SONY BDP-S301 Freezes

[rserkes]

I've read the "sticky" thread on this forum about the BDP-S300/301 and I am still confused. Three in-a-row DVD movies (rented from Netflix) caused my player to freeze. By that I mean it just stopped playing and wouldn't respond to either the remote or the buttons on the player. To get the disk out I had to unplug the player to get it to power down and then plug it back in. Two of these movies were Blu-Ray and one was SD. I assumed it was the player since I couldn't imagine getting three in-a-row bad disks so I returned the player to the seller for an exchange.

The first two movies I played on the new unit worked fine and then last night I had a freeze on the new player. Again, it wouldn't respond to either the remote or he buttons so I had to unplug it. Now I'm confused as to whether or not it's the player(s) or the rental disks.

The first unit came with firmware v3.3 which I upgraded to v3.7 and then v3.8. The second unit came with v3.7 and I haven't upgraded to v3.8 thinking that might be he problem .. but it still froze with v3.7.

In a nutshell, could someone please tell me what's going on and what I can do to view these movies? What's the fix? I'm about ready to return the second until and get a plane vanilla DVD player and watch movies in SD until the technology gets the bugs worked out. Or is it just SONY? Are other manufacturers having this same problem?

If it means anything, I always clean the disks with an optical cleaner and an optical grade towel before playing them. It doesn't seem to matter, though.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.