Video Playback issues

[jceperley]

I have a 60 gig PS3, about a year and a few months old (purchased August 2007), and lately I've had some problems, mostly with video playback, that even Sony's customer service can't explain.

Basically, here's the thing: I use my PS3 mostly for watching videos- Blu-rays, Youtube, Regular video files. Sure, I play the occasional games, but not as much as most do. But here's the problem, what I usually do, is I would get videos in AVI format (usually I move them using an SD card from my imac to my ps3), which should play ever since a firmware update a long time ago, but recently, when I move these files over from my computer, it tells me that the format can't be read.

Now, another problem I've been having is with Youtube, which I use on a regular basis through the web browser, but what I've been noticing lately is on a growing number of youtube videos, I'm just getting a blank black box where the video should be playing, and I still get sound.

So, does anyone know what's going on? Has anyone else had these problems? They all seem to have started at the time I update the firmware, not the most recent time, but the time before. So, what's going on? As I say, no one from Sony can even tell me.