Trouble with Blue-Ray player.

It's either that the Blockbuster movies are too scratched up (I've found that BDs are way more sensitive about any pitting or scratches on the disc then DVD), or if they're really new movies...then they could have some feature that needs a firmware upgrade. I've got an older BD player. Some of the most recent movies have completely hung up before I tried installing the latest firmware update. I've also noticed that some new BDs take much longer to load: movies like Avatar Collectors Edition will take a full minute having a black TV screen and my player reads 0:00 before I get any loading icons or "network started" activity. Finally, there are some titles (Universal titles in particular) that like to have a lot of Live-BD features. I'm not sure why they think customers want a movie's splash screen to show local weather and time status....but that and all their ads make their titles seem to be slower to load. Disabling your network connection might help with load times.

So if you're just seeing a black screen...it could be that it's a new title that just takes awhile to load. My usual read error is "copyright violation". Cleaning the disc is the only thing you can do about that. But there could be a firmware upgrade for your BD player already: doesn't hurt to make sure you're up to date. If you never use BD-Live, then it's also worth it to disable your ethernet. Lastly, if you're sure that the rental disc is actually hanging up (and not just one of those titles that takes forever to load), then trying the usual techniques for DVDs might help (cleaning the disc, trying to buff it with toothpaste, etc).

 

Yeah, if you're patient enough to wait for the folks at Best Buy to find a geek that can update it...that might work. So is your internet a broadband modem, or dial up? Maybe you could try updating via USB? If your BD player is not connected to an ethernet, I'd also make sure its ethernet is disabled in its settings (if it's enabled, it could be spending a few seconds trying to find an ethernet connection). Myself, I've had very few instances of titles completely refusing to load due to firmware issues....slow loads due to glitsy graphics/BD-Live on the other hand!