Panasonic 2.2 firmware for BD70V, BD60 and BD80 to fix Blu-ray random freeze

[MrBoylan]

Hey, folks,

For those who have been patient enough to stick with the current generation Panasonic Blu-ray Disc players (DMP-BD60, DMP-BD70V, DMP-BD80), despite the annoying (but intermittent) playback freeze on Blu-ray Discs, I have some good news: Firmware 2.2, which will be delivered tomorrow (12/1) is intended to work around this problem without any need for a hardware fix. In other words, you don't have to send back your player, just connect it to the internet and download the latest firmware after tomorrow.

You can also download the firmware today and burn a CD if that is your preference. That download for the BD80 is available here:

DMP-BD80 Firmware Download (North America) | Blu-ray Disc Player | Digital AV | Consumer Products | Support | Panasonic Global

We have not tested this yet as it just became available for download this morning. Would be interested to hear people's experiences with this.

-CB

[Steve Tannehill]

You can also download the firmware today and burn a CD if that is your preference.

This only works for Windows, not for Mac as it is a self-extracting exe archive. The last update worked for both, it was just the firmware file uncompressed. They should use zip files if they want to be compatible with both Mac and Windows, or just not compress it.

We have not tested this yet as it just became available for download this morning. Would be interested to hear people's experiences with this.

The problem seemed random, so it is going to be hard to duplicate. I installed the update and played one disc this evening, and had no freezes. So far, so good--but a limited sample.

- Steve

[roberth]

I figured this thread would be pretty long by now with folks posting how many blu-ray titles they have watched so far with no freezes or maybe to say the freezing still occurs with 2.2 FW.

I downloaded 2.2 to my player last night after FW 2.1 froze on a blu-ray title for about the normal 5 seconds. My heart really sank when the first blu-ray movie on 2.2 stopped but this was a disk issue from Netflix. I couldn't even watch most of the middle of the movie Hellboy II it was so bad. I had to go and select a new chapter each time to even get the laser to move.

Any input from FW 2.2 users???

[MrBoylan]

No news is good news.

[BADuHamel]

Wow, did they actually push this firmware to the players or can you only get it via download from the Panasonic site, because I've used my BD80 and it did not alert me to any new firmware being available.

[MrBoylan]

Wow, did they actually push this firmware to the players or can you only get it via download from the Panasonic site, because I've used my BD80 and it did not alert me to any new firmware being available.

People have reported it being available but I can't directly confirm because I don't have our BD70V connected to the internet currently. Do you have the BD80 set to auto update? Have you gone in to manually check to see if it finds the update?

EDIT: Just connected the BD70V to the 'net and it found the update. Are you able to see it?

-CB

[BADuHamel]

People have reported it being available but I can't directly confirm because I don't have our BD70V connected to the internet currently. Do you have the BD80 set to auto update? Have you gone in to manually check to see if it finds the update?

EDIT: Just connected the BD70V to the 'net and it found the update. Are you able to see it?

-CB

Yeah, I had auto update notifications turned on, but for whatever reason it did not alert me to this update. In any case, I went into firmware updates and 2.2 was there.

[Steve Tannehill]

I've played a disc almost every day since 2.2 was released, and have had no freezes so far.

- Steve

[roberth]

I've played quite a few blu-ray titles with no freezing since using FW 2.2.

I'm taking it others are not having any problems either since no one else has posted. Usually there is a flood of posts when the news is bad so no news is good news.

[cowbot]

I upgraded my BD80 firmware hoping it would fix the following problem:

When I play dvd or other 4:3 material, i have *bright* grey borders on each side of the picture. Display is a Sanyo PLV-Z700 projector connected via HDMI.

This looks absolutely terrible. Is the Panasonic BD80 creating these bright grey borders, or is my projector adding them? Please, if you have a BD80, can you please post (and register if need be) if you get the grey borders (or not).

Whoever decided to make bright grey borders on either side of 4:3 video needs to check into a mental asylum.