I bought a Sony Blu Ray player 4 months ago. For various reasons wasnt able to use it for the first couple of months. Since then and after many attempts, I have successfully viewed just 1 film in its entirety. The unit itself either will not recognise and load the disc (on average it takes between 50 to 100 reloads to get the disc to be accepted), or it then plays about 30 minutes of (various) film before freezing and locking the shutter tray (stays locked for hours even turning the power on and off).

Anyone else had these problems? For me, this is not a giant leap forward in technology. I have a 15 year old VCR still working perfectly and a ten year old £25.00 DVD the same. And I keep being prompted to the internet for firmware etc, surely mass produced cross generational technology should not involve being expert in updating via the net-not everyone has the internet!

Your player is broken. It should not do what you are describing. A four month old player should have the latest version of firmware on it anyway. But even so it should still play the vast majority of disks perfectly well.

Take it back to where you got it and get it replaced at the very least. It is clearly not fit for purpose if it is unable to play disks. It is unlikely that simply not being used could have caused any problem. Unless it got kicked around or was stored in a hostile environment, eg extremes of heat or cold or very dirty.

Unless you've took a knife to all the disc it sounds like players broke.