Sony bdp s301 blu ray update

Disk tray opens quickly when you want it to except power up. Comes with a HDMI cable that works well.

Have had no problems playing the other formats that are supported. Cons: Power up takes about a full minute before you can open the disc tray, and after that it takes about 45 seconds to load the movie. Price is high as well. Sold by: Newegg Shipped by Newegg. I just tried using a cleaning disc which stated it had successfully cleaned the disc.

No joy. Recently my other BDs have taken longer to be read, and often I would have to eject and reinsert a couple three times to make them work, and when they are finally read it works fine, albeit with one caveat, namely one of my BDs auto ejected in midst of playing. When I reinserted it it brought me to where it had left off. This has only happened once. For now I am only buying DVDs for my viewing pleasure.

Like most of you here I'm experiencing "can't read disc" after inserting a bluray disc. I spent too much time last night on this forum trying EVERY solution offered by users and moderators. Keep in mind that this unit is operated by adults. It sits undisturbed on a shelf. It is pampered. It has never been struck by lightning nor had an arrow pierce it. Or had a Coke poured over it. We don't shove blu-rays into it with a hammer. I should prefice this. It USED to play any blu-ray disc.

It will play a DVD. What's the point of purchasing a blu-ray player that won't play blu-ray discs? Yes, it has the latest firmware via it's connection to the internet. No dice. This sucker is not going to play a blu-ray. I find it funny that moderators say "in that case, it will need service". The fact is that service is about the same cost as replacing the unit. I'm really bummed that I have a Sony product that so quickly became disposable. My next blu-ray player will not be a Sony.

We had no problems playing blu-ray and regular discs - until today. The player reads the disc then displays "No Disc" on the screen. I tried several discs with the same results. Our firmware is current, and I tried all the other troubleshooting steps, to no avail. We have never used or needed any USB memory devices. Any ideas or help would be appreciated. Thank you. I tried disasamble the blu ray disc drive, and cleaned the laser lenses.

It worked after I reassembled it back. Finally it played DVD and blu ray discs well. It was not that difficult to disassemble or reassemble the player and inside driver. Before this, I tried update, unplug, reset, Olynne, thanks so much! Sony won't support it because it is out of warranty, so I took mine apart, and cleaned it. It worked! I can now play Blu-ray's! I used a cotton tipped stick, dipped in acetone, and cleaned the lenses.

Then I cleaned out every speck of dust I could. Thanks again! I thought it might be a defective disk, so I took it back to the store where they put it into a BD player from another manufacturer and it played perfectly! I tried inserting a thumb drive in the USB slot on the back of the unit, thinking there might not be enough built-in memory, but no difference. At the time I originally posted this in another forum on the subject, I had checked the firmware version and it was the most recent available See update, below.

Have the standards changed for companies producing BDs or is this a firmware or hardware problem with my BD player? I also did what was suggested in earlier posts: unplugged the unit for over 2 minutes; reset to factory settings, etc. Yup, we had the same experience with no solution.

End of story. Don't know if anyone is still tracking this discussion, but I recently was able to return the BD disk that did not play on my BDP-N to 20th Century-Fox and just got a replacement.

I'm giving Sony this last benefit of the doubt. After this, if this brand new, factory-fresh BD doesn't play on their BD player, I'll be buying one made by a different manufacturer. When added to Sony's removal of apps, like CinemaNow and now YouTube, it appears that consumers' needs and wants are not a very high priority for Sony any more, sad to say. It did the same thing as the original disc! The 20th C-F fanfare played for a few seconds, screen went black, a smaller, animated 20th C-F logo appeared for a few more seconds, screen again goes black, and the player shut down on its own - AGAIN!

Just as with the original BD disc! Have you ever considered writing to 20th Century Fox about this issue? I'm sure they wouldn't be happy to hear that Sony customers cannot play their BD Discs. Maybe 20th Century Fox need to collaborate more closely with the manufactures of BD devices? Here's what I wrote Hello there, I wonder if you can please advise? I offer support to owners of Sony products through their user forums. Lately many people have complained of not being able to play certain Blu-ray discs on their Sony BD Players.

