BD-UP5000 problem discs - Page 32

That's the latest release found so far that does not play, Speed bring the oldest. There must be a certain way that those Fox titles have their menu drawn that the code was broken or more likely left out by mistake. Interesting that most all of these are back catalog releases and not ones that released new releases when there were first made, if that makes sense. Edit: I believe that Sunshine was the only one released at the same time as the original DVD. Might have been slightly later.

I bet this is just going to come down to a BD-Java code library that was inadvertently not linked up to the firmware. I have no other explanation. Cast Away might be related based on how the menu is done. I will have to fiddle with it on 1.5 and 1.4 and see what I can surmise.

Please report that one to Sammy since I don't own it. I will however add it to a bunch of updates I am doing this weekend to the master spread sheet, once I get the details of how it is acting.

Also, someone needs to report Cast Away. I guess that will be me once I open it and test it in a day or few? Sammy has already ordered that one as well as the others.

Just need to know if MaC:FSotW is the same issue or a different one.

Region free 2010 release or original 2008 release?

So I sent an e-mail to James Finn at Fox about the problems with there movies playing on BD players and of course I received no reply. At least I am looking at other avenues to try and understand what Fox is doing. Lot of good that did☻ I will still keep on going at Fox about these things. I have no fear as I have no job.☼

You can see it loading and then it just sits there! I have not seen anything quite like this before. And Mr. Kludge, this is a film that is well worth having; its outstanding quality being its sound....it really is quite something.

original 2008 release

Confirmed. I went on a ride in the hovercraft and stopped by Blockbastard and they had it in stock. Has the exact same symptoms as Cast Away, which I purchased yesterday. I have MaC:FSotW on order, found it cheep at one of my regular online BD haunts. Also have High Anxiety on order. Love that movie and been waiting for the BD release to own it. Will be interesting to see if it plays under 1.5 or 1.4 at all. Other recent Fox/MGM releases I have tried have been fine under both releases.

It plays just fine under 1.4. I will add it to the spread sheet, however I'm sure whatever fixes Cast Away will fix this one.

Yes, great film. I have it on D-VHS DTheater 1080i DTS. It's one if my reference films for audio and video evaluation. The soundtrack is incredible and in DTS-HD MA it is even more amazing.

FYI - since MaC:FSotW was discovered yesterday, last evening I opened all my remaining Fox/MGM titles sans; Man on Fire, Edward Sizzorhands and Donnie Darko since those were confirmed as working on both recent versions. The list is vast and it took a long time. I did not check any bond flicks, a great majority of my complete collection is sealed and will remain that way until I take a week off and have a bond on BD marathon. I ran into no additional problems. However there could be some marginal titles that won't play, but any Fox titles that have been released that I don't own would be mindless dribble ImOHO and I don't care if they play anyhow.

I also checked that all of the titles that won't play in 1.5 do indeed play in 1.4. All checked out ok on both accounts. I did not try any ones that played in 1.5 to see if they do not play in 1.4 since I'm sure, based on the titles I own, that they would have been discovered long ago.

Has anyone tried Crazy Heart or any of several other Fox titles that have been released since Dances with Smurfs?

My pleasure. Done and gone this afternoon. The person I dealt with had very little idea of what I was talking about (as usual) I told her that we were reporting problem discs and that they were being recorded. Anyway, it's done.

In case anyone cares. High Anxiety plays fine under both 1.5 and 1.4 for that matter (and looks great for such and old flick). This week when I return my rental of MaC:FSotW I will exchange it for Crazy Heart and try my luck with that.

My used copy of MaC:FSotW arrived today. Of course it did not play under 1.5 either.

Over the weekend I updated the SS and sent on to Sammy and spent a half hour on the phone with support on Sunday making sure my case was updated with last weeks finds and Master and... Was not a pleasant experience for me or the CSR on the phone, but I got it done and now have yet another case number. This on is a level 1, the other is a level 2. I did not have the patience to get transfered to lever 2. Besides I had to get ready and go do other things for a change ;-)

I also burned 1.5 on a dirt old (8-10 years) sealed Kodak CD-R/W that I found in a closet and re-flashed my main unit just as a test of both the CD-R/W media and to see if re-flashing would do any good. Of course it changed nothing.

Tonight when I was looking at BDs I realized that all the affected Fox titles have the saying "Advanced Menu Technology" above the box on the left of the back above the features etc. However not all of them that say that are affected (I have as many or more that are unaffected with that on the back). So if you happen to have titles not mentioned as being tested and they have that wording on the back they would be suspect esp. if they were released between Speed and MaC:FSotW. The later releases do not say that (actually they may somewhere, but not in big bold letters above the features like the others).

I wonder if ultimately we will find out this is a cluster situation... where technically they are problem discs but somehow the older firmware was compensating.

Kinda like... lots of Web sites out there are not properly coded, but some browsers are more forgiving of some HTML errors than others and will try to correct for missing tags.

What if the answer turns out that some of these FOX Blus have a bug in their Java menu that accidentally the older Samsung firmware was overlooking and allowing... but Samsung had to tighten the code to make room for the Avatar compatibility.

Nope. These Fox titles previously would not play in Samsung players. It was fixed w/ a previous FW update (1.3, I think?). As others have noted here, they seem to have left that "fixed" code out of 1.5. AFAIK, other manufacturers' players don't have problems w/ these Fox discs.

