bd up5000 freezing

No but I will go back to firmware version 1.3 if I was you

My 5000 freezes from the time since I got in back in May. Unfortunately as I'm in Canada and bought it refurbished on ebay off someone in the US I know from past experience that I'd probably have way more problems sending it back then just living with it.

To summarize, my 5000 mine will freeze anywhere after 5 to 20 minutes of use and has done so using every firmware version I've had on it: 1.2, 1.3 or 1.4.

It freezes on everything whether it is Blu-ray, HD-dvd, dvd's, dvd-r's or even cd's. However, it is not entirely consistent in freezing as it will sometimes make a grindy noise just before it freezes and makes a few other noises for 10-30 seconds only to restart all on its own. Trying to fastforward too quickly or too often can hang it up as well as the odd pause.

9 times out of 10 though it freezes completely and I have to shut down and turn the unit back after waiting a few seconds. While this is a PITA, the good thing is that once I go through this it almost never freezes again for at least a couple of hours and when it is running it does so with almost no other issues such as audio dropouts. Without the freezing issue I'd be totally pleased with the unit, instead I'm only mostly pleased.

Richard

When I upgraded from Ver. 1.3 to 1.4, mine started doing the exact same thing. And this was on movies that up until then had played fine.

With 1.4, the movie would seem to be ok until about 20 minutes in when it would freeze. I would then have to turn the player off and then back on to access the film. I would restart the film, and then it would play fine the rest of the way through. I have reverted back to 1.3 and now have been having no problems again.

Steve A.

I think the firmware version on which it is happening is inconsequential. Sounds to me more like hardware that's in the process of failing.

It's probably overheating.

Agreed, if this was a software problem, I think there would be a great number more of us reporting the freezing after upgrading. The possiblities for the cause of this are just too great. It could be hardware, it could be corrupt firmware, it could be a combo of the two. For myself I havent run into any issues since upgrading to 1.4....

Like I said before, I burned two 1.4 dics, the first one caused freeze ups on the first 2 DVD's i played, the second burnt one the video portion played fine but got quite a few audio dropouts. So i'm again back to 1.3 which plays both the video and audio just fine for me,

12/31 update: After 4 different downloads and burns, 1.4 finally works for me. (keep fingers crossed)

I was having this exact same problem. At the time I also noted that my discs were very hot when I removed them. I then drilled a 2 1/2" hole in the back of my entertainment center and installed a 12v elctric fan. Total cost of the project was $21 including the purchase of the drill bit. I can just barely hear the fan if the room is totally quiet, but the player hasn't frozen once, and the discs are nice and cool now. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of freezing problems and audio drop-outs are due to overheating.

As I noted above, I have not had one movie freeze on me since I went back to software version 1.3. The only time I had this problem is when I went to 1.4.

The only time I had a movie freeze was when i tried to watch the brave one on hd-dvd ,but when I rebooted the player all was well. I've not had any problems with 1.4 palying movies since. However, it's been only two days since I made the move from 1.3.

Hi there:

Just upgraded to 1.4 over the holidays as a result of an inability to play Nightmare Before Christmas. Now, I'm getting freezes anywhere from 17 to 30 minutes in. This problem seems to be much worse with a regular DVD. In some cases, the sammy will actually freeze, the TV will go blank, the Sammy will "motorboat" as if it's searching the disk and I'll have to re-enter the disk menu to get back to the program!

On a BD, I generally just see a 1 to 2 second freeze and then back to the show. It doesn't seeem to matter what seetings I'm using on the Sammy, the problem persists. I'm using an HDMI cable from the Sammy to my AVR-2807. I have swapped over to analog, problem persists.

I had a similar problem, not quote as bad with the previous firmware, now I'm driven nuts!

Contacted the Sammy tech line in Canada today, they told me they will swap units for a new or re-furbed one. They are asking me to trust that this will eliminate the problem.

Very odd that I have the same exact problem on mine.

So far I have only tried BDs but the unit will freeze when playing a disc for the first time after powering on.