One particular user has replaced the BD Discs several times but still has the same problem. Is it possible that 20th Century Fox are using a newer as yet unsupported BD format or do Sony need to release new firmware to support these discs?

Many thanks Chris. I get an error message that says "Mismatch between disc and player region codes". I've tried re-setting the Blu Ray player several times, and I've also confirmed that parental controls are off.

I have gotten the player to recognize one Blu Ray disc released in For what it's worth, the two Blu Ray discs that prompt the player to give the region mismatch error were both released in late or early It's enirely possible that Netflix sent you the wrong region or perhaps the disc is heavily scratched?! I've had similar issues myself with badly scratched rental discs.

Also is your firmware current? You may be able to check this in the Tools menu on your player. Are you saying that your player also has issues recognising other BD dics? What about DVD's? As a side note, I notice that you are a new member, welcome to the community! If I may advise, please don't change the subject heading of posts as this confuses other people.

It is better to give the post a sub-heading in the main text area. Many thanks. Well I think it needed doing given the number of similar complaints. Sometimes it's easier to spot patterns forming when you can see all the problems in one list. It certainly took a long time to produce! I started at Page 1 and worked my way through, at one point I feared I'd even reach the end given all the reading which is another reason why I wanted to do this. At least now we can see which fixes worked for which models.

Thanks again for you appreciation! Thanks for the Maze Runner fix. I have an S and it would stall and stutter. But, that player sometimes fails DHCP and doesn't connect to the network. Can you clarify your statement please? It would be interesting to know for sure as this may help Sony identify where the issue lies. Removing the cable fixed it on the I also tried the again after verifying it was connected to the network, and it worked fine.

Both players have the latest firmware. I didn't try just disabling BDLive. I do remember having to do that with The Artist on both players just to get it to load. Hi Andy, Thanks for confirming this, so to clarify removing the Ethernet cable on your S whilst playing the movie 'The Maze Runner' does allow the film to play where previously it would not.

That's great news!!! Thanks for reporting this, I'll add your name and model number to the list and your success with a work-around. Please note I will also pass on this info to Sony. As for your other BD player S, I'm a little confused, did the above work-around solve the issue with that player also? Please be a little more detailed with your response if possible to save me keep asking questions. So with regards to your earlier statement above, does this issue still happen The first time on the , I didn't verify if the network was active or not.

The second time, I made sure it was working. The movie worked both times. The issue appears to only affect my Ah ha, finally I squeezed that information out of you! Thanks for clearing that one up for me, well I suppose fixing 2 issues in one go was a tall order! I've added the details about your S to the list on the previous page at the bottom.

I'll leave your S off for the time being as it doesn't really relate to this post. Thanks again. What I'd like to know is just why it seems to be trying to access something on the network or Internet while playing???

I believe your player does check things like the film title using the Gracenote feature but whether this is done during playback or when you press stop I can't say for sure. I did suggest earlier that one member try turning OFF Gracenote but it didn't make any difference. You might also have noticed that I contacted 20th Cenury Fox about this issue and they said that all their discs are within tolerance and they have contacted all the major manufacturers to ask them to update their firmware to prevent issues like this from keep happening.

I don't think Sony are likely to do this however unless service centres report enough of these issues to Sony Japan. Personally I would report the issue to a service centre so they are at least aware it's not an isolated incident with your device.

I have also asked a contact of mine to foward the list I made to Japan if possible. Blue Ray discs now won't play on our hbdnw theater system. Worked fine last week and this week it won't play. It will play a dvd.

Is this a common problem? I am concered because we just bought the unit about 6 weeks ago and now I am being told we have to send it off to New York for warranty repair. I am wondering if the player is a lemon and we will have on-going problems with it. Not happy!! All of the Parental restrictions are set to "Off".

