Generally speaking, Blu-ray players aren’t that complicated. Yes, some of them incorporate streaming features, but they ultimately exist for a single purpose: popping in a disc and playing it. They’re nowhere near as complex as a PC or game console.

That said, the current home theater landscape presents a lot of potential hurdles, some of which you can run into even if you’re a veteran of the scene. I’m going to attempt a quick primer on some of the most common problems, as well as solutions you can try that won’t cost a fortune. Don’t give up on a player unless there’s an obvious hardware defect.

Black screens

A multitude of causes

I’m putting this one at the top not just because of its importance, but because there are actually several potential causes, one being HDCP handshake errors. HDCP is an anti-piracy technology built into HDMI. When there’s a conflict between HDCP versions, video is blocked, so it’s imperative that your player, TV, and HDMI cable all support the same version or better. The latest one is 2.3. If everything is kosher but you still suspect an HDCP error, try unplugging all the associated devices for a minute and restarting playback.

In some situations, there could be a mismatch between what your player is capable of and what your TV’s inputs are set to. If you’re trying to play a 4K HDR disc, your TV’s HDMI inputs need to be configured to use their full bandwidth, usually by toggling on an “Enhanced” or “Deep Color” mode. For that matter, make sure you’re using the correct HDMI ports and cables in the first place — the minimum for any kind of HDR is HDMI 2.0a, and it’s best to use HDMI 2.1 or 2.2, which support not just the latest dynamic HDR formats, but high refresh rates and VRR.

Check that your player’s output settings match your TV’s specs, too. On Sony drives, you may need to disable a feature called BD ROM 24P Output.

Audio is subpar or missing

Try settings workarounds first

For digital audio formats to work in a home theater system, data has to be decoded at some point along the chain. Typically, devices will try to decode audio the moment they receive it — but if they don’t support a particular standard, they’re either going to default to a lesser one, or fail to play audio at all. A common stumbling block is DTS:X, which isn’t nearly as well-supported as Dolby Atmos.

Often this can be solved by enabling passthrough (a.k.a. bitstream). If you’ve got a DTS-capable soundbar, for instance, but your TV only supports Dolby, you should enable passthrough on both your Blu-ray player and your TV. This will force them to leave audio unprocessed, giving your soundbar the chance to decode it instead.

A particularly tricky issue is Dolby MAT. This is meant to be a more efficient way of handling lossless output, bundling raw PCM with Atmos metadata for compatible hardware. This metadata can, however, trick devices (like receivers) into skipping surround enhancements for stereo mixes, resulting in bland output. If this is happening to you, you’ll need to either disable MAT or rely on passthrough.

Speaking of lossless, you won’t get that at all if your Blu-ray player isn’t connected via HDMI 2.1 or later, and a compatible sound system isn’t plugged into your TV’s eARC port. HDMI 2.0 and ARC don’t have the bandwidth for any lossless format, with or without spatial effects.

Discs are freezing or failing to play

Sometimes the trickiest situation

For this one, I’m assuming that you’ve already inspected a disc for damage or smudging, and that your player is otherwise functioning on a physical level. When this issue rears its head, you’ll see your player get stuck on a loading screen, or pop up a vague error message such as “Cannot operate this disc.”

Here, the solution may be triggering a firmware update. Your player might not have the latest encryption keys out of the box, or support for the BD-Live features some discs include. If so, it won’t be able to handle recent discs until newer firmware is downloaded.

Remember also that region locking is still a thing. Some players can only load multi-region discs, or ones with a local region marker. 4K UHD discs are region-free from the get-go, but if you’ve got a Region A drive, Region B and C discs won’t play. This is why it’s smart to buy a multi-region player if you can.