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Question

Samsung BD-F5100 freezes randomly when watching movies

Mar 3, 2018 9:36AM PST

Hi! So, I have recently bough myself a used BD-F5100. I was really excited and it works well for regular DVDs. But when I try to play video files from USB or from DVDs burnt by me (at 8x or 10x usually) it freezes randomly and the controls are all useless - can't pause, can't stop, can't press anything. I just have to unplug it. This doesn't happen all the time, just sometimes, but it can get very annoying when it does. What I have also noticed is that if I have enough patience to wait for the player to get back to the menu (the player menu), it will all be painfully slow and laggy. I suspect it has something to do with memory usage. Any help?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Unlike our PCs and smart phones
Mar 3, 2018 9:43AM PST

These are just bricks. You can try a factory reset and be sure the firmware is current as well as be sure the media is clean. That is, no fingerprints or scratches.

There are no controls for us to tinker with for memory use, etc.

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Well, not really "bricks"
Mar 3, 2018 11:12AM PST

The firmware is as current as it gets in my region, maybe try a region hack? I reset the BluRay Player when it arrived, so that's out of the question. The disc that I've noticed freezing issues on is a brand-new Sony DVD. And my PC's optical drive is clean. The freezing also occurs on USB drives.

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Hacking a brick.
Mar 3, 2018 12:32PM PST

Is still hacking a brick. You can't see a report on what apps and memory used in this thing so it's a brick.

If you feel like region hacking go right ahead (your choice and risk.) But the usual is clean media and maybe cleaning the lens (see youtubes on how.)

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Checked the optics
Mar 4, 2018 9:20AM PST

I checked the drive: it doesn't get much cleaner than that. And the region hack doesn't work on my firmware.

But yet again, the freezing also happens with USB drives. Why is this happening? Please, help me.

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As to USB drives.
Mar 4, 2018 9:31AM PST

The most common issue I run into is the player can't handle the encoding of the video. Sadly folk when they bring in an example, it's something they downloaded (pirated) and we can't help. Most folk know why, now I've told you.

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Player can't handle all x264 content then?
Mar 4, 2018 11:48AM PST

I stay away from non-x264 content. And I've just chnaged the HDMI cable. It managed to play a whole 2 hour long movie. Can the HDMI cable cause such things?

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That's a sure thing.
Mar 4, 2018 11:57AM PST

You can find a lot of complaints on that so I won't vet my answer on content.

As to HDMI cable, that would be a first. Usually you know it when you see an iffy HDMI cable. At the office we had one and to get rid of it I took a hammer to the ends and put it in the recycle bin for the last time.

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All videos seem to play fine now
Mar 4, 2018 12:53PM PST

I checked the DVDs I had issues with and now they all seem to work just fine. I guess I have too many HDMI cables lying around. Maybe it's time to do some cleaning up…

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The Freezing is back now
Aug 26, 2018 3:19AM PDT

I have these HDMI cables in my house, tested with all: HAMA HDMI gold plated ends
Philips HDMI cable with Ethernet (not gold plated)
For my TV, I am also using an HDMI switch with 3 inputs and one output (basically, to have more inputs, as my 2007 TV only has 1).

The TV is Romanian branded, however, the freezing occurs on other TVs from Philips and Samsung too (2015-2016 models). So, the TV is excluded. Why is this happening? I can't watch my movies over the USB in no way, shape or form. I tried converting the format to MPEG-2, which, from what I read, is the most compatible along players. But it's the same.

What is actually pretty strange is that I can watch my 40 minute telenovels (720p, H264 - just like the movies), but they don't cause the player to freeze. However, the movies freeze after less than 20 minutes in.

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The Freezing isn't random
Aug 26, 2018 7:53AM PDT

I finally figured out wuy the freezing occurs: it's because of lossless video encoding. PLEASE, PEOPLE, DON'T ENCODE MOVIES IN LOSSLESS FORMAT!!! MOST DVD AND BLU RAY PLAYERS CAN'T HANDLE THAT!!!

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Thanks for that.
Aug 26, 2018 10:16AM PDT

As noted, some players have substandard capabilities and sorely confuses folk that come in with "It runs fine on my PC." These players have very limited capability compared to a PC and VLC PLAYER.