Help! I'm having trouble updating my firmware via CD. What am I doing wrong?

Upgrading your Blu-ray disc player’s firmware isn’t a complicated process, but it is a very specific process, so if you’re having trouble downloading or updating firmware, you may be making one of a few very common errors at any step along the way. First things first, make sure you're downloading the correct firmware for your player. If your player is a Samsung, you can locate the model number on the front panel, then head over to our Firmware Downloads Page and follow link to the right of that model number to find your firmware. (Note: At this time Samsung's firmware files are only available for Windows 98SE, ME, XP, or Vista.)

Next, make sure you actually download your firmware. In other words, when you click on the firmware icon on your player's Download Center webpage, make sure you don't select the option to Open it. Choose the Save or Save File option, depending on your browser, and save the file to a location on your hard drive that you can easily remember.

The file that you download will almost certainly be a .zip file. Before you burn your firmware to CD, you must first unzip, or extract, your firmware this file. If you're using Windows XP or Vista, you should be able to open the .zip file with no addition software. If you're having trouble doing so, though, you may need to do a Google search for a Zip File Utility program, such as WinZip.

The file that you extract from the .zip should be in the ISO format—its name should be a string of numbers and letters that end in .iso. This is the file that you'll want to burn to CD.

Burning the file to CD is a critically important step, and there are two common mistakes that many people make at this stage of the game: first, you need to make sure you're using a CD-R or CD-RW. If you burn the ISO file to a DVD-R, DVD+R, the upgrade process simply will not work. And yes, we too see a hint of irony in the fact that you can't use a BD-R or BD-RE to upgrade your Blu-ray disc player's firmware, but come on—do you really want to spend $15 on 25-gigabyte disc, only to burn a 50-megabyte file to it that you're only going to use once?

At this point, you also want to make sure that you burn the ISO file to CD as an Image File, instead of simply burning the file to CD as you normally would. Windows' built-in CD-writing utility doesn't support this feature, so you'll need a CD burning program like Nero or any number of free CD/DVD burning programs available on the web (we tried ISO Recorder and found it to be a quick, easy, free solution), and you'll need to make sure you select "Burn Image" or "Burn an Image File" from the File menu of the program you use. If you simply move the ISO file to a CD-R/W with Windows, or copy it as if it were a data file with your CD/DVD burning software, the upgrade will not work.

If all else fails, you can always contact Samsung customer support with the model number and serial number of your player, and they'll send you a CD containing the latest firmware within a few weeks.