BD-UP5000 Universal Player Samsung [OFFICIAL OWNERS THREAD] & FAQ - Page 384

i just updated my player to 1.6 and its been sitting there with the tray open with the message firmware update now processing. its been about 15 minutes and was wondering if i need to pull the plug?
oh also, on the front panel of the player it says CD UP on the LCD. what does that mean?

thanks for any help to my questions.

You can pull the plug after about 15. Cd up means cd method upgrade. You might have been able to avoid this by performing a cold start before the upgrade. It has not happened to me on many many upgrades and down grades, but has to several others and they have been fine.

thanks for your help, it worked and Avatar now working.

I took apart drive today and made matters worse. It now won't read any discs. I don't know how to properly set the laser rail screws. I removed them then realized they weren't full tightened and were actually held in place with glue. I tried a bunch of different settings from fully tighted to as much as five full turns counter clockwise but nothing worked. Both the blue and red lasers turn on but it won't read any discs.

Anyway, I ordered a replacement drive on Ebay. It looks like I'll be keeping the 5000 for HD DVDs. That is until a good deal comes along on a Toshiba XA2 or Onkyo DV-HD805!

Speaking of loaders. There is one listed and there is a 20% off sale going on. I have no idea if this is a store sale, general ebay sale or something that just is being offered to me. Anyway if anyone needs one out there this would be under $60 with shipping. I'm tempted to buy it, but stocked up at the moment. I have a feeling I'm going to wish I held onto my spare for power supply, main board, front board, fan and other misc parts.

I emailed the guy on that loader apparently it's in perfect working condition. For anybody contemplating the deal on ebay you won't find anything cheaper than this. Just to find one is a task in it self good luck to those that want to stock pile parts.

My 5k I never use it anymore I never stock piled on parts for it either. I've converted all of my HD DVD's to .mkv so it will play in anything. No need for a dedicated HD DVD player anymore. It's also nice to view it in MCE but alas I never really use that either. It's always MPC-HC for me it's that damn zoom function that super seeds all third party players and SA. The PC really spoils you I haven't gotten up to load a disc in a tray in months. Always watching movie marathons using MPC-HC's play list.

The one listed at 20% off is the one I bought. The original listing stated 2 were available. I bought one so now there is only one left. Less than $60.00 for a loader is reasonable considering how hard it is starting to get to find them.

Well I went ahead and bought it before the sale ended. I already inquired about those before they were listed. Both are 2007 releases and I think they have a few others. I don't really need it, but someone will need one eventually and hey I can always pick up a broken one on eBay, slap in and drive and resale it.

I should pick up a spare loader for the bh200 as well.

The loader I bought off of ebay is defective. It loads HD and SD dvds but not bluray. I tried 3 different bluray discs and none of them loaded. They all ejected after about 30 seconds with the infamous error code. I cleaned the lasers but of course that didn't help. I emailed the seller. Hopefully he has another one he can ship me or gives me a refund.

Mr.kludge, test your loader when you receive it. The one he sent me looks very different than the loader I have. My 5000 is basically a Frankenstein unit. I orginally purchased it off of ebay knowing it didn't play HD DVDs. I then stole the main board out of it to repair my original 5000 which was freezing at boot up. Once my original unit was working properly I then ordered a replacement board to get this 5000 working again. It worked fine except it didn't read HD DVDs which is why I ordered the replacement loader. Now I have a loader that reads HD DVDs but not Blurays. Lol I already ruined the loader that didn't read HD DVDs by taking it apart to far.

Hopefully the seller has another working loader available. If not then I guess I am back to looking for one or I'm just gonna give up and buy a stand alone HD DVD player.

FWIW -- my HDA2 works very well with HD DVD discs. My brother has a BD-UP5000 and I've helped him regularly with his player firmware. However, if he had a hardware issue, all I could do is direct him to Samsung support ! This format problem is an unquestionable PIA, but outside of replacing all HD DVD with BD equivalents, I don't see a way around it (and as an original HD DVD enthusiast, I've no interest in massive replacement with BD).

Again FWIW -- If you care about being able to play your HD DVD collection, it probably makes sense to have a back up HD DVD player !

I own two stand alone HD DVD players, an A1 and A2. I want 1080p and bitstreaming though. I've been looking for an Onkyo dv-hd805 or a XA2/A35. I was hoping to get the 5000 working properly and I was going to use that just that for my HD DVD collection since that was the easiest and cheapest solution.