Mr. Kludge, thanks for all the work you're doing on our behalf. I've been lurking recently, and haven't contacted Samsung, because I don't have any of the problem Fox discs and thus have nothing to contribute. I appreciate your efforts nonetheless.

Doug

I confirmed with both of my 5000s that Castaway freezes on a blank screen using Firmware 1.5. I didn't bother to check any other Fox titles. I assume I will get the same results that everyone else here has. I am going to reinstall 1.4 and wait for Samsung to release 1.6. Who knows when that will be. I am on the fence about selling both my 5000s and moving on.

Exactly what I was going to say. This is more a case of left out code. My theory is that whoever was working on the code for this player way back when is not in the picture anymore (or just so much time has passed that they forgot about all the code that had fixes in it) and they had to work with what they have and could recreate. Either that or the code was just simply missed. I have never heard of or experienced a case where a movie that played or got fixed in one release would not play in a subsequent release. Also probably why it is so hard to get the point through to Sammy support. Everyone I have spoke to at Sammy says they have never ran into this before.

However, it is a sound theory that there might be some standard Fox BD-java/BD+ code at Sammy that is assumed to be the end-all for Fox titles and simply does not work right in the 5K. I'm betting that other Sammy players have troubles with some if not all of these titles, or other titles, if they wrote semi-standard code for all their players. Who knows and who cares? I just want all my movies and future ones to play in these players.

Samsung players seem to be the most problematic compared to other companies. When you try to explain your problems to them, they act like they have never heard of them before. This company does not care about us small people as they just turn out a new player that will take care of any of your on-going issues.

I just reinstalled 1.4 on both my 5000s and now they both loaded Cast Away without an issue.

I am very disappointed with Samsung for them to screw up this badly on a firmware update. O well. I've decided to move on so I will be selling both of my 5000s. If anyone is interested let me know. I will be posting them on Ebay very soon. One of them is in perfect condition and will include a remote. The other one has a few dings/scratches and does not play HD DVDs (bad loader/drive) and does not come with a remote.

I thought about keeping them for a spare room or something but this last firmware screw up has sent me over the edge.

Here's the scenario that happens frequently at my work:
They have a series of folders for each release. When they work on a new enhancement, they either grab the code from a previous folder (not the latest), or someone hasn't placed the latest code in a production folder.

So, the new enhancement is built upon the next-to-last version of the code.

The difference is that, we usually find the problem in testing, where Samsung apparently doesn't do any regression testing.

Doug

I know, I've been watching them. One of mine is in perfect condition so it should fetch around $200. The other one doesn't play HD DVDs and has a few dings on top. I actually bought that one to repair my good player. I swapped parts around to find out what was wrong with my orginal player. It stopped working a few months ago. It would turn on but wouldn't load any discs. The tray would open and close but the player would never fully load/initialize. It turned out to be the main board, which I assumed was the problem. Once I got my good player back up and running I ordered another board to get the donor player working. I was planning on keeping the dinged player for the spare bedroom as a BR only player. I bought the donor player knowing it didn't play HD DVDs. I cleaned the lenses but that didn't help. I would have to replace the loader/drive to get HD DVD to work again. They sell for about $60 on ebay.

I think the price drop is due more to the new lower costs across the board for BD players. The manufactures and studios have been lowering the prices to get the mainstream public to buy. Sadly I don't think it is going to work. The mainstream still loves DVD and most folks I know don't have HD players or intend to purchase them any time soon. The cost differential between DVD and BD is still vast even with the plummeting prices for BD media recently. I'm speaking more about the used and on-sale market and not the new market. There are many instances on Amazon of the BD being less expensive than the DVD and many now include a DVD or the horrible digital copy alternative.

You can buy a Sony ES player right now for only $250 on Crutchfield. Most of the entry level main stream players are well under $200 and most people don't care about the extra functionality the 5K has, nor the improvements that can be had by the more expensive players with better processing.

Course this recent problem does have an impact. I know there are folks that were willing to pay more than $400 for the 5K given it's extra capabilities and a decent fix/patch for this recent issue would for sure help a little.

I saw the same thing at places I have worked... where people would develop for a while on the wrong code and not even know it.

I also second the idea that regression testing just isn't happening in cases like this.

But it also 2nds my idea that this need for playability-updates because of changes in BD-Java or encryption keys or whatever is a bad thing for Blu ray... because people just aren't used to having to regression test and provide firmware updates for media players like they have for computers.

Another bad Fox title detected. Behind Enemy Lines, suffers from the more common menu background video loop issue. No need to report to Sammy, I've done that already.

Today's Finds; ice age and high crimes have cast away problem. Men of honor, courage under Fire and mr. Magorium play fine. That's two More dtheater releases that suffer from that problem. Looking more likely that dt releases will have issues and more likely to have cast away problem than sunshine problem.

Have a good weekend. I have more coming and going to do an exchange at BB Tomorrow once kiss the dragon makes it's way here.

Avatar better really be the best movie ever if it is the only movie you can play on your Blu ray player

I need to try my DVD-r discs and see what happened there. 1.3 caused playback problems and 1.4 fixed it. What a twisted web Sammy weaves.

I haven't had any problems with dvdrs they seem unaffected.

I am glad something still works.