Help! My ps3 stopped reading discs!

[makingmusic476]

Okay, so I have relatives from Houston in town, and we were planning to watch a couple of movies tonight. First, I pop in Shrek 3 (My mom bought it, in full screen no less. The fool.), and it plays just fine. After that, I pop in Harry Potter: OotP on BD because my cousins haven't seen it yet. The little blue disc icon pops up, and I click it while simultaneously plugging in my controller to recharge. Just seconds later, a screen pops up that says...

"Error [bunch of numbers] Invalid Disc"

...and I was like, "wtf?" At first I figured it was nothing, but then became a little worried after I ejected the disc, reinserted it, and saw the little loading swirly going on for like 15 seconds. So I popped that out and put in the Fifth Element on BD. The same thing happened. It just didn't stop loading. After that, I figured it may have been just BDs, because of a similar thread I've read on here, but when I popped back in Shrek 3 on DVD, the same thing happened. The same also happened for Uncharted. I then shut the ps3 off, stood it up vertically, and tried HP again. Nada. So now it's turned off downstairs, vertically, and I'm praying to God that it will start reading discs again in an hour or so.

Do you guys know of any possible solution? Do you know why it could be doing this? I got it back in early December of '06, one of the first 400k with Talladega Nights, so the warranty is already up. I'm afraid to call Sony just to have them tell me, "That'll be $140," or something because I really have no money right now.

I just don't understand how the thing could break. I mean, I haven't exactly used it all that often, and from what I've read there's only a .2% failure rate or something insanely low like that. I only own 4 games - Resistance, Warhawk, Heavenly Sword, and Uncharted - and I haven't finished a single one yet (it's a problem I have with gaming although I've only had Uncharted for a few days, so give me time. It kicks ass, and I LOVE Naughty Dog). Other than that, I only own 16 BDs, and have only watched each once or so, aside from the few I use as demo material. Sure I watch the occasional SDDVD, but overall the thing just doesn't get used that much, or at least not the disc drive (I'm always downloading trailers and stuff).

Although, I did have a Lord of the Rings EE marathon a week and a half ago when I got my wisdom teeth out. But I don't see how that one time thing would affect anything.

Anywho, can anybody help?!?

Also, if I do have to get it sent in to be repaired, will they give me another 60gb console with the hardware BC, or will I get stuck with an 80gb or something? Will it be new, a refurb, or will they just repair mine?

Update: 1/1/08

Called Sony today. At first they tried to charge me $149.99 to get my ps3 replaced, until I brought up that I the warranty had been extended to Jan. 15 according to guys at AVS. Then the customer service rep. checked with his boss, and came back and said there would be no charge. They're shipping me a box, and said total turnaround time should be 10-14 business days, which jibes with what the guys on AVS were saying. It took them about two weeks to get their systems back.

Update: 1/8/08

My box arrived today. That's four business days, just like the guys at AVS said. They said in total it was a ~2 week turnaround for them, so if I ship my ps3 off tomorrow, I'll get it back in a week to a week and a half.

Update: 1/14/08

Sony shipped off my ps3 today via UPS 3-day shipping. It should arrive Wednesday or Thursday.