It usually hangs 10-25 minutes into the movie at which point I have to power down and back on to restart the movie. Once restarted, it plays fine for the duration...even with 3+ hour long movies. If it were only heat related, I would think that it would freeze again at some point after restarting but it doesn't.

I'll try DVD and HD DVD next to see if they cause the exact same issue. I'm also going to do a little trial and elimination to see if I can pinpoint the exact combination of circumstances that cause the problem to pop up.

BTW, it does it with 1.3 or 1.4 firmwares.

It's not heat related. It's probably a problem related to the circuit boards inside the player. Mine has been this way from day one and I went through 1.0->1.2->1.3->1.4. No change. It's a hardware problem. And since it is random, I don't think Samsung will do anything even if you send it back for repair. It's a small percentage of the 5K that suffers from this issue.

Other than the inconvenience, it's not really a big deal to me. Chances to get another Samsung player that is touble free are slim (many 2500 owners and 1500 owners now report complete lockup after a firmware updates).

sheesh, many? That can't be good.

I have the same freezing problem after 10-20 minutes.

Read here for what I plan on doing to correct it:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=9841

Sorry, I originally posted in the wrong message thread....

In an effort to get to the bottom of the freezing problem on one of my 5000s, I've been doing a little testing on the theory that it is heat related.

I ran eight tests, all with the Blu-ray "Patton", which is 2.8 hours long.
Each test was started with a cold player. (i.e. off long enough to reach room temperature)

I verified that the internal fan is working fine and I also have the unit sitting on a wooden desk with open space all around it.

I alternated the tests between having the cover on the unit and taking the cover off and here are the results:

Test #1 - Cover On - Freeze-up at 00:15:32 (hh:mm:ss)
Test #2 - Cover Off - Movie played all the way through
Test #3 - Cover On - Freeze-up at 00:32:01 (hh:mm:ss)
Test #4 - Cover Off - Movie played all the way through
Test #5 - Cover On - Freeze-up at 00:17:55 (hh:mm:ss)
Test #6 - Cover Off - Movie played all the way through
Test #7 - Cover On - Freeze-up at 00:28:21 (hh:mm:ss)
Test #8 - Cover Off - Movie played all the way through

Based on the above results, it appears that at least on my player, the freezing issue IS heat related.

At this point I don't know which internal components are the culprits but I suspect it is one of the processor chips. (which run very, very hot)

I have some combination fan/heatsink cooling devices on the way to see if they will eliminate the issue and to help determine which chip is the culprit. (if it is a chip)

Next test today will be swapping-out the power supply board from my other, problem-free player to see if it is the cause. Others on this forum have suggested this so I'll be testing that theory next.

I also noticed that if I power on the player with no disc in it. Leave it alone for a few minutes. It will freeze up and won't even open the tray.

BTW, my player freezes up in 3~5 minutes or so. Usually along the time for menu or studio logo screen.

Once in a while mine will freeze in the 5-10 minute range as well.

FWIW, I just got done with the first test swapping out the power supply board from my good player.

The board from the good player is now installed in the player with freezing problems.

I put the cover back on, fired up my Patton Blu-ray, and guess what, it froze at 00:07:17 !
I tested it a second time with the cover on and it froze at 00:11:21.

That clinches it for me.
That test tends to eliminate the power board as the culprit. Interestingly enough, the power supply in my freezing player has a higher revision number than the one in my trouble-free player.

Now I just have to wait until the coolers come in and do the trial and elimination tests on the processors...one by one...until I find the temperature sensitive one.

It makes sense to me that it could be a processor problem.
Processors in computers are rated for different clock speeds even from the same batch. They are tested at the factory for max speed and labeled as such.

Faster clock speed processors within the same family tend to cost more because there are fewer in a batch that can run reliably at the higher speeds and higher speeds equals higher heat generation.

People who overclock their computer's processors are able to do so (up to a point) if they add additional cooling.

That's my theory with this BD-UP5000. It must have a chip that performs at the low end of the reliability scale with respect to heat.

I hope the added cooling will solve the problem.

