Anyone else had this problem?

Bought the player on Friday. Plugged it in & updated the firmware last night. Watched Transformers on HD-DVD twice (once with commentary), no issues. Tried Spider-Man 3 on DVD today...started freezing about 75 minutes in. Freezes in nearly the same places every time...put the disc in my 360, and it plays it just fine.

Very frustrated/disappointed in this hardware right now, with this and with the ridiculously long loading times.

Can anyone help?

Sounds like it freezes at the DVD Layer change.

You're the first to report this so it might be the actually disc.

I was just about to say the same thing. Try a couple other DVDs and report back.

You want a frustrating piece of equipment? Try the Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player. It'll make the Toshiba look like the best player you've ever owned.

It can't be the disc. It would freeze on the 360, too...it's played flawlessly on it.

Also, I skipped ahead a couple of chapters, and it froze at random points during the same scene.

Put it back in, and it froze when I tried to enter the chapter. Rebooted the player again, tried again, and it worked flawlessly.

It's chapter 34, by the way..."Strawberries". It'd freeze throughout the fight scene.

Excuse me, but how does that justify a screwed up A2?

Not true at all. Different hardware, different results. I can't count the number of times I've had a DVD with playback issues on one player that plays flawlessly on another.

Generally speaking, while the A2 looks noticeably better playing DVDs than any other player I have, it doesn't possess that "it can take anything you throw at it" factor. If the Spider-Man 3 disc is a rental, I'd say it's just a matter of the player not being able to handle a damaged disc.

Layer changes can be pretty noticeable when playing DVDs, but I've never had skipping on a disc that I owned.

Of course if it's a new disc, I have no explanation.

He didn't say it did. He just implied there are higher forms of pain in the HD world. Maybe he's owned the BD player he's talking about and had many more issues.

Not that it's really comparable, but I'm currently watching the unrated version of 1408 from Netflix and it looks fantastic on the A2. The disc looked beaten to death, I was surprised it played at all. But about 1:35 through and no issues at all.

My experiences with the DVD-18 discs was kind of like this. They would freeze in a couple of my DVD players, but play back fine in the A2 and Denon.

I don't rent DVDs. At all.

The disc had literally just been opened, and was in mint condition. I've no idea why it gave me fits for over an hour, then suddenly worked perfectly.

glad didn't go for the A2, even at $100

i can't stand this kind of problem... do you know how much time you can waste on figuring things like this out? no deal even if it's $50 (okay maybe it is, for HD-DVDs that is)... this is one of the reason why i want the Wii to be able to play dvds, just in case the other dvd players fail

While i did say i'm not gonna buy anymore dvds, but i didn't say i'm not gonna watch them...

I've only noticed a slight pause when I presume there is a layer change. Nothing out of the ordinary otherwise.

But isn't the Wii restricted to 480p, whereas the A2 does a *wonderful* job of upconverting to 720p or 1080i?

In any case, my A2 froze once on the Episode Menu of Lost Season 1 Disc 6 once, but that problem has not recurred. Each DVD player has its peculiarities, but from what I have heard there are no widespread issues with the A2 and SD DVDs.

E_life, well, if i'm having problem with playing a dvd and about in the middle of it, upscaling is the last thing i'm worrying about...

That's not necessarily true. Different players tolerate different error rates and read differently. Especially the 360 which likely has a high-speed PC-style DVD drive which is a bit different than most consumer DVD drives.

Example: my wife bought a new CD from Amazon.com. It played with a couple of skips only in her car CD player. It skips like crazy on the A2 or PS3. If you look at the disc it is obviously visibly flawed around the edges -it's a faulty CD.

Yes, I agreed that different players tolerate software differently. I think I have used about 10+ various dvd player (and computer DVD drive) in the past ten years, and I have big collection of DVD from different Region. One title may play on one machine but may not on the other. And it is not related to how expensibe the player is at all!
As matter of fact, there are people claims that those cheap Chiese-made no-brand name players actually have bigger tolerance.

Back to HD-A2, I have the machine up and runnung for two days now. I have it play many different SD-DVD and I have not had any problem yet. I actually have one disc that freezed up on my old SD-DVD player but play fine on HD-A2.