Toshiba D3 Problem?
 

My HD-DVD player from costco is less then a month old. I haven't watched many movies on it yet, around 3. Anyways I was watching one last night and the screen got distorted. A few little boxes on the screen. I paused the movie and then un-paused it to find no sound. I then paused once more and then un-paused again to only find the voiced not in sync. That was like that for maybe 15 sec. and everything back back to normal. So I continued to watch the movie until the end. Went back to play the problem area and it was fine. It was also fine when I watched the movie a weekend earlier.

So is this something I should be worried about? Meaning taking it back to the store for a refund? I doubt when I get there on the weekend they will have any left. OR Was it just a fluke thing?

TIA for any advice!

Make sure to update the firmware. Many of these weird playback issues have been resolved with system updates. Welcome to the new media; take-it-out-of-the box-and-use-it is history.

Thanks!

I will try updating the firmware. I did fill out the card for a disc, but will try on my own. I did a quick google search this morning and came up empty, because I made the search too complicated it seems.

I really HATE the fact that you just can't take things out of the box anymore. With a recent laptop purchase with Vista, its one big mess getting everything up and running.

I would caution against updating the firmware, at least until you read more about it. The units being sold by Costco are at firmware 1.3. The only update available is 2.0 (many links to it can be found at AVS), but numerous users have reported that 2.0 introduced more problems than it fixed. So many people have had problems that someone actually developed a "hacked" version of 1.3 that allows you to "downgrade" from 2.0 (something the firmware doesn't normally allow).

FWIW, I left my D3 at firmware 1.3 and I haven't had any problems so far.

The description of the symptoms sounds like it could just be a spot of disc damage or debris as easily as a firmware issue, especially since it didn't happen every time.