RE: Your tangent topic DVD player life span.

I can tell you that my experience is that what you were told might be true. My Sony DVP-S560D died after approx 14 months. I did some research on various news groups and found that many people are referring to this as the 560 syndrome. I then found that other Sony players have the same issue. I was told by a Sony repair tech that the lasers eventually have alignment problems and it would cost $150 to repair. Of course since many new players cost less than that I decided to just purchase a new one. I appears at least with Sony DVD players that this fact is true.

I would suspect that this does not have to be the case just that the manner in which many consumer electronics are made these days leads to a somewhat limited life span. One positive side effect of this limited life span however is that it "Spousal negoc" as you put it for a new DVD player with all the latest features becomes much easier when the existing player has died.