^^^One weird aspect to it was that all the discs were unpredictable, meaning that sometimes they might engage, other times not. Sometimes the load times were slow, sometimes nothing at all happened -- I once let it run for 10 minutes with blank screen before unplugging the player. Sometimes when you unplugged, it would then start up and engage upon pressing PLAY. Other times it would do the same thing as before.
On the other web site that was linked in the emails I quoted from AVS above, there was much more discussion of the issue than on AVS, including "solutions" -- one person had success putting a blank flash drive in the back of their player -- the thought being that it provided extra memory space for the player to boot up the menu. I tried that, did not work for me. Another had success putting in one of the discs which might have engaged more easily -- you then go to EPISODES in the menu and specify an episode off the other problematic disc, wait for the player prompt to change the disc, then upon putting that one in, it will play.
That solution worked for me yesterday -- however I think you cannot count on that "less problematic" disc playing all the time, and of course it is a ridiculous hassle to go through. I tried the method twice with disc 2, and it worked to then play disc 1, which had frozen the machine twice earlier. But no saying next time I try, disc 2 will play to get me to disc 1. Then you can go through the whole set again trying to find one that will engage -- which means several freezing, unplug player, start up, eject sequences.
But as I say, some people seemed not to have the problem at all. It seemed not related to specific players or updates, or if it was, there was a broad swath of firmware-current players from different manufacturers that this issue stymied.
