I have posed this question to anyone who can help me with this. I have a phillips blu-ray player, but at a loss of why it needs a fan. I know pcs have one, and dvd recorders that are standalone, but why does a blu-ray player have or need one? is it because of the hardware in the player, the laser heat to read blu-rays ? any help would be greatly appreciated.

sony hired him?

It gets hot. I'm actually shocked you did not put 'bluE-ray'.

a modern computer runs at full load to decode a hd video. some people with dual core systems can't even run the video smoothly. in other words the processing is very demanding.

in the future the power needed to decode hd video will seem paltry as decoding standard dvd is today. i expect then there will be dedicated chips that can run with passive cooling

Who are you, Jay Leno?

The laser does not get anything hot. It is the processor that puts out serious heat, as mentioned above.

All the BD & HD-DVD players out have fans for the processor. As far as DVD recorders go, the fans are pretty much for models with hard drives built-in to remove the heat generated by that.

Thanks for all questions, I really appreciate people who can be of help. there are a lot of people out there with knowledge that can help others. again thanks for the advice.