Player freezes during movie

Have you tried buying a Memorex or Scotch 3-M Cd/Blu-Ray Player Cleaner disc? You are supposed to clean your CD/DVD/Blu-ray player every 10 hours of playing time or every 5 MOVIES!!!

The problem is in the laser pickup assembly, the stepper motor that moves the laser is sticking on the worm gear or excessive ware on the gear linkage is preventing it from moving.

First, some long winded history and this may not be exactly the same problem you're having but I have an Oppo BDP-83 and I tried 2 different Predators blu-ray discs from Amazon.com, both of which would NOT play the actual movie. I could play the previews and get to the main menu but could not play the movie itself or jump to a scene select, etc. Any option that was selected would completely freeze the player at a black screen and I'd have to hold the power button down for a few seconds to reboot it. I tried it on the most recent Oppo firmware dated May 5th, 2010 AND the beta firmware date August 24th, 2010. Nothing. I read that some people had luck turning BD-Live OFF or disconnecting the player itself entirely from the network or by just waiting it out 5-10 minutes to see if it'd start....nothing worked. I disconnected the ethernet cable, let it stay at that frozen black screen for 30 minutes while I made dinner, fed the kid, etc. The thing that seemed to finally get the 2nd disc to play (1st disc I returned for an exchange via Amazon) was to select the BD Live Extras at the main menu, and download all of the extra previews, etc. After that, the movie played just fine. It could have been a fluke, but hell, I tried everything else and this was the only thing that didn't completely freeze up my player.

The most likely cause of your frustration with the BDP-S350 is that your player's firmware is not the most current. Most often, the firmware problem is JAVA related and will not let the menus load at all, but freezing during playback has also been reportedly fixed with the firmware upgrade.

The solution is to go to sony's website, download the firmware upgrade, burn it to a disc and then load the disc into the player to fix it.

I hope that helps.

If the rented DVD is too scratched it will cause the DVD player to pause while it tries and find the next available playable area on the disc. This may cause the player to skip to another part of the movie. Try wiping the disc with a damp cloth from the centre towards the outer rim and dry the same way. Fingerprints ect. also cause problems. If the scratches are circular the player will have a hard time trying to play the disc. If the scratches are straight and small it shouldn't cause too much problems.

Is the Firmware going thru completly What version do you have for the UP5000?

I would blame it on the DVD player. They are fickle when it comes to playing burned discs. Try playing the disc in your computer. If does the same thing there, the disc is garbage. You can also try burning at a slower speed, sometimes this helps. I would also try to avoid using DL (dual-layer) discs.

My friend suggested I clean the dvd optical reader lens inside the player with a fine brush (like a camera brush with a blower bulb). This seemed to help immensely. I'm not certain if this is just a temporary fix, but it seems to be ok so far.

Burn your DVDs at tow positions slower than what the system and discs say. It sounds as if there is a huge amount of error being introduced during the write process. Unfortunately, the old discs can only be recovered with an external program like Zero Assumption Recovery or the like....accordianman

Are you able to play other discs on your player? Did you get your discs from a reputable distributor? and not at a flee market? Could be that your discs aren't giving the proper signals.