Although, if they can get this kink ironed out, I'll buy another one

At a guess the most likely cause was a failed disk drive, which unfortunately is a risk you take with a hard disk based player. The same sort of failure can be expected in a certain proportion of any hard disk players shipped.

That fact of course is in no way comforting when you are one of the consumers with the failed disk

One day we won't need hard disks for this sort of use, thankfully. Can you imagine getting in a time machine, going back in time and telling the inventor of the first Winchester drive (Google only shows that it was IBM, but not who at IBM) what the desendants of their device would end up being used in