may be true for all i know,, but would'tuse a best buy guy as my info source,, did he sell you a warranty

Believe it! My PS3 drive burnt out after about eight movies. There is a new one on the way.

Blink:

Not the first time I've heard this story. This is their 'pitch' to sell you the extended warranty.

I can bet the next words out of his mouth were "would you like to purchase the extended warranty."

I've had my 40 Gb one about 5 months. Play only DVD's and it's been flawless.

The company I work for makes looping videos. There is a difference in DVD drives
and an industrial drive is designed for 24/7 playback. The $35 players last a month
or two and as the price goes up so does the life of the drive.

I suspect to get the Blueray drives price down they don't use bearings and other
parts that are designed for long playback. So is the sales rep telling you the truth....
most likely. How often do you watch a movie? We have family night weekly and
sometimes see a movie in a theater (with digital projection of course!) does the price
difference justify buying a PS3?

did he sell you a warranty

Nah... I don't bite on those little "extra" warranties. Sony warranties it for a year.... I figure that's good enough

Sony warranties it for a year.... I figure that's good enough

Some major credit card companies double the manufacturers warranty if you use their card for the purchase.
Or you could buy it from a place like Costco who still have a really good exchange policy.

Mike

Honestly, I think he was trying to pitch you the warranty. I just checked, and during movie playback my PS3 spins the Blu-Ray drive constantly, as does a DVD player. In other words, no spin-up spin-down cycle.

These are my $0.02 in this:

If you buy a games console, the console will spin the drive up when needed, and spin it down when not. Since a game requires less access to the Blu-Ray drive, that means it is spun up and down a lot. This increases the tear and wear on the drive. Obviously.

So, if you use your PS3 as a combined games console and blu-ray player, you will probably end up with a shorter life for the drive than you would if you had a dedicated blu-ray player. On the other hand, if you use your PS3 solely as a movie player, there should be no difference in the spin-up, spin-down cycle of that and a regular blu-ray player.

There is possibly one exception to the above. The PS3 does appear to some times spin down the drive when menus are shown. Perhaps. I saw it once I think, but could not reproduce it. If that is the case, and a regular player does not do this, then the PS3 could possibly be at a slight disadvantage if you spend a lot of time playing around the "Extras" section of your disc.

Honestly, I'd be surprised if the drive normally fails within two-five years. This is a games console after all, Sony will have all kinds of trouble on their hands if it does. Gamers obviously spins up and down their drive a lot more than you or I will, and if the machines starts breaking early Sony is in trouble. We'll see somewhere around 2010 I guess :-)

And I bought the 3 year warranty on my 80GB PS3.

Why? My son is 8 years old, and I went through 4 DVD players/drives in a year with him.

I figure I'll go through 3 PS3s in 3 years all for the price of one plus a little extra.

If you buy a games console, the console will spin the drive up when needed, and spin it down when not. Since a game requires less access to the Blu-Ray drive, that means it is spun up and down a lot.

Interesting you say that, because it would seem to me that spinning up/down would cause more wear and tear than constantly spinning. It takes a fair bit of energy to spin a disk up to speed (and therefore more heat generated and more pressure on the bearings) than it does to spin it up ONCE and keep it running. Sort of like a car on the highway.... a car with nothing but highway miles lasts a lot longer than a car driven for years in stop/go city traffic.

Playing a movie would run the laser constantly whereas a game would cache the data and randomly access the Blu-Ray drive depending upon the game being played. That to me would suggest that a game would require more processing power producing more heat and stress on components as a result.

Regardless of the theoretical arguments what makes the most sense is that if you play games and movies on a regular basis you are using the device more and regardless of which causes it, more frequent use will shorten the life of a device. That makes the most sense. Solution: Lower the cost of Blu-Ray players and the Playstation 3. Same solution I always have to all things Blu-Ray.

John

unless the PS3 is a cheap POS, I don't believe it. People still have their original PS1's & PS2's. Many people use their PS2 as a DVD player. My gamecube got replaced because it fell one to many times (apparently they're like a cat & only have 9 lives. This wii has been "flying like a brick" twice, so we'll see how well that holds up!). And THAT took 4 years to do!

Yes, the player itself may wear out faster when playing movies, CONSTANTLY, but you're talking ~5/6 years down the road. Remember, Sony said the PS3's life is a decade (hahahahahaha) so I wouldn't worry about not getting replacement parts any time soon. Odds are a repair will, at most, cost $200. That's still less then 1/2 the price of the cheapest BD player on the market (which happens to be the PS3).

Honestly, I'm more worried about a firmware update bricking consoles then the hardware physically dying!

Playing a movie would run the laser constantly

Yes... of course... I wasn't even thinking about that end of the business, but you're absolutely right.

It's the lasers that fail in regular DVD players, invariably the one for playing DVDs fails a very long time before the one for playing CDs. I've got many CD players kicking around. It borders on the criminal the amount of needless toxic landfill we're creating.

Trouble these days is no one will pay more for something built to last or at least be fixable when a trivial part wears out.

Bob.

Strange. I just spoke with my daughter, who manages a Best Buy store, and she tells me she's heard nothing related to this from Sony, Best Buy, or any other entity.
I'd be demanding the salesman provide you with a specific name at Sony, as BB doesn't buy from a distro.

I'd be demanding the salesman provide you with a specific name at Sony, as BB doesn't buy from a distro.

Well.... this is Canada and not the USA so things may run a bit differently but it's neither here nor there because I don't believe it at all.

My pure guess is that they're trying to move the set top players because they're not selling anywhere near as well as the PS3 as a player. Right after the sales guy told me about the drive issue on the PS3's he tried steering me over to the blu ray player section.

I will say that after a bit of playing around, the PS3 is an interesting little machine. So far I have tested a commercial dvd, a home dvd, M2T files, and a blu ray movie and it seems to work quite well. It does get quite warm though and that bothers me a little.

Fortunately you only have to deal with that gawd awful game pad only once during the initial setup then you can toss it in the closet and use the blue tooth remote. I haven't tried an IR blaster plugged into the usb port and the PS2 remote yet but maybe this weekend I'll get the chance.

It works quite well with the Onkyo 705 AVR... you can set it up for bitstreaming the audio over to the receiver for decoding there, which is kind of nice since the receiver automatically adjusts its levels and such for the type of audio it senses. I cross the fingers in hopes that they can software upgrade it to play back or at least bit stream dts-ma/ha.... but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it

Blink,
When playing back Blu-Ray Disc's (and maybe DVD's), if you hit the triangle (Options) button on the remote you can toggle the audio from bitstream to pcm(realtime), in the video section there are also other options for picture, other options under options etc.
The display button will display the bitrate etc.

Good luck with it.

Interesting you say that, because it would seem to me that spinning up/down would cause more wear and tear than constantly spinning.

That was what I was trying to say. Yes, spinning up and spinning down would cause more wear and tear, but if you use the PS3 for movies only, it isn't relevant. The spin up and spin down problem would only manifest it self if you used it as a games console too.