Broken BDP-S300

[taylormx]

Hello all -

Please excuse any mistakes/ignorance as I am new to this forum and new to forums in general.

I purchased a new BDP-S300 two months ago along with a new Toshiba 46" Cinema Series LCD TV (model no. 46LX177). The player was connected directly to the TV with an HDMI cable and the sound was connected to an old receiver through the 5.1 analog outputs.

A week ago, I was watching Transformers and started to fall asleep. I turned my whole system off with the disc in the drive and went to bed. When I had time the next day I started the system up and tried to watch it again. The player would power on, but the picture would dance across the screen - it was totally unwatchable. The sound seemed fine though.

I took the disc out and powered the unit off. I powered it up again to see if the Blu-ray logo had a problem, and sure enough, it did. I had just received the 2.6 update in the mail and updated the unit with no issues - but the problem still persisted. I also tried plugging the HDMI cable into the other inputs on my TV with no luck.

My retailer would not take the unit back, so I called Sony. I explained my problem and they said the unit had to be sent in for service. I sent it in and actually received a call back from a Sony technician yesterday.

The Sony guy told me that there was nothing wrong with the player. He said that I had the video output set to 1080p but the TV wasn't capable of it and I would need to set the video output to auto. He also said that the unit wasn't capable of upscaling to 1080p and I tried to gently correct him on that point. I related that the TV was certainly cable of 1080p and also had 120 hz frame rate technology.

Then he said that I had left the disc in the drive and that it was trying to read it as a system disc and that was causing the issue (?). I explained that I had started up the player with no disc and the blu-ray logo had the same problem. He said they were still going to send the unit right back. Don't get me wrong, I want my BDP-S300 back right away, because I really miss it. I want a WORKING unit back, though.

Luckily, I got a call back in about 10 minutes, and the technician said that after relaying everything I said to an engineer, they were going to keep it until Monday night to try to recreate the problem I was having. I still don't have great confidence in the service, however.

Has anyone else had a similar problem to mine? Did I have the player set up incorrectly?

I'm sorry for being so long, and I really appreciate the insight you all could provide.

Thanks!

Ria