Blu-ray Disc Player Firmware Update Needs are Stifling the Format?

I read a story this morning on hometheaterreview.com discussing how the growth of the Blu-ray Disc format is probably limited based on how often player firmware needs to be updated. This is a side of Blu-ray Disc that I haven’t experienced in person yet since I don’t own a player yet and no set-top players have come through the building to date. (Any manufacturer reps reading this? Care to help us alleviate this condition? )

The problem is that new features, bug fixes and key revocations by the paranoid Hollywood movie cartel (who are actually very nice people… just paranoid) are causing the need for end-users to update their firmware. And firmware is not something that should be updated on a whim on anything–in the above-mentioned story, writer Jerry Del Colliano shares the experience of updating his Blu-ray Disc player’s firmware and having the machine croak… and since the player was out of warranty, he was SOL. If a guy who knows what he’s doing kills his player because of a firmware update gone awry, where does that leave the much-less-technically advanced users buying these players and getting burned by something like this?

Unless the answer is that everyone who wants to watch Blu-ray Discs gets a Sony PlayStation 3, the best-regarded (and cheapest) Blu-ray Disc player on the market? The potential problem is that would unfortunately make for dire times at Sony, who sells the PS3 at a loss in hopes that people will buy the expensive games to play on the console. The beauty part is that it’s very easy to update the firmware on a PS3, when it has to be done. But then you get into a discussion of economies of scale, supply and demand, etc. (No, I couldn’t get into a whole economic discussion at the moment… it’s been too long since I took an econ class, although I did enjoy microeconomics.)