Hi Scott,
You bring up a good point !!
However I think that most companies would honor the "end user" and all they would have to do is provide a serial number to prove the product is in fact in there posession.
I had (and still have) a "Pioneer LD" player that was out of warranty by almost 8 months and "Pioneer" paid the complete cost of having the unit fixed. All they asked for was the serial # to verify that I was still in possession of that player and then they took care of the rest.
O-BTW , Over the years I have had to deal with many companies and I can tell you all that "Pioneer" is first class in my book !
jedi