The loader I am getting is not one that was listed. I am getting one that has a date code that has been smudged in the hope that it is an '08 or at least in good shape. I've bought from this seller before and not had problems and they have sold a great many of these. They must have gotten a bad one taken out of a deck at one point mixed up? They do have another '07 in stock and think they have others at another building where they store stuff. Oh, and I always test these things. I have a 5K specifically for backup/spare and for testing loaders etc.

If you get a replacement and still have problems let me know and I can get you a working loader (provided the one that I should have over the weekend or early next week is good.). I haven't had to return stuff to the seller since the other loaders I have gotten from them have been brand new '08s and worked perfectly. Oh, also BTW - it's a she not a he. She does all the grunt work for the company that her husband owns and it a very nice lady and has been very accommodating and has provided much good service and information.

Even if this "sale" loader does not work out, I can probably part with one of my other basically brand new loaders. The question would be to give up one of the new '08s or the '07 that Sammy stuck in my old spare just last year and had like not even an hour or two of use (was used somewhat for 1.5 regression testing and verification of the movies that would not play on 1.5 since I put it back to 1.4 after I ran into those problems, just to make sure I could tell Sammy that the movies did in fact play on 1.4).

Oh, and I just had a lightbulb moment. Did you re-flash your player with 1.6 when you installed the new loader? The reason I ask is that both of my new loaders had f/w that I had never seen before and with the newest one that I believe is the best it had no issues (but I did re-flash anyway), but with the other one it would not play BDs until I re-flashed it and got it to the latest loader code (0304 if I remember right). You will want to check that before you give up. Remember that these loaders primarily come from stock that was intended for computer use and the f/w can be vastly different with those. I did not write down the weird older loader code versions since I really did not care. I had a few min. where i though the one loader was bad, but now that it is up to snuff I have it in my current spare and all has been well.

I didn't update the firmware after installing the new loader. I don't see how the firmware could have any effect on the loader. I don't believe the firmware rewrites the bios/firmware of the loader.

After reading your post I decided it was worth a shot. I reinstalled the loader, programmed my Harmony 550, and updated the firmware to 1.6.

Unfortunately I got the exact same results. It does not read any blurays.

I just pulled out my BD-UP5000 to update with 1.6 and was wondering if Samsung is still fixing loaders and if there is any indication of how long they will continue to fix loaders.

My machine is a 12/07 build, only have had skipping/pausing problems with some Blu discs in the past. Just wondering if I should take the initiative to get the loader replaced before they stop fixing them, if they haven't already.

There are 3 firmwares that the updates, can, effect. System firmware, loader and front board CPU. 1.5 and 1.6 share the same loader code. The only way for us consumers to do the flash is with the general complete firmware install. However samsung has individual update discs as detailed in the service manual for the individual updates, be it front, loader or main system firmwares.

If you swap your drive you must reflash, unless the loader you install happens to have the latest code. I am skeptical that the version loaded with the 1.6 and 1.5 updates is in fact the latest for the loader based on the version, I think thy might have regressed it and it might be why some are seeing issues that would have been addressed long ago. For example DVD region code issues. I hope I am wrong there. One of these days I'm going to read up and see if there is firmware you can load on the drive for computer use. There may be a way to make these drives more reliable and read more discs that way.

Anyhow it was worth a try since I had the exact same problem until I flashed that one loader.

It's a flat $110 including return shipping for any out of warranty repair. You pay freight to them. It runs about 10 clams if you use fedex ground including insurance depending on how far away you are from their repair centers. One of mine went to nj for warranty repair last year.

Your loader is probably fine. The 5k, at least in my experience with 3 units and several loaders, is very picky about dirty discs and scratches and there have been a bunch of playability issues with skipping and other stuff fixed with 1.6.

Recently I bought a cheep used copy of yes man and it has a repaired scratch and coughs up blood for 2-3 min. I sent the disc in for a replacement or refund and I've ran into a few rentals and discs in my collection that have had issues, but not very many. Scratched and dirty hds don't seem to be a problem. However I had one loader that was much better with bd than my main player as far as marginal discs, but would only play hds when it wanted to.

Clean your lasers with a disc and play a bunch of bds from your collection and several rentals before you send it in.