None of the discs are 3D. I've tried to do the software update, and it says it is already up to date. WayneH, Hi there, welcome to the community. A few quick questions for you Is it all Blu-ray discs that don't play or just some of them? Have you changed any settings which might have caused this issue? Likewise have you recently applied a firmware update?

Please answer the above questions as it might help diagnose the problem. Also it might be worth investigating if your retailer could offer you an exchange if the unit is faulty. Worth asking, you probably have some legal rights to request a replacement product seeing as it is quite new. Do you have this film yourself? If so it would be a useful test if your device can play it okay? Please come back with any new info, I might need to add you to the list.

Unfortunately I do not have that movie. Come back in the next couple of days, I'm hoping to post some updates which might help you. Hi folks, As promised I sent the list I created on Page 14 to the forum Moderator 'Jeannettez' in an effort to bring this issue to Sony's attention. Jeannette has kindly supplied me with the following feedback together with some useful information, some of which you may or may not have tried already.

Jeannette also suggests that if a particular recommendation below does not work for you, please RESET your player and try these recommendations again.

Below is the reply from Jeannette Thanks again to Jeannettez Forum Moderator for all her help. Thanks for all that detailed info. I'll give a try to the things I haven't already tried, probably this weekend, but I think it's kind of ludicrous that WE, the owners of Sony BD players should have to do any of this stuff just to play a disc! I agree!! Just bought mine about 6 weeks ago and it won't play BDs!

The store I bought it from has agreed to exchange it for me but I'm worried it will do the same thing. There is a major flaw here! I've jumped thru all the "setting" hoops too. It's not entirely Sony's fault. The media companies are hyper-paranoid about copying and keep coming up with new copy protection schemes.

These usually use the BD-Java programming language on all players. That's why many discs take so long to start up and often have those progress meters. The Java is used to add an extra layer of encryption, plus often checks on region code bypasses and other hacks. Sometimes, it messes up and doesn't work on some players. Some people also mention DRM as being part of the issue but again it's not something I know much about.

Whilst I agree with you that it's not entirely Sony's fault as a company they could be doing a whole lot more to keep people informed about these issues. Understandably people on these forums get very upset when they can't find answers. Sony could resolve much of this anxiety simply by posting a bulletin informing their customers why these issues are happening and what if anything they're doing to rectify the problem.

Well I think I performed a miracle. Now I can't get to work again, tried new 1. Must have been a fluke, but I did it twice at different times?? Discs do not play on player or laptop and computer reads them as "empty". Sorry to hear that since I just got the "Kingsman" Blu-ray and was planning to try it this weekend.

I'll let you all know if I was able to play it or if it, too, wouldn't play. Guess I should have checked the studio name before I bought it. So, if anyone is still interested, here's what happens when I try to play the "Kingsman" BD: After I insert the BD, the screen goes black for a few seconds while it loads, the the 20th CF fanfare starts, but is cut short.

Then, "BD Pause" icon shows up in lower left corner and screen stays black for a few more seconds. It starts playing at the "Previews" section, but they play okay. Then I can select "Play Movie" and the movie plays!!! I didn't do anything special to set this up: I didn't disconnect Ethernet or erase BD data, and it's still using the same software version as before M R, I think no updates available from Sony since that one was installed, according to Network Update. Maybe 20th CF changed something in the way they code or produce their discs is the only thing I can think of since Sony has done nothing to change the software.

Sorry I can't be of more help. It's definitely a conundrum my vocabulary word for the day! Keep us informed! I'm still leary of buying another BD by 20th CF, but maybe my experince with this disc will help change my feeling about it. I may have found an answer. At least for my particular situation but maybe this is a step in the right direction for the rest of you. I went into my settings and allowed PowerDVD to disable the color settings of Windows Aero and it was immediately able to play the movie with no errors.

I hope this helps. This won't help users of Sony Blueray players since they do not use the Windows operating system. Just tried to watch the BBC series "Life". Did everything this said to do, but still won't play. It plays the intro, but when it gets done, instead of going to the root menu it goes back to the bluray player home screen.

