I was watching Watchmen on Blu-ray last night when the picture froze. If you’ve seen the move, it was the scene where Silk Spectre and Nite Owl take a stroll down a dark alley and they end up going Old Testament on a bunch of street thugs who were up to no good.

I tried taking the disc out and cleaning it. I had just bought it so I didn’t know how it got dirty, but that was all I had in my digital disc troubleshooting bag of tricks. After cleaning off the nonexistent gunk from the disc, I tried to watch it again, but now my Blu-ray player wouldn’t read the Blu-ray disc at all.

I tried it again today, but the result was the same. I then tried playing another Blu-ray disc. The player wouldn’t read that disc either. I tried a regular old DVD disc and it read that disc without any difficulties.

My Samsung BD-P1500 will play DVD discs, but not Blu-ray discs. I’ve probably only watched five, maybe six Blu-ray discs on it and it now wont work.

I went to the Samsung website to see what I could now do. After entering in all of the applicable information, it informed me that though the machine was still under warranty for parts, it was no longer under warranty for labor. The warranty for parts is 12 months, while the warranty for labor is a mere 3 months. I was then advised to call Samsung to arrange a repair.

How lame is that? It would probably cost me more to have the unit repaired than it would to just buy a new player. I paid $200 for this one last Black Friday. I haven’t priced them lately, but I doubt Blu-ray players have gone up in price since then.

Not that I will ever buy anything made by Samsung ever again.