BDs with scratches- Can they cause problems during initial boot-up?

[DaDude]

I have a Samsung BD-P1600 Blu-ray player and sometimes when it loads a BD-Java disc, it will freeze when the main menu comes up. At first, I thought it was a bug in the player, but then I realized that it only occurs on BDs I rent from Blockbuster Online. Some discs tend to have quite a bit of scratches. While BDs do have that coating, people who rent these tend to mishandle the discs and abuse it.

What?s weird is that this doesn?t happen all the time. The menu will freeze and I?ll have to reboot my player. Next time, it will boot up ok. Kind of weird. This is what made me think that this was a bug in the player. However, I just rented ?The Bourne Ultimatum? and that disc had a lot of scratches. So, when I put that disc in the player and it boots up, the menu will keep on freezing. It had to reboot the player 5 times before it loaded the menu properly. But when I played the movie in its entirety, it played flawlessly. So, the scratches didn't affect the movie itself; it only causes loading problems. I tried a bunch of movies from my personal collection and none of them would freeze in the main menu.

So, does anyone experience this odd problem when playing scratched discs they rented from Blockbuster or Netflix?

[venejo]

I've heard that scratches on BD discs are a curse. Even a greasy fingerprint is bad for the disc and the beam, to read the disc.!

Besides that i suppose you have the latest firmware installed on your player.

[DaDude]

Besides that i suppose you have the latest firmware installed on your player.

I do.

[ahhell]

Rented movies are always destroyed by careless jackasses.

If you do rent them, ask to see the disks before you leave the store. At least that way, you know the condition of the disk before renting.

[DaDude]

I rent online now. Can't check.

[DaDude]

I had the same problem again with "Bee Movie" that I just received today from Netflix. Saw a few scratches, but it didn't look bad. Yet, it kept freezing when loading the BD-Java menu. Had to reboot 3 times to get it to load properly. Once again, the entire movie played without a problem. A bought a couple new BDs this week from the store and no freezing problems at all with them. Same goes with all the other movies from my personal collection.

I find it so strange how my player is very sensitive to scratches when loading a BD-Java disc. With DVDs, even though they had bad scratches, they would still boot up ok. I wonder why BDs act differently.