PS3 RED RING OF DEATH?

Last Monday I fired up my PS3 in anticipation of watching Superbad on Blu-Ray, which the wife had so graciously picked up for me. Unfortunately, when I put the disc in nothing happened. No title screen, no indication that the PS3 knew the disc was present at all. I'm not a noob, so of course, I cycled the power on and off and tried again...no luck. O.k., I tried shutting down with the all-powerful black switch in the rear that essentially resets everything on the PS3 and still no luck.

Now I was genuinely concerned. I took out Superbad and put in Call of Duty 4...nothing. "Oh no", and several other choice phrases unfit for print rolled from my tongue, then I went to my computer hoping to find a simple solution online. Instead, I found a wide assortment of posts on various forums reporting the same problem - a sudden inability of the PS3 to recognize any disc - and the solutions weren't exactly what I was hoping. Apparently the problem is caused by leaving a game or movie paused for an extended length of time, or even leaving a disc in at the title screen. Eventually, that fancy Blu-Ray laser burns out forever. Goodbye $600.

Every report invariably lead to a return of the console to Sony for a replacement with varying degrees of success or failure. Worse yet, there were many reports of posts being taken down from Sony's own forums in an apparent attempt to keep the problems out of the press. Unsubstantiated reports said the problem was as common as 25% of all consoles sold. What?!

This was beginning to sound just like my experience with the Xbox 360's red ring of death.

With great trepidation, I called Sony's customer support line.

After waiting on hold for nearly 20 minutes, I was greeted by an American-sounding woman. The next five minutes were spent getting all of my personal information, literally one letter at a time. It was extremely irritating to have to spell out the word "road", but whatever...if it helps me receive the correct service the first time through, then I'll put up with it. After all that, I explained my problem and the rep told me they would send me a prepaid shipping box with detailed instructions on how to box up my console and prepare it for pickup. Turnaround time, she said, would be approximately two weeks for me to receive a new console.

She explained that I could copy all the information I had on my console, including game saves, to a memory card so I would not lose my all-important save data. Then, the genius that is my wife noticed the Best Buy receipt said I still had four days to return or exchange it there since it was a holiday purchase. I explained this to the Sony Rep and she gave me an incident number in case I needed to call back and have the box sent anyway.

I copied all my PS3 data to a mini USB drive, packed up the PS3 and headed to Best Buy with my receipt in hand.

After the Geek Squad checked out the console and verified it was, in fact defective, they told me I could exchange it with no problem as long as they removed the UPC code from the new box - since I had already mailed in the original code for my Blu-Ray movie rebate - and the Spiderman 3 Blu-Ray movie, since I had forgotten to pack it in the box. "Sounds great", I said.

I then decided to purchase the two-year replacement plan for the console for $59.99, which I normally never do. In this case I decided if I had a problem in the future it was worth $60 for the convenience of not having to return it to Sony, plus it bought me an extra year beyond the Sony one-year warranty period.

Once I got home I restored my wireless settings, restored all my save data, and then put Superbad in...hallelujah, success! Of course, I had to re-download all my PSN purchases, but that was no big deal as I set them up to download overnight.

Now, I just hope this one doesn't go bad.

I'll let you know if it does. In the meantime, anyone else had a similar experience? Let us know in the comments.