Well, I'm on my fourth PS3 (don't ask) and today it has stopped playing BR disks (film or games).  CDs, DVDs, PS2 titles (it's BC) all work fine.  But BR, no way - it stops reading the disk after about 1 minute, which clearly eats into playtime considerably.

Clearly, I can now be certain that the little dot that represents me on the probability curve for PS3 failures is a real outlier from the median, and that I may even be alone in the set of PS3 owners who are on (or will shortly be on to be more accurate) their fifth PS3.

Good thing I have the Continuous Play cover I took out when I knew I was about to go out of warranty.

The funny thing is I take good care of it and almost never have issues with electronic devices as I always look after them so well.  I've never had something fail on me like the PS3.  Everyone I know locally with a PS3 is still on their first, too, which just seems to rub it in all the more.

Oh, well.  Time to phone for a replacement...

And no trying to twist this to your own ends my 360 playing fellow VG'ers!

Wow, that is some tough luck you have there. Remember to take a backup

Maybe you should stop throwing your PS3 out of the window.....
Just take it as a friendly hint

my 60gb went kaput 5 times. bought a slim after the last time. it was going to be another $200 to fix the thing, and although i would prefer to play the ps2 games on the ps3, i still have a "working" ps2. so i was really fine without the extras on the older model.

ya clearly your either placing it in a very bad spot where over heating or some type of disturbance is occurring, or you are handling it very poorly or you leave it on continuously.

not one person i know in real life has had their ps3 break and even on my friends list i think i met one guy who said his hard drive crapped out.

you are obviously doing something wrong

I had my original 40GB go south on me after about two years, at which point I sent it in for repairs and bought a Slim as a fallback. That's been working well so far, but it's only been about three months on it...

And yeah, it was the Blu-Ray laser on mine that went, too. Could still read DVDs, but Blu-Ray was skipping like crazy, and games would just freeze up randomly.

are you a chain smoker who burns wood fires and then piles up all the ash next to the intake valve of the system

You're doing it wrong...somehow

Had my uncles 60GB Ps3 YLOD earlier this week and my step-dad's 60GB Ps3 YLOD'd on his Birthday (Early January). Needless to say he ripped the fucking thing apart to get to Batman Arkham Asylum.

Luckily for him my mum "allowed" him to pick up a new Ps3 Slim the same night. She couldn't stand him looking like a child who's dog had just passed away.

Seems unnecessary. All he had to do was rip the BD drive apart and not the whole system.