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Is there NO 4K player that doesn’t have freezing issues?! (1 Viewer)

DanNeir

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Have the Sony x800 and am well aware of the freezing issue history but after going through dozens and dozens of 4K discs, regular blu rays and dvd I thought the problem was over because it hadn’t happened in a long time.
But just now watching the 4K Godzilla King of the Monsters disc the player completely locked up and had to be unplugged to get it to work again. Is there no player that doesn’t have some history of freezing issues?
 

Todd Erwin

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Which version of the Sony X800 do you have?

I used to have the original X800, which had sporadic freezing issues. I replaced it with the X800-M2, which came out this Spring, and haven't had any freezing issues whatsoever (knock on wood).
 

Malcolm R

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I have a Samsung 4K that I used for a while that would occasionally freeze. I decided to switch back to my Sony BR player, as I don't yet have a 4K display so using the 4K player was pointless if it was going to be a problem.
 

DanNeir

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I have the first UBPX-800, it had freezing issues early but for the last few months not a single problem. It played such things as Avengers End Game, the new Iron Mans, all the Mission Impossibles, Jurassic Park Collection and so on. Mid way thru Godzilla and it just froze. This was the first time I’ve ever had to unplug it to fix the problem. It’s up to date on all firmware updates. Been reading reviews and haven’t found any player with at least a few people complaining about discs freezing up.
 

willyTass

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My Panasonic 9000 has very occasional freezing issues . More so with Blu rays than UHD

If u look at every players thread : Sony , oppo 203 , pioneer lx500 etc around the world there are owners who have occasional freezing issues

This is what happens when you have the pits so close together on a small disc . Maybe one day we will have lasers with more finesse , more error correction cause it really is a pisser . I remember when the first HD-DVD player came out and everyone on the forums was advised to “ wash ur discs “ to help with freezing and pixelation , I had a strange feeling then the format was doomed. More recently on the oppo 203 threads people were told to wash discs prior to use . Sigh
 

DanNeir

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It really is frustrating considering how physical media has to battle to remain relevant when digital copies are released 2-3 weeks earlier than their physical counterparts. And there’s no denying the discs are superior but imagine trying to show someone why and having the player lock up like that.
 

B-ROLL

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My Panasonic 9000 has very occasional freezing issues . More so with Blu rays than UHD

If u look at every players thread : Sony , oppo 203 , pioneer lx500 etc around the world there are owners who have occasional freezing issues

This is what happens when you have the pits so close together on a small disc . Maybe one day we will have lasers with more finesse , more error correction cause it really is a pisser . I remember when the first HD-DVD player came out and everyone on the forums was advised to “ wash ur discs “ to help with freezing and pixelation , I had a strange feeling then the format was doomed. More recently on the oppo 203 threads people were told to wash discs prior to use . Sigh
I never was able to get a complete movie to play on my Toshiba HD-DVD player without the HD-DVD disc freezing (the only exception was Star Trek Classic episodes which played fine).

The Toshiba even played DVDs perfectly.

I have the original recipe Sony X800 and had freeze up issues. But (knocking on wood) haven't had any recently.

I also have a Philips 7501 and have not had major issues with that player.
 

Matt Hough

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I read the forums (at another site) for all major UHD players and have since the format began, and there hasn't been one that didn't have at least a few users experience freezing. I have had the Philips 7501 and 7502 and the Sony X700, and I have never had a single freeze. Of course, I wipe every disc thoroughly before I insert it. I think UHD lasers are incredibly sensitive to not just fingerprints and scratches but also manufacturing residue, so I do wipe them down.
 

JohnRice

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I read the forums (at another site) for all major UHD players and have since the format began, and there hasn't been one that didn't have at least a few users experience freezing. I have had the Philips 7501 and 7502 and the Sony X700, and I have never had a single freeze. Of course, I wipe every disc thoroughly before I insert it. I think UHD lasers are incredibly sensitive to not just fingerprints and scratches but also manufacturing residue, so I do wipe them down.
What do you use? I've found a microfiber cloth works well when the problem isn't really stubborn.
 