More news later after the chip coolers come in.....

So, that means you spent, what? Nearly twelve hours on this? Man, someone should be paying you...

Kudos to you for all you've done, though. Hopefully it results in you having a fix, and possibly helps other people with that problem as well. Well done.

During a test run I'm off doing other things. I check out the player every now and then to see if it froze so it's not like I'm sitting there watching it the whole time.

I feel very confident that I can permanently solve my issue and hope that my solution will be applicable to the many other BD-UP5000 owners out there that have the same freezing problem.

This is too nice of a player to be thrown in the "scrap heap".

Yeah, technology and design-wise, it is a nice player. I've been happy with mine.

It is just unfortunate that it seems the owners (of both this and the LG machines) put more time into documenting and solving problems than the companies do. I mean, if Samsung had one engineer/tester with your fortitude on the payroll, this would be the most trouble-free machine on the market!

Companies would rather put engineer/money toward new product development (new revenue) than fixing existing issues(no revenue). As long as consumers like us dumb enough to keep buying new (but buggy) products, companies will keep doing this

I'm afraid that nowadays it's all about beating the other guys to market.
This rush to market directly causes the introduction of products that have had less-than-optimal testing.

Times have changed....and so has the robustness of newer products in some cases.

All true, all true. They've completely lost the "pride in your work" factor. Very sad.

I'm going to sound like an old timer again, but when I was in the programming biz it really cut me when someone found a bug in my stuff. I did all kinds of crazy things to test it myself, just so I could find problems before anyone else did. Not that it would ever be perfect, but no way did I want to be the guy whose code got a bad rap in a magazine...

Of course, then later you find out your stuff is being used for things you never imagined. Like you see a demo about how the army used it for all the logistics for the last war...or hear that it runs a foreign stock exchange...

Well, it looks like I found the cause of my freezing issues.

If you recall from previous posts, my problem was that one of my two BD-UP5000 players would freeze anywhere from ~7 to ~35 minutes into a movie. The only recourse was for me to turn the player off, the back on again, and go through the agony of trying to pick back up where the freeze occurred.

This would only happen when I would first turn the player on after it had been off for at least a few hours...on the first disc I played. After the power off/on, it would play just fine for the duration.

I ran some experiments to see if it was heat related and I found out it was.
Both of the large processors on this unit run extremely hot. This would be the Main Processor and the Reon-VX chip.

My solution cost me about $10.
I purchased a 40mm x 40mm x 28mm "Chipset" fan and heatsink assembly.
This is a 12 Volt DC powered fan rated at 5 CFM.

I disassembled the fan from the heatsink and installed the fan on top of the existing heatsink on the 5000's main processor. This is a three wire fan but only 2 wires are needed (Red+ Black-) so I clipped the third wire. (Yellow)

The Red and the Black wires were tied into the 12 Volt DC supply on the 5000's power supply board.

I then attached the fan to the top of the existing black heatsink so that it would be blowing air down on the fins.

The gold-colored heatsink that came with the fan (that I disassembled) was installed on top of the Reon-VX chip to help cool it down as well,

The Reon never had a heatsink on it to begin with so I decided it could use some help too. I decided not to install a second fan on the Reon because I didn't want to load the 12 Volt power supply down too much.

I've run through several tests now that are identical to my previously stated testing with the player's cover on and have yet to have the player freeze on me.

By the way, the underside of the main circuitboard opposite where the main processor is mounted has a thick gray silicone heat transfer pad that makes contact with the board on one side and the inside bottom of the steel sheetmetal chassis on the other side. This is there to draw more heat away from the main processor. This heat get transferred to the sheetmetal case on the bottom of the unit.

Before installing the extra fan, this bottom area under the player would get extremely hot as well but after the fan installation, it is only warm to the touch.

I've included some before and after photos below.

I'm posting this because there may be others out there with a player that behaves like mine did (with the freezing) I hope this helps you too.

Pollyscroll

ORIGINAL (BEFORE)


MODIFIED (AFTER)


FAN