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MichaelB wrote: Fri Jun 12, 2026 4:30 pm I couldn’t care less about the ads—I accept they’re a necessary evil—but for the past few days the “checking you’re a human” infinite loop has reared its head again. I can access the board via Tapatalk (as I’m doing now), but I much prefer proper typing to doing it on a phone.

Are you using Safari?

Yes, and it's working now.

So I ended up getting the Panny UB820 and the first UHD I tried to watch, Kino‘s Nostalghia, which looked stunning, began to skip around an hour and a half in. It played fine on my UB420. Does this mean I received a bad player or can this be fixed?

EDIT: I thought it was a smudge on the disc, which I cleaned off (it was barely visible) and then the movie appeared to play fine. But tonight it happened again with another brand-new disc, no smudges. It was after about an hour and 15 minutes. Stopping the disc and restarting fixed it for like 10-15 minutes. Clearly this isn't a disc issue. The player seems to be overloading or something. Seriously frustrating.

My first UB820 was bought open box was Richer Sounds. It was a complete dud that wouldn't read any discs. They replaced it with a brand new one, as they had no others in a similar condition nationwide. Had zero player-specific problems with that one in a year since.

I'd probably want to test the discs in another drive though, as I have had consecutive brand new Blu-rays fresh out the shrinkwrap be faulty before.

Wasn't sure where to post this, as it is not a Criterion release, but does anyone have a functioning Blu-ray of the Met Opera's Bellini's I Puritani with Summers conducting, starring Netrebko, Cutler etc? I have bought this four times now. Three discs wouldn't play at all. One disc would play to halfway or so, then skip and finally die. All tried on multiple players. Seems to just be printing that browned and deteriorated like many Criterions?

Something I’ve only noticed on my new Sony Bravia (and never on my old 1080p Sony or my projector) is that black background notice screens (copyright warning etc, even Criterion‘s wacky c intro) and horribly splotched with pixelated blocks and weird streaks. Totally random from release to release. Do these screens just get shit encoding? Obviously it doesn’t matter but the first time I saw it I freaked out and thought my tv was damaged

Here's a new one for the electricians. My father texted me this morning. Two days ago he says he heard the loudest thunder he's ever heard in his life. Today, went to turn on his 4k tv and oppo and both are on the fritz. Will power on, but neither will operate. The TV turns on, but no image displayed. The CD player will turn on, clunk, and then turn off.
Anyone have an experience like this before? Or is he off his rocker and I need to go to my parents house and troubleshoot this?

Surprisingly, his amp and record player, plugged into an extension cord off the same outlet, were not impacted.

Were they not plugged into a surge protector?

Years ago I had a DVD player’s power supply die after a thunderstorm (don’t remember if it was running through a surge protector). Brownout’s and temporary power outages can cause problems that things like powerboards (power strips) with surge protection don’t always help with. Electrical gear doesn’t always deal well with power cutting off and on - not enough voltage is just as bad as too much. If there’s an outage I’ll always switch gear off at the wall until the power’s restored, just to be safe.

While the amp & turntable are likely to have have far less electronics than the other gear, it may well just be the extension lead that saved them, simply due to the further distance the electricity has to travel.

swo17 wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2026 2:31 pm Were they not plugged into a surge protector?

Sounds like no. Computers were, but not his entertainment set-up.

Unfortunately this is a hard lesson to learn firsthand. Get a midrange surge protector that has a light indicator confirming it is still providing surge protection (many surge protectors lose protection after experiencing a surge but still function as an outlet so you’d never know). We use Tripp in our house if you want a recommendation, but I’m sure there are many similar options on Amazon

Thank you for the tip.