Is My Blu-Ray Player Bad?

[Modular]

Hey all,

I'm having an issue with lightly scratched blu-ray discs not playing at all or getting halfway through a movie and freezing up on my Panasonic DMP-BDT220.

Are blu-rays more susceptible to scratches causing read issues than dvd's, or is my player a dud. I've only had it for 3 months and can easily exchange it if need be.

All of the discs I've had issues with are blurays from Netflix that have seriously minor scratching on them.

Thanks for any insight.

 

[sdifox]

try washing the discs with a bit of dish soap, rise off and dry with towel.

 

[queequeg99]

try washing the discs with a bit of dish soap, rise off and dry with towel.

Try this. I usually use any regular dish soap with warm water. I just use my fingers to rub the soap on and a microfiber cloth to dry it off (after shaking as much water off as possible). But in a pinch I've also used regular dish clothes and have never had a total failure yet.

I have the same BD player and have had very good luck with netlifx blu rays disks. Dvds, on the other hand, are a different matter (about 1 in 20 are unplayable).

 

[JechtShot]

You have it backwards. Blu-ray is more scratch resistant and has a hard coating on the disc unlike DVD. Not only that, Blu-Ray has an error correction system that is more efficient than DVD.

I think it's your player with the issues.

 

[Modular]

Thanks, I'll give the dish soap a try. I'm also going to try the disc in a friends player to see if theirs has trouble playing it.

Jecht, that's what I had read. If the dish soap doesn't solve it, the player will be exchanged.

 

[Smoove910]

I had that BD player... did the same thing. It met an untimely death on the receiving end of my .308 at the shooting range. Yes, it resolved the problem I had. Now I roll with a cheapo LG BD player from Walmart. Never had a problem reading discs, I just wish there were more audio output options

 

[Number1]

I had that BD player... did the same thing. It met an untimely death on the receiving end of my .308 at the shooting range. Yes, it resolved the problem I had. Now I roll with a cheapo LG BD player from Walmart. Never had a problem reading discs, I just wish there were more audio output options

LOL, there is your answer OP, return and go shopping for a better player.

 

[fralexandr]

I dunno, plenty of people have problems with rental Blu-rays not playing. Whereas older rental DVDs that are scratched to hell have no problem at all.
Maybe Blurays are harder to scratch, but once they do get any kind of visible scratch, getting them to play flawlessly hasn't been possible.
In many cases those blurays fail to play or skip multiple scenes on my PS3, but play successfully with a few noticeable artifacts on my PCs bluray drive.

So even if the bluray disc is more resilient itself, many bluray players seem to be hit or miss with them, even name brand players. All of the DVD drives my family has owned have never had any of these kind of issues, regardless of how cheapo or expensive the DVD player and how scratched the DVD was (as long as it wasn't physically cracked). I think that kind of says something about how effective bluray is regardless of its superior scratch resistant coating and error correction. I would suspect this has a large part to do with the higher density media relative to the scratch size, but I wonder if scratched HD-DVDs happen to have any of these issues?
Does anyone with an HTPC have these problems? Maybe some of the bluray player manufacturers source their drives from the same sources with bad QC?

 

[Modular]

LOL, there is your answer OP, return and go shopping for a better player.

Better player? I'm not usually a ranking slave, but many other sites say the same: http://reviews.cnet.com/best-blu-ray-players/

I've yet to dish soap the disc or play it in another player. I may just return the thing altogether and get a player for my HTPC that I haven't hooked up yet...

 

[Number1]

Yes try what is suggested in here of course. Obviously smoove910 had the same kind of issues and resolved it by getting another brand of player.

By better player I meant another brand.

Let us know how it works out.