We did it. We bought a Playstation 3. We didn't want to, since there aren't many games for the P3 that aren't also available for XBox. In fact, none of this would have happened if we hadn't first bought the crappy Blu Ray player.
There's something about having a high-def TV that gradually convinces you that you don't just want a Blu Ray player, you need one. And once you talk yourself through the doubt and conservatism that always accompanies media switches, there you are, in the Blu Ray aisle at Best Buy, overwhelmed by the meaningless points that they use to bulk up the "features" descriptions. (The worst is when they allude to the design or basic controls as a feature. I don't look at it as a bonus that my DVD player has a "play" button. I tend to expect that.)
Anyway, we ended up with a seemingly capable Insignia Blu Ray, but when it got home, it was the worst-behaved Blu Ray player ever. It stuttered and stalled, loaded in geological time, and clawed up the furniture. Not to mention that it couldn't even play the new James Bond movie--not, as some might claim out of an innate sense of taste, but because its firmware was out of date, and there was no practical way to update it.
I know that some people would claim that you should try to work through these things, but watching a Blu Ray disc shouldn't be a painful experience that makes you long for VHS. The problem we discovered, on taking it back to the store, is that unless you're willing to sell your first born, Blu Ray machines that solve the loading and easy updating problems are prohibitively expensive. But the PS3, which of course, can play Blu Ray and has better memory and wi-fi capability than almost anything else in that price range was the obvious solution. This is kind of a bummer, since it's a big, ungainly piece of electronics that hunkers on the entertainment center like a sad, lonely hunchback. But at least we have something that plays Blu Ray discs that isn't in danger of being hurled out the window in frustration.
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