I collect games as most of you know, and I'm also a horror and sci-fi movie buff who buys movies and seasons of TV series on disc at times. I was a fairly early adopter of the HD-DVD drive for the 360 and after the hi-def format war was over, I was really happy to find a combination Blu-Ray and HD-DVD player so that I could keep my existing hi-def library and build on it. I also own a PS3, which means that I have two devices for each format (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) in my house. I didn't mind terribly the long start-up and load times, even though DVD had none, since the picture was spectacular. I was perturbed at the four firmware upgrades on the combo player of which DVD had none. I don't view a video playback device as more firmware-needy than a toaster. It may be naive, but I think that once the codec is set, that's it. It would be like requiring a software upgrade to toast wheat bread and bagels in addition to the white bread and English muffins that the toaster could handle out of the box. I was even starting to replace some things I own on DVD with hi-def versions.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and my combo player and PS3 have both stopped reading anything above a DVD. I'm more than perturbed now and the format upgrading is over. I'm in the process of getting both devices repaired, but my confidence in Blu-Ray as the disc format of the future is substantially reduced.

Tonight I bought Season Two of Terminator on DVD, even though I own Season One on Blu-Ray. I'll miss the higher video quality, but at least I'll be able to watch the damn show.