Philips BDP7700 - Doesn't play discs, cannot update software via USB

[mikkoras]

Hello.

New to the forum and new to Bluray players as well.

I recently bought a Philips BDP7700 and the device is basically not working at all. The player is connected to a TV via HDMI cable and I can get to the device's home screen menu.

I tested the player with five or so different Bluray discs (Avengers, Skyfall, Transformers 3 etc) and not a single one of them plays. The player becomes totally unresponsive as the player moves from the Home screen to the actual disc content. I had to unplug the power cord to shut it down. I repeated the process a few times with multiple discs, but with the same response.

The furthest I got was with an audio cd: the music played for 8 seconds until the player jammed.

I assumed this was a software issue so I wanted to do a software update. The current software version of the player is 3.17. And the newest version available is 3.71 (http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/cpindex.pl?ctn=BDP7700/12&hlt=Link_Software&mid=Link_Software&scy=en&slg= eng).

I don't have the possibility to connect the device directly to the network so I tried to perform the upgrade via a USB.

I downloaded the software zip from the aforementioned link, extracted it and copied the the "UPG_ALL" folder, with the BDP7700.bin file inside it, to an empty USB stick: USB ROOT\UPG_ALL\BDP7700.bin. I started up the player and I plugged in the USB to port in the back of the player. Then went Home --> Setup --> Advanced --> Software Update --> USB.

The following message appeared on the screen: "Now searching upgrade software. Please wait.". And that's it. The player was stuck with that message. I waited and waited, but nothing. The player did not respond to any commands from the remote. There was no message to "Start" the upgrade process. I attempted this multiple times.

I tried the same thing with two other USB sticks (with FAT and FAT32 formatting), also with the player's front USB port. The player simply keeps showing the message "Now searching upgrade software. Please wait.".

I've also done the factory reset and repeated the above attempts to play a disc or to perform the software update. It doesn't help.

So, the only thing I can do with the player is get to the Home screen, but that's it. It doesn't play Bluray discs and you can't update the software.

I've written this same information to a Philips support forum (http://www.supportforum.philips.com/en/forumdisplay.php?80-Blu-ray-BDP7000-Series) but the topic has not yet been approved and is not visible on the forum.

I'm also still waiting a reply from the store I bought the player from.

Anyone have ideas on how to proceed?


Thank you.

[jman98]

Your ONLY option is to return the player where you bought it and get a replacement or refund.

Sounds like your player was defective from day one (it does happen) and the attempt to update the firmware bricked it. The player should not have required you to make any firmware updates to get it to behave normally.

I don't recommend that people apply firmware updates unless there is a fix for something that they really have to have. One example might be that subtitles don't work correctly in files played off USB. There is always some small element of risk with any firmware update. If you lose power during the update or you get the wrong one and the player isn't smart enough to stop you from using it, you can brick players. Note that firmware updates can also take away functionality, which is another reason to NOT apply them. Support for Cinavia was provided to some players as a firmware update. Cinavia is an anti-copy protection mechanism that can prevent you from playing certain types of backups of your purchased BD discs.

Finally, in case you care Philips BD players can often be made region free for DVD playback, but unfortunately the reports we get are that they do NOT convert, so if you play PAL DVDs you get PAL output and if you play NTSC DVDs you get NTSC output. This is a big problem in North America where many TVs are not able to display PAL video at all, but may not be an issue at all in PAL video countries.

[mikkoras]

I too believe that the player was indeed defective from the get-go. I just hoped that it could have been solved via the software update.

However, I don't see how I "bricked" it with the update since I never actually started the update process. The device just kept scanning the USB stick for the update file.

Thanks for the reply.

[jman98]

I took you description of what happened to mean you did actually start the upgrade but it hung without completing. Then your player was just defective as bought by you and needs to be replaced. Trust, you really don't want this to be solved by a software update. You want a new player. There's very likely multiple things wrong with this player.