First time I have had this issue, and this is a new player that I have updated the firmware on. It plays other BBC blurays fine, and this is not a region protected film. It didn't even start!!! Got a message that the disc was unreadable!!! It's a brand new BD and the firmware is up-to-date, that is to say, it's the latest version available, from December !!! Has anyone else tried playing this BD? It's been a while since I've posted here myself, I guess like others I grew tired of the lack of input from Sony!

Sorry to hear that you're still having problems with certain blue-ray movies, if it were me I'd seriously consider making a video and posting it on YouTube. With any luck someone at Sony will see the video and be shamed into releasing a fix. Better still send them a copy! Incidentally a little trick you might try which may or may not work is to wipe the center spindle hole of your disc with some Isopropyl Alcohol before insertion, as is often the case we film adicts like to munch on snacks whilst viewing our favourite movies and this sometimes results in grease getting on our discs and in particular the center hole.

Bizarre I know but I once had a DVD which played fine one day but not the next, the above remedy did indeed solve the problem. It's the first thing I would think of if a disc didn't play these days. Taking the above one step further, if you do like to snack and watch movies it's also quite likely that grease has contaminated the center spindle in the machine itself. Cleaning might be a little more tricky as it involves opening the unit, something else which I've had to do in the past and which worked a charm.

You never know! Good luck my friend! Hi, "Slinky" lol thanks for the post and the advice! I tried playing this same disc 3 more times yesterday. The first time, after wiping the surface not the hole because I hadn't read your post at that time with a clean, soft cloth, when I inserted it I got the message, "Cannot operate this disc," just like before, then screen showed an icon of a disc with a question mark in it.

Second attempt: after waiting a few minutes with the player turned off, inserted the disc again and How the heck did that happen??? No adjustments were made between attempts, not even erasing the BD data, and it worked???

So, I figured that was just a fluke and, after waiting a few hours this time, I tried again I never heard of this, but maybe my BD player has early-stage Alzheimers.. Btw, no new firmware updates were secretly installed between tries - I checked lol Thanks for your suggestion about wiping the hole, but I ALWAYS hold the disc by the edges and never with greasy fingers - I make sure to wash my hands before I touch a disc Thanks, again, for your help!

I'm sure the forums have been missing you! And Sony, too! Hello mate, That's some good news to hear though to be honest I'm not surprised in the least! My own Sony BD player BDP-S has also developed a touch of Alzheimer's recently, sometimes it forgets what it's doing at shutdown and just flashes the shutdown message for ever more.

The only remedy is to pull the plug since no commands will function either on the remote or the front of the unit.

At other times when viewing YouTube or Amazon Movies it forgets that a remote control is available and again promptly ignores all commands. The list goes on but thankfully no such issue with disc playback as yet. Now ordinarily I might suggest talking to Technical Support but anyone who has ever tried doing so will know that if you are fortunate enough to engage in a conversation you'll either quickly be given the runaround or you'll be asked to complete an extraordinarily long list of tests to diagnose the fault yourself.

In other words support tries it's level best to frustrate the customer to the point where they give up. I say this with my own bitter experience earlier in the year, I spent weeks sending screenshots and photos too and fro not to mention the technical details they required, did it get me anywhere, did it heck, I still have exactly the same issues as when I first bought the device not to mention a growing list of new problems. Thankfully most these bugs can be got rid of with a reboot of the system, that is until the next time it happens and so life goes on and we continue to suffer the frustrations of owning a Sony product.

Presently Windows 10 is taking up most of my free time so not much time for these forums I'm afraid. De-cluttering the file system has been my main goal since upgrading last week but I'm just about there now. It's funny after peeling back the layers and removing the clutter I find myself looking once again at Windows 7.

Next job is to hack the system files and replace those ugly MS icons. Be lucky. This is only my personal opinion but experience lately tells me that Sony have made a BIG mistake combining streaming media features into their Blue-ray players.

As a standalone blue-ray player my BDP-S functions very well but sadly the same cannot be said for the streaming services, there's more bugs to be found on those than on a rotting corpse!! I'm old enough now to remember when Sony once had an enviable reputation the world over but sadly in recent years that reputation has taken quite a hammering from angry customers who've been left pulling their hair out in despair.

