Issues with Sony 4k Blu Ray player

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Strilo

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I've been having issues here and there with my Sony UBP-X800 4k Blu Ray player lately. In the middle of watching a disc, it will suddenly stop, the screen goes black and the remote doesn't do anything. The receiver acts as if the player has been powered off, then a few seconds later acts as if the player has been powered back on. After a few times, I managed to hit keys in the right way and saw an error message on screen from the player saying that the disc could not be read. I took the player in to Best Buy, where I have a Geek Squad protection plan and they kept it for two days. They said they could not reproduce the issue, but they reset it to factory defaults and made sure it was on the latest firmware. They mentioned that if the issue came back, we could ship it off to be serviced, but that it would take 4-6 weeks.

I had it back for about two weeks, listening to Blu Ray music discs (like the White Album yay!) and other digital 5.1 FLAC files worked just fine for me. However, my housemates were watching movies on disc and apparently it happened a few times to them as well. Yesterday I took the player back to Best Buy and said I wanted to have them ship it off. They told me that they can do that, but they have to reproduce the issue first and because the last time they were unable to do that, it might be environmental in my house. They suggested it could be the receiver or the HDMI cable. Personally, I think either of those is total BS. The issue happened with my old Yamaha receiver and also with the new one, so it's clearly not the receiver. Also not really sure how a receiver could cause the player to not read the disc... As for the cable, I am skeptical there as well. If they can't reproduce the issue, I picked up a new HDMI cable and will test with that. If the issue returns, they said I could have a Geek Sqaud in home advisor come out for free to check things out.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions? Seems to me to be pretty cut and dried as a hardware issue with the player, but when the tech cannot reproduce the issue, it gets sticky.
 
Unfortunately the issue you are mentioning is a common thing with this player. Either it works great or it has issues like this. I am not sure there is a fix for this aside from replacing the player and hoping the next one is fine. I agree with you that it is pretty obvious it is the player. The hard part might be getting geek squad/BB or Sony to reproduce the issue and honor the warranty. If there is a disc that repeatedly causes this problem then maybe you could demonstrate it to them with that. You might want to check out the avsforum thread for this player.

FWIW, I have this player, but I use it relatively sparsely and in my use case the x800 actually has been pretty stable.

I am finding with these newer players, you simply have to pull the plug every now and then to ensure proper operation.
 
Yeah it has worked great for over a year, until just a few months ago. It happens with all sorts of discs, no pattern there. And yeah I am hoping to force Best Buy to get this addressed. And I am skeptical that there is service that could be done. It's a cheap enough player that it seems like replacing it would be cheaper than shipping it and wasting people's time on this.
 
I feel your pain. My current laptop, IMO, is a total lemon. It has misbehaved from early on. Dell had me ship it out and replaced a bunch of crap....only to still have it acting up. There answer is to ship it back to them again (now out of warranty).....
 
Well the Oppo is no longer made, so... that doesn't really help me :p

Believe it or not, I was watching the UHD 4K Native BlackkKlansman the other night on the OPPO and guess what ... when it was time for the film to start ...... NOTHING! I rebooted the unit to no avail and then had to resort to watch the included 1080p BD~V ..... with no problems whatsoever. Cannot return the disc to Amazon for a refund as the 30 day return window expired.

Perhaps I should see if the UHD 4K of BlackkKlansman plays on the X800 .......
 
I am not sure about Amazon reviews... they can sometimes be unreliable, both in the positive and negative directions. Reviews on other sites tend to be more reliable. Not sure tho.
 
I am not sure about Amazon reviews... they can sometimes be unreliable, both in the positive and negative directions. Reviews on other sites tend to be more reliable. Not sure tho.

If you read enough of them though, you can get a pretty accurate idea of how a product performs. They did replace the X800 fairly quickly which might indicate it did have issues. And at one point, Amazon warehouse deals were blowing out the unit in pretty great quantities for $125-$140.

In ANY case either Best Buy or SONY should repair [or replace] the unit...at NO charge to you!
 
Maybe unplug the X800 from the mains from time to time, to completely reset it ?
 
