me.
Searching online, a couple of recommendations appear: clean the lens and update the firnware. Is there anything else that might be the problem? Do DVDs just inexeplicably go bad?
Used dvds. Sometimes they bend and still play and other dvds bend and skip. DVDs are not as wonderful as advertised.
There are two firmware updates available.
Plus a pdf for the update.
One update is April 2016, the other is May 2016.
Thanks for your reply! How about Blu-Ray discs? Same story? Or are they an improvement in ruggedness over DVDs?
That’s a big help, Darksheare! I’ll check those out!
I’ll tell you, once upon a time when my family used to watch a lot of DVDs & Blu-Ray discs we actually had 2 different players (a Sony & a Samsung) attached to the same TV. We used to get discs in the mail from Netflix (many of which were fairly battered), and sometimes a disc would be glitchy in one player but run fine in the other, and vice-versa. The fact, though, that you’re saying that multiple pristine discs are playing poorly in this player doesn’t sound right. I’d return the thing and get something a bit higher end. And by “higher end,” I’m not talking about a fortune. The “higher end” players might be $30-$50 more than you paid... which is like the cost of a couple pizzas.
Welcome.
First order of business on that is checking if it already had the updates applied.
Sometimes that doesn’t work so well.
Can sometimes brick the system if an update hangs.
So be sure to thoroughly ravenously read everything, or sucker another fool into doing it.
Latter is best option from amusement standpoint.
;-)
I have my receipt, so that may be the simplest solution.
After looking at reviews and features, we bought a Sony UBP-800M2 during the Black Friday sale at Best Buy last year. We watch Blu-Ray and streaming material.
Of the Blu-Ray and DVD items we’ve seen, we haven’t had a problem with a Redbox or library video that couldn’t be cured by cleaning the disc.
Do install any firmware updates you find from your manufacturer. We had one and it addressed some strange behavior.
Agreed.
How can I know if the updates have already been applied? Just explore the settings?
That may be what I do: return and upgrade to a higher-end player.
There should be something in settings that says what firmware date it has.
That itself varies by manufacturer, so I’m uncertain where it would be menu wise.
Could even be a string of numbers on screen somewhere saying “V.date or version number here”
The player I grabbed for my girl years back has the latter, version is on lower corner of menu screen.
More recent ones I expect it to actually have an option in the settings somewhere to say what it has.
Great. I’ll check it out before returning it.
I’ll wade into a firmware update, but I’m kinda nutty like that.
If there is a hardware reset that restores initial software, I kinda cavalierly wade into it.
It has smartshare software for PC.
Lets you stream media to smart tv.
Some players just don’t get along with some discs, but others might. Before taking the one you have back, get another one and compare the discs on that one. If different discs have a problem then it might be worth having two options.
Thanks for the tip! You’re the second to suggest an alternate player at the ready.
I did a firmware update on a printer once. Once!
Sometimes if you go into setup, then settings, you can find a button that says something along the lines of restore factory defaults etc. Sometimes that fixes problems like you have, or problems with streaming.
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