It seems no amount of criticism has any effect on Sony who for the most part seem to be a faceless organization intent on selling more and more devices without giving customers proper support.

You make an interesting comment about the new Mac OS, I too have started to notice issues particularly with iTunes. It seems with every update the program gets more and more unusable not to mention ugly looking!

Why can't manufacturers leave well alone? If something aint broke why fix it!!! I do love to customize! I like the photo btw though whoever photoshopp'd it missed a few operating systems off the list, I first started with Windows 3. Thanks for you earlier kind words, have a great summer too! New week, same old problem Inserted the disc, menu screen showed that same icon of a disc with a question mark inside and "Cannot operate this disc" or something like that superimposed above the icon.

Tried contacting Sony Support on Twitter, since that gets a more immediate - if not more helpful - response and was told to update the firmware! If only I could!!! You'd be helping A LOT of people!!! I don't have it on my iMac, but I've checked it out in the Apple Store and it's very unappealing! I think it was a BIG mistake putting Jonny Ive in charge of the user interface in addition to the hardware I have the same problem with my blu ray player model BDPs started a few months ago as far as I can tell, plays all dvds and some blu rays, recently I've only tried dumb and dumber too and the last stand older blu rays work, strange right?

Sorry to hear about your problems. I keep hoping they'll see all these posts about problems with that firmware and the latest BDs and get out an update that will fix the problems, but that hope is fading. And, you're not the only one who thinks this may be a deliberate strategy by Sony to force people to buy new BD players, even though they're taking a big chance because after a bad experience with one brand, I don't think people will be willing to give that brand a second shot.

If you read my first post about this issue, you can see that, when I took my BD for The Maze Runner a 20th Century-Fox BD back to the store since I thought it was a problem with the disc, it played perfectly on a player made by another company whose name begins with "S" and is from Korea.

Mine are universal branded, haven't tried any others yet. I was going to take the movie back too but I thought I'd give it a go in the ps3 and that's when I new it's the blu ray player, you see the ps3 gets an update monthly mostly "stability" more like codecs because after a while developing must change or do something to their games and without an update I couldnt play the game.

I was contacted by sony tech and they told me to hold all the buttons on the blu ray player itself apart from eject I only have 4 buttons do this with the disc in the player will restart and guess what? It worked, well started to I could only select my language after that just a blank screen and it takes longer to load each title and the spin motor tries to spin up but stop.

I asked them what these buttons do apart from reset but they wouldn't say I'm thinking it's disabling some codecs. Also interesting that it worked on your PS3 since that's made by Sony, too, and you'd think it would have the same guts as their BD players, so like you said, it could be because the PS3 gets more updates?

Thanks for the info! Hi guys, I don't know whether this phenomenon is unique to discs purchase in the US but for some reason we don't see many posts of this nature in the UK.

That said however one has cropped up earlier today and so for what it's worth I've added a link back to this post on the UK forum. Maybe you guy's can chat together and find some common ground? Slinky McVelvet - Inventor of the word 'Mellifluous' even though my dictinary says it was around in the 15th Century and you sure don't seem that old!

I would think that the BDs in the UK are at least made in different plants than those made in the USA, and use a different video standard - at least a different region code - so seems even stranger that, if it's a coding problem, it would be in the UK, too So region B of our blu rays has an issue, though the one company makes the movie example universal made the last stand 20thCF doesn't also make the last stand so I can't buy from a different company?

Actually I suspect the problem has long existed in the UK though not visiting the forums very often I don't tend to see how often such issues get reported. Of course it's quite possible that the issue only affects older models, personally I've never had this issue myself and most of the discs I play are Amazon rentals.

I think Black Friday might be a good opportunity for you to invest in the future, I see that there's some new ultra high definition blue-ray devices hitting the market now though you might want to take stock of what company you spend your money with. Best of luck! InsaneGenius, LOL My mum always used to tell me if I dug a hole deep enough I'd reach Australia.

