It all started so innocently when I decided to check all the fw versions on all of my machines and upgrade as needed. I powered all of them up and began to check them. I then started with my TV and all went good. I then turned to my virgin (no upgrades) XA2 and noticed that it would not respond to the remote or any of the buttons on the front. I then noticed that to power it down I had to hold the power button for about 10sec (reset?). I continued to power it down, unplug it for different amounts of durations, all to no avail. I put a number of discs in and they all would start on their own and play fine but the player would not respond to any inputs given to it. At this point panic began to set in as I thought that my beloved XA2 has just bricked itself. My last ditch attempt was to try and do an upgrade to it and see what it would do. I proceeded to upgrade to 2.7 and all went well. The player is working again but it appears that the picture quality has been severely degraded. This player has always been an outstanding up converting player but now it seems it is no longer up converting. Anybody have any thoughts on this. Did I do something to damage my player? Will upgrading to 4.0 help me? Thanks