Scott Merryfield

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My current Panasonic UB820 has not locked up once since I bought it a few months ago. My previous Sony X800 (which is still in my equipment rack) did suffer from freezes occasionally, which was a pain to unfreeze since it required a power cord pull, and the cord does not disconnect from the player. I have read elsewhere that some owners of the newer X800M2 model still experience freezes, so Sony has obviously not completely corrected the problem.

Similar to @Matt Hough , I found that sometimes even an apparently clean UHD disc would benefit from a cleaning to eliminate breakup and freezing issues. My entire Harry Potter set, for example, had this issue. Sometimes the manufacturing process leaves a residue on the disc. I rinsed the discs in cold water and then dried them with a microfiber cloth.
 

jcroy

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(From an historical perspective)..

Pixelation and skipping have been mainstays since the laserdisc era. Even with laserdiscs which were purchased brand new back in the day, there were occasional pixelation issues. I only really encountered skipping on laserdiscs with significant damage, such as rental copies of laserdiscs with more significant pixelation from scratches. At the time, I thought it was due to error correction either not being done or the error coding wasn't designed very well.

When I first heard about dvd being a disc format for both movies and computer data, I suspected data accuracy would be a big priority. (When I found out about technical details of the error coding/correction design many years later, it turned out it was much more sophisticated than the error coding/correction system on audio cds).

Unfortunately everything I was presuming about dvd being more robust against data errors, turned out to be all wrong. It turns out the first movie dvd disc I purchased was defective, back in the late 1990s. It was a Terminator2 dvd which froze 20 minutes into the movie, where I had to pull the plug on the player and plug it back in. (That defective T2 disc was returned to the retailer for a refund, and subsequently I never jumped on the dvd hobby bandwagon for over a decade).

Since then, I never trusted that cd/dvd/bluray discs would be error free in playback and data accuracy. This is the main reason why I check every newly purchased cd/dvd/bluray on the computer, to see whether there's any manufacturing defects causing read errors on the computer dvd/bluray drive. (Such manufacturing defects which are not visible to the human eye, is what frequently causes freezing on a standalone dvd/bluray player).
 

Worth

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(From an historical perspective)..

Pixelation and skipping have been mainstays since the laserdisc era. Even with laserdiscs which were purchased brand new back in the day, there were occasional pixelation issues. I only really encountered skipping on laserdiscs with significant damage, such as rental copies of laserdiscs with more significant pixelation from scratches. At the time, I thought it was due to error correction either not being done or the error coding wasn't designed very well...
Laserdisc was an analog format - at least the video portion was - so it wouldn't have been pixelization, as such, and wouldn't have had error correction.
 

jcroy

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Laserdisc was an analog format - at least the video portion was - so it wouldn't have been pixelization, as such, and wouldn't have had error correction.

Not quite pixelation that one would see on dvds.

IIRC, it looked like "lightning streaks" on the screen for a fraction of a second.
 

jcroy

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I don't remember ever coming across a laserdisc freezing in the middle of playback. Not even with scratchy damaged laserdiscs.
 

jcroy

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This is what happens when you have the pits so close together on a small disc

When I first heard about hd-dvd/bluray around 15 years ago, this ^ was also what I was thinking. Compounding this was the notion of a single-sided two-layer bluray50 disc, which I initially thought looked like a "Wile E Coyote" idea. The single-sided three-layer 4Kbluray disc is the same idea on steroids.

Going further back in the time at the dawn of dvd, initially I was skeptical about the notion of a single-sided two-layer dvd9 disc.
 

Brian Husar

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I have a Sony UBX700 and it has freeze issues, but not every disc. And yes I clean my discs. I notice it’s discs by certain studios. I don’t have any issues with Sony Pictures Home Video discs or Fox discs. I also have an LG. It will do it on the LG as well, but not on the same discs. Now, if you go to the spot that freezes directly, it won’t do it. It’s only of you watch the movie with out stopping and ejecting the disc, So what I do is find a nice stopping point, eject the disc, and hopefully the disc will have the “resume movie” feature and start it up, and it plays through. But from this thread, even the most high end system has issues. Now this is only on 4K UHD blu rays. Not on standard blu rays.
 

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