Whilst I totally agree that my warranty deal works out at better value for money than Continuous Play, I would argue that it's at least worth considering rather than dismissing it all together. Now, you may think I'm being mad here, but think about it this way: Sony's charges for an out of warranty repair can be as high as £150 (I suppose this reflects the expensive components that comprise the PS3), and they will want payment immediately.

Whereas Continuous Play is half this amount for the year, and payment is deducted monthly, I recall (I previously had my PSP on this) and by having payment in bite-sized pieces, would be more manageable. Just some food for thought.

All the best Mark!

Ive been playing call of duty and the fan barely even switches on. With the old PS3 it was always blowing out loads of hot air. No doubt this helped finish off the blu ray drive.

regarding the warranty, ive been looking into this playstation continous play. Abit expensive coming in at over £60 a year. Your warranty looks like a great deal compared to that!

Yea, having an extended warranty was a stroke of luck as I thought I'd never need it! I still have both a fully-functioning original PlayStation and PS2. I think the rule of thumb for me in future anyway, is taking out an extended warranty for an item that I wouldn't be able to afford to replace, in comparison to a cheap toaster or kettle!

That's a great result you got from Sony outside the warranty. Whilst they weren't legally obliged to do that for you, customer goodwill and loyalty means a lot to such companies, especially after that was the second PS3 that broke on you. Shame about the measly 3 month warranty though.

A sobering thought is whether hardware failure will become the norm in future due to increasingly complicated technology? There's simply more that can go wrong. I admit that now on my second PS3, I don't view the console with the same amount of trust as before; I no longer expect it to always 'just work'.

I brought a ps3 (40gb) in november of 2007. Three weeks after getting it i was playing call of duty 4 and the game locked up and the system refused to restart.

When it did restart it wouldnt read any discs. Phoned sony and explained the problem and they sent a replacement. Anyway fast forward (boxing day) 12 months of problem free gaming and i was playing call of duty 5 and the same thing happened.

PS3 wouldnt read any discs, was abit miffed off to say the least at yet another hardware failure!. Sony are sending me a replacement console tomorrow even thou it was out of warranty. I did have to have moan regarding yet another failure and that was when they said they would replace it.

I did find that after doing a full format it did read discs for a shortwhile but then came up with the tell tale

80010514 an error occured during the start operation

Well done on the 5 year warranty, my replacement ps3 will have a 3month warranty which doesnt instill me with any faith at all!