I am currently at 2.4

For some reason this player can not play standard def DVDs. Let me rephrase that it can play them yet it seems like over half of the ones I try to watch end up freezing up on me. Does anyone else have this problem?

Are these retail DVD's or DVD-R's?

I don't have the problem and I use it to watch movies 3-4 days a week. The other days I use my region-free player or my LD player!

retail dvds a lot of times it happens on ones that are brand new right out of the box

You might want to try re-initializing the player. Write down any custom settings that you have, then power off the player. Unplug, then hold down the power button for 10-20 seconds. Now plug the player back in and try again (you'll need to re-enter any custom settings).

If that doesn't work, I'd revert back the the firmware you were running before, and test. One of the advantages of Gen 1 players is the ability to revert back to old firmware levels.

I've had a fair number of other problems with my HD-A1, but this isn't one of them.

(My latest one, although it hasn't happened in a while, is that the center channel would randomly drop out over HDMI. It never did this over analog, and rewinding would sometimes trick it back into working again. Nothing else I have connected over HDMI has ever done this.)

I had this happen with firmware 2.3.

The title was *cough*Mean Girls*cough*, and it froze near the end (right after the "Bus" gag). After holding down the power button to shut the player off, I tried the disc again, and it froze in the EXACT same spot. I tried it a third time... same thing. Haven't tried it with firmware 2.4 yet... but I- err... my girlfriend... was pissed that we couldn't finish the movie.