As far as how long they will service these, who knows. As long as parts are available I'm sure they will continue. That's why I've been buying up loaders and considering buying yet another one on eBay that has everything good except the loader to use for parts and a project unit for verifying loaders etc. I'm sure I can find one for cheep.

It's probably a decent money making thing for Sammy since these are so easy and quick to work on and I'm sure they have a pile of parts for them. A good tech should be able to repair one in about 15-30 min. Worse case since all they do is swap parts based on symptom and then do a very quick test of the unit. They probably make more repairing than on the sale of new cheeper bd players.

Interesting.

Maybe I should try all the different firmwares to see if any of them play blurays. I have 1.2-1.6 on disc already. When I have some free time I will give it a shot. I'll try some of the older blurays I have.

I doubt any of them will work but you never know. The drive makes some very strange noises while trying to load a bluray. I will post some pictures when I get home of the drives. They look completely different.

You could try. I don't know the behavior of the loader version before 1.4. When I regressed my players to 1.4 after 1.5 was FUBAR I noticed that the loader f/w stayed at 0304 and also going to 1.5 as well. I know the loader code changed with 1.5 and I posted about it somewhere here. Apparently the update is smart enough not to regress the loader code when you downgrade? I don't know if that is by date or version number. I never did figure out what the progression was. To verify eject the tray and hold down the info button on the remote and it will report all the versions. You can also tell from the firmware string that it reports in the system setup menu, but it's harder to catch the loader code in there.

I never did try going back to 1.3 or 1.2 to see what would happen, as I did not see the point. No reason now to be running anything other than 1.6. You may find that going all the way back and then forward that it might fix it, but I bet you got a bum loader and I'm sure they will make it right. Mine did not come today since it was shipped late, which is fine since I'm really busy this weekend. I will let you now how it works out. I'm hopeful, but expecting this next one to be bad since it has obviously been handled. The other 2 I got showed no signs of ever being used, and as I said are working perfectly.

BTW - for you and everyone else. I do have another contact of someone that has a bunch of loaders they have been using for ripping HDs. One of these days I will contact them as they mentioned when they were done they were going to dump all of them, so there might be some deals or decent prices on them on eBay at some point. They of course will be used, but should be in good shape.

I installed firmware 1.2 through 1.6. None of them read any blurays. I think it is safe to assume that the drive I received is defective.

Did you happen to note what loader code you ended up with on each firmware release?

Recent movies played with no issues. Nick and norah's, sleep dealer, she's out of my league, 2012, flash gordon (did I mention that one before).

Btw - out of my league is a great movie and freaking hilarious in a non fart joke way (in fact there is only a couple potty jokes in it). I will have to pick a copy up when they get cheep.

No. I didn't bother since none of them played any bluray discs. If any had I would have written down the code for each.

Sorry to let you down Kludge. You are the most active member in this thread and I appreciate all of your hard work.

1.6 has been great but last night I wanted to watch Casino Royale and the machine gagged on it / spit it out. Cleaning the disc with brilliantize didn't help. Check out your Casino Royale.

I had my first disc not play since the 1.6 update. It was "The Crazies" and it was a rental. I tried cleaning as well but no luck. Also, almost every disc I have tried will not read the first time but usually plays fine the second attempt.

BR or HD-DVD?

No problems here. I own both the original release in lpcm and the 2-disc collectors edition in ddthd. All 3 discs load and play fine. These are used copies i've picked up over the years and have never been in my player before tonight.

Which one did you try? I assume the original since you did not mention success or failure with disc 2?

The crazies played fine for me a week or so ago. It was a rental from blockbuster and had to just check and it was mailed to me not one I swapped for. Also, I think I have only had like 1-2 times that I have had to reload a disc since 1.6 and I have been watching movies quite a bit since there is not much on tv to watch these days.

Casino is only on bd afaik.

The last loader I bought came today and it won't play bds. I was afraid of that since it sounded like a used drive where the others I bought were new or taken from 5ks that had other problems (they showed no signs of use or having been installed. At first is was running like 1117 and would not play hds either. I flashed it to 0321 (the latest that installs with 1.5 and 1.6) and then it would play hds, but no bd joy.

Needless to say it's going back for a refund :-(

Anyone else having issues with avs forum e-mail notification today? Last one I got was last might and I was not notified on any of the ones today. I ran into them when I was going to post about the loader and ran into some things to test and reply to.