Sony S350 won't play certain Blu-Ray discs

[JAFlanagan]

This is driving me insane. Does anyone else have any experience with these types of problems?

I bought a Sony S350 from Amazon in December. As far as I knew, it functioned perfectly with BD discs and DVDs. I updated the firmware pretty quickly after I got it. I bought a 3 disc set of Mad Men (great show!) and watched the first disc an a half with no trouble.

Skip ahead a month or so, I'm watching "The Company" on BD from Netflix, and the first disc works fine, but the second won't load at all. It just says, the player cannot read this disc, and stays on the menu. I return it to Netflix, and get a replacement, which works fine.

Last week, I get a copy of "W." and it won't load either. Annoying sure, but tell them the disc doesn't work, and they send me a new one. It won't load either. It was pristine. No scratches, fingerprints or anything. I updated the firmware again, even stuck a 1 GB thumbdrive in the back, just to be sure (even though it wasn't a BD Live disc, but what the heck), and it still doesn't play. No biggie. It's not supposed to be a great movie either way.

The straw that drove me nuts is that tonight, I put the second Mad Men disc back in, and it won't load. Neither will the first disc, or the 3rd, which has never been played. I tried some other discs I have, and they all work fine. I checked the firmware again, reset all the settings on the player and did a power reset. Nothing will make these discs play that played fine before. They aren't damaged in any way.

Checking Sony support, they want me to pack up my player, and ship it to them on my dime to Pennsylvania. I can't return it to Amazon, since it's been over 30 days. So, any thoughts?

Also, thank you, but please don't tell me I should have bought another brand, or get a PS3. That's not really a solution to my problem. Thanks for any helpful advice.

-josh