So the other day I get 2 Netflix Blu-rays, Admission and The Host, i noticed they were Universal discs and said "oh no, this will take awhile to load" or something to that effect. well, they didn't play. Both of them.

Then, i was going to do movie night with Place Beyond The Pines, noticed it was Universal and sure enough it won't play.

They will play the Universal logo and then will load and keep loading with black screen...

i have Sony BDP-S360. very bottom barrell. played Universal titles up until now. made sure that the firmware was up to date. It is.

Any help would be so appreciated!

**Edit** Movie night is saved because it was a Blu/DVD Combo pack, but i still need help...

Interesting, I have the same player.

It may be unrelated but I remember having to put a USB stick into the rear of the player to get "Starship Troopers" to load.

i do have a flash drive in the back...

Same thing happened when I tried to play Oblivion on my PS3 last weekend. The initial Universal loading logo thing would come up, then the Universal logo and fanfare would play. After that, nothing but black screen.

I ended up having to go to my settings and disable internet connectivity for Blu-Rays. I tried it again and the disk worked as normal.

I was downloading a large file on my computer at the time and just assumed it was bandwidth congestion so I just shrugged it off. I should try again and see what happens.

ugh. i have Oblivion too and wanted to watch next week. i will try what you suggest, but don't know if i have that setting...

Bob...you beautiful son of a bitch!!!! i turned that setting for internet off and it booted up the Blu-ray!!! thank you...so much!

I guess those blu-rays...
*puts on sunglasses*
...weren't so universal.

YEEEAAAHHHH!!!

I had this problem with Mr Popper's Penguins (Fox)... Disabled Internet and voila.. it worked... I found the answer in an obscure review on Amazon of all places.. Since then, as I have a Roku that uses my Lan Line, I don't have the BR player connected any longer (no updates in a while anyway). So I basically lose any BD-Live content, but haven't experienced this since... It is interesting to know there are more discs than just the aforementioned that cause this issue..

I had the same issue with Scream 4. Still can't get that fucker to work in either of by Sony blu ray players (or my PS3) without turning off the Internet. Maybe it's just an issue on Sony's end with their players?

I'm glad that it helped!

I have no idea what actually causes it. I've heard theories that range from potentially new copy protection implemented on those disks that Sony has to update the player for, to the disk trying to stream/dl in current trailers to play and hitting a snag somewhere.

Considering on all the Universal disks I've had it happen on, it freezes right where the trailers might potentially play, it could be the second one.

BTW, I popped Oblivion in again on my lunch break when I wasn't doing anything else on the internet, and I got the black screen again.

I will do this so my daughter can finally watch this movie after we've had it for over a year.

It isn't just Sony players.. Mine is a Panasonic..

The issue is that the discs are authored to automatically connect to BD-Live to download trailers that will forcibly play before the main menu. There's something wrong with either the disc authoring or the web server that hosts the trailers that is causing some Blu-ray players to freeze up. If you turn off internet connectivity in the player's setup menu or just disconnect the Ethernet cable, the player skips that step and goes right to the menu.

I've got some 3D IMAX movies from Image that apparently have had their BD-Live stuff taken offline, so my player just keeps trying to load the "updates" forever until I tell it to stop. Yet another reason why trusting things that are online rather than on disc is silly. Those BD-Live trailers look awful too- first time I saw one I wondered why it looked so bad, then I realized it was streaming it online. Some Universal discs will play nice-looking hi-def trailers from the disc if you disable BD-Live, or BD-Dead more like it.

The studios hardly ever use BD-Live anymore on new discs, except Universal's trailers. Disabling Internet connectivity on your BD player for all discs is probably the easiest way to go at this point.

Weird. I've played Oblivion several times on my PS3 Slim and have had zero issues.

well, i hope to get Admission back from Netflix next week and will try it as well, but think it will play perfectly.

thanks for all the help guys!

Remember when BD-Live was going to the savior of the format?

Sony doesn't even seem to be using it anymore- when you bring it up, you just get a message to check out their website. BD-Live wasn't a totally bad idea but it was implemented pretty awfully- I have some Fox discs that always start out saying "Check out this special feature now on BD-Live!" with said feature having been there a few years, then when you click "no" it then says something like "OK, but if you want to check it out later you'll have to reload the disc!" and you have to click something else to get the damn thing to play.

Tough crowd.

"It will date and age our discs if we put the advertisements we're shoving down consumers' throats on the disc, but with BD-Live, they can adapt and change with the time, making our product seem new, fresh, and advertise the newest shit people didn't pay money to be forced to watch!"

Fucking fail. I have problems sometimes with the clear Well Go USA discs in my PS3, but that's another issue. The slow loads for Universal discs due to content loads off the internet are beyond frustrating, and should end.

Also, props to GoldenJCJ's Horatio Caine 4 panel gag.

Speaking of slow loads, I got a copy of The Great Gatsby (for my site) and that thing took about 5-minutes to load. Strange as Warner's discs usually load relatively quickly.

Bizarro. was it 3d or 2d?

I remember day of release on Iron Man, and the catastrophe with the discs all trying to go online at the same time jamming the system. Not so good times!

I have a strange problem with just a single Universal disc. Changeling. Before I updated my player, it was just fine. But now, about half way through the movie, it skips about 5 seconds. Wonder what the update did....But it's alright. It's not that big of a scene.

2d