I'm not sure how old I was before I stopped believing this. McVelvet" had in his response, but I think things would be the same in Australia since they have a different region code than the USA and the discs are probably made in Australia rather than imported from USA, though I'm unsure about that.

And, yes, it would be my assumption that you won't be able to buy a movie that was produced by one studio on a BD made by a different studio, but I could be wrong about that, too. I don't have any idea how many plants in Australia, or the USA for that matter, actually produce the physical BDs, so there may be one plant doing the actual manufacturing for more than one studio.

I think the question would then be who does the coding: the studio in the master copy or the plant? Maybe "Dr. McVelvet" has some insight into this. Hope you're able to solve your problem, or that Sony actually gets around to posting firmware updates that will solve the problems. Good luck! McVelvet, unless of course he read any of my posts on the UK forums.

As for the mention of plants Well best not talk about those, it might cause a big stink, lol!!!!!!! I guess when we're faced with such frustrations as owning non-functional equipment humour is all we have to save us, the world would be a very unhappy place without it.

All the best guys Dr. Slinky McVelvet - Inventor of the word 'melifluous'. Haha that's one thing I didn't try putting the disc upside down! I told them to cut the bs it's the right region it's brand new no marks deadset they must have some air heads in the tech part. Is reinstalling firmware possible? I doubt it's that but it could be possible that some corruption occurred during install usually the whole update would just fail but if an install is just like a program you can get it installed to find out there's an error being the fact that I've never had this issue till recently only thing that's changed is an update.

Insanegenius Hi dude, Yes Sony Support can say the dumbest things at times, little wonder why most people only ever phone them once!

I guess their like politicians when you think about it and especially how they deny any responsibility and pass the blame back on the end user. Wrong region code That sounds almost as bad as my suggestion of playing the disc upside down!!

I don't know your full story and what other things you've tried doing so far but from experience often a simple reset re-boot can solve some problems. I think because newer Sony BD Players have an in-built processor you have to treat them kind of like computers which we all know very often recover simply by re-booting.

Allow the device to sit un-powered for a few minutes before restoring power once more. Turn the device on again and hopefully some or all issues will be repaired.

Be aware that a reset will undo any user modified settings, you will need to re-do these once you're back up and running again. I think this is by design in case a wrong user setting is causing the issue. Please do come back and let us all know if anything has worked. All the best! Here's another Sony Blu-ray player that has suddenly stopped playing BD movies. It plays DVD discs without a problem, but it has suddenly stopped playing Blu-ray discs.

This seems to have happened after a network update of the unit software. New, completely clean clean BD Movies will not play, they just spin in the player and no error message appears. Previously it was displaying the message Cannot operate this disc. Then a firmware update occurred and now it doesn't display any message. Has this player really been broken by a Sony upgrade? At least you GOT a firmware update!

I've been waiting for one since last December! And the problem has gotten even worse lately! Now, BDs that used to play, don't play! Even older ones! Happily, "Black Friday" is coming in a couple weeks in USA, anyway, don't know if it's the same in other countries and there should be lots of sales on electronics, so I may be able to get a new BD player at a very good price Hope Sony reads this - finally!

For those of you interested, you can also watch a number of videos on YouTube which show how to clean an optical disc drive. The video below concentrates on how to clean the lazer in your player, you also will notice the centre spindle discussed in my above tutorial. Cleaning both the centre spindle and lazer is a good idea if you have disc read issues.

It seems that lazer cleaning alone is rarely the solution to this problem and spindle cleaning is often the best course of action. Although written for Panasonic owners this also applies to any optical disc drive. Fixing your Panny: When there's a fault and lens cleaning doesn't help Good hearing from you, even if it's still about this never-ending issue! Thanks for your post and all the information and illustrations and links! Very thorough! I'll definitely give it a try! I don't know if you watch "Doctor Who" but the latest episode had a simialr theme: "sleep dust," or what we in the states call "sand," accumulated I sure hope that doesn't happen in my Sony!

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