How can I fix this Blu-ray situation?

[teeny-tinychicken031]

I'm having some very frustrating problems with my blu-ray set-up. I rented a "Captain Phillips" blu-ray from family video, and as I am watching it, the screen goes black. The audio was still there for a second. Then the picture comes back, but the audio doesn't kick back in for another second or two. It all takes place very quickly. The disc was, to my eyes, skipping. This had never happened before on any blu-ray I've ever played, but I rented the disc and figured it was smudged or something. I cleaned it off and it was basically flawless (one very minor scratch and a hint of a smudge). It still skipped. I looked up the problem and came to the conclusion that I may need a firmware update. My blu-ray player is a Sony bdp-s185 and it doesn't have wifi. I tried for hours to connect it to the internet (I plugged an ethernet cable from the blu-ray player to a laptop that was connected to the internet). It was just way too confusing for me and I couldn't establish any internet connection. Then it was suggested to me to download the firmware online (on the laptop), transfer it to a usb drive, and put it into the blu-ray player. I did the first 2 steps fine, but when I put the usb into the blu-ray player, nothing happened. This is incredibly frustrating! I just want to watch Captain Phillips without any "skipping" or whatever is happening. Even if the skipping is just the disc, I would still greatly appreciate help on how to update my blu-ray player without connecting it to the net.