Didn't really know if keeping a Blu-ray on pause for long period of time (so as to not have to reboot from beginning) and just play when i am ready to watch would be bad for a disc or the player...

thoughts?

I doubt it would be bad for the disc, but I see your blu-ray drive motor burning out a lot faster if you make this a habit...

What do you consider "long period of time?"

Is a minute or so of your life really THAT precious to possibly damage (or, at the very least, shorten the life of) your player?

It's definately bad for the player. Anecdotally, I left my DVD player on for days with a disc in so I could resume where i left off instead of having to find the spot again and it blew out one of the capacitors on the board. I had to break out the soldering iron and replace it to fix it. Not sure if this is case with Blu-Ray players, but I wouldn't risk it.

Yeah. I've heard rumors that if you leave a Blu-ray in long enough. it will catch fire and send out mini robots to kill you and your dog.

I don't see how it would have any impact on the disc... but it obviously provides additional wear-and-tear on the player. And it would seem to be using a lot of unnecessary electricity. Could end up being pretty a pretty costly choice vs. just shutting off the player and spending a minute to return to your place.

It only really bothers me when there are all the forced trailers and it takes forever to get to the movie. I'll usually set the bookmark or if they don't have one just remember where I am in the movie. If that much time has gone by that I can't remember I'll just start over.

I, for one, welcome our mini robot overlords.

"Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter."

yeah, that all makes sense ('cept for the mini robots part ). didn't think about wear on motor when in extended pause mode.

A few days?!?! WTH!

Seriously though, in terms of wear and tear, is a player being on Pause any worse than it being in Play mode?

The mini robots make a ton of sense, except for the fact I don't own a dog...only a cat that likes to eat and sleep and poop a lot. Perhaps the mini robots are after my future dog, in which case that is very scary and serious stuff. I will best take note and not leave my Blu-ray player ever in pause mode except for a second to give my cat another food bowl.

I leave one paused while I eat dinner sometimes. My thing though is I refuse to shut players down anymore. I've gotten tired of waiting for DVD/BD players to boot up like a damn computer, so I just keep things running. The only thing I kind of baby is my HD-DVD player, for obvious reasons, and the fact I rarely use it. Drives me nuts when I want to watch an HD-DVD and it takes forever to boot up and spit the tray out at me though. I've had my PS3 and 360 running 24/7 over a year and both still work. Well, I claimed my PRP on the 360 last week cause the controller broke and the PRP was almost expired. lol

I wouldn't worry so much about the BD player as I would about burn-in on my HDTV.

Seems like an unnecessary waste of electricity to me, in addition to unneeded wear and tear on players.

If boot times really annoy you many of the latest generation of BD players are reported to be very quick booting. It is an issue that the player manufacturers have solved.