Well, Best Buy just called me and said they reproduced the problem yesterday. They then did a factory reset, which they did last time, and say the problem has not yet returned. They now want me to try it like this... even though that's exactly what we did last time! I told them to keep trying to reproduce the issue, because after the last time I didn't change any settings or add any apps, it was in a factory default state for all of the subsequent issues, including what they saw yesterday. For whatever reason, they're scared to ship it out to the service center without being able to reproduce the issue again after the most recent factory reset. I'm not willing to go in circles with this.
 
Seems like the issue may be more managerial, my son (former BB manager, got hired away by Sears and we know how that turned out) he would grab a new unit off the shelf and take care of the customer. If geek squad reproduced the problem once I thought that was the criteria originally.🤔 Especially if you bought a extended warranty all that money just goes into higher-ups pockets. They need to slap an open-box label on that unit and set you free for crying out loud. The thing is they hate open boxes and they want them off the books at the end of each month.( Can get some really good deals 😉 got a $499 X1000ES for $249 great unit) Hate to do it myself but I've been known to persuade people to do my bidding, so to speak. Glitches can happen with any brand even the mythical Oppo had big 203 issues and an unusual amount of returns until they updated firmware. With numerous roommates operating it, pinpointing the issue already has taken enough of your troubleshooting skills, that's why you bought the Plan, it's their turn to do what's right for you.
 
I agree. However, they did ship the unit out anyway and we will see what their service center uncovers. There will be hell to pay if they tell me they couldn't reproduce the issue and they ship it back.
 
FWIW, I've had the same model for about 5 months with no problems yet. I always switch mine off at the wall between each use (~2 movies per week on average + surround listening and I haven't used any of its apps - just playing from discs) though so not sure if that has any effect. I've had BD and DVD players freeze in the past though and had to switch them off at the wall to get them to re-think their behaviour.

There's so much functionality in these boxes now that it doesn't surprise me that they spit the dummy as often as they do. They're basically doing a computer's job but with what I'm guessing is not enough processing power. If they had more grunt, I bet we'd see less of these issues.

Let us know how it goes Strilo. Intermittent faults are always frustrating. The shop should just take it back and give you another, especially since they've replicated it themselves.
 
Yeah I had it set so that the player was cut off from power completely when the receiver turned off. But this is clearly something hardware related, IMHO.
 
Believe it or not, I was watching the UHD 4K Native BlackkKlansman the other night on the OPPO and guess what ... when it was time for the film to start ...... NOTHING! I rebooted the unit to no avail and then had to resort to watch the included 1080p BD~V ..... with no problems whatsoever. Cannot return the disc to Amazon for a refund as the 30 day return window expired.

Perhaps I should see if the UHD 4K of BlackkKlansman plays on the X800 .......
Dang, that's no good. I have this 4K too and haven't watched it yet. Just tried the 4K disc to ensure it played and the X800 said "Unknown". I ejected it, re-injected it and the movie started so I'm hoping it doesn't throw the toys halfway through.
 
Yeah I had it set so that the player was cut off from power completely when the receiver turned off. But this is clearly something hardware related, IMHO.
Yeah, that's definitely weird. Not sure if you'd been through all of the settings to switch off any syncing that the player/TV/receiver may be doing with each other? I only found extra sync settings a few weeks ago when I had to resort to watching a Region 2 DVD via my old BDP which is region free DVD (unlike most BD/4K players now - grrrr). It was doing all this weird syncing between the remotes and different hardware but I managed to sort it out. From what you've described, it doesn't sound like that's the cause of your unit's problems but it might not hurt to switch them off anyway.
 
Sorry to hear you are having problems...but I'm not surprised...when members on here mentioned buying this unit I mentioned the "freeze" problem as it was being discussed on the AVS forum..and Sony does what they usually do...first there is denial that a problem exists...then a mention of a firmware update...and after MUCH time has passed either they come out with a new model and forget about the firmware update...or finally issue an update that doesn't fix the problem...

You might find some answers on this thread from 2018...now keep in mind these problems were evident a year ago...so Best Buy or any retail outlet should know about them...and Sony certainly has to know by now..
 
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