PS3 Blu-ray issue not firmware-related News

Their repair cost is pretty shocking.

Nice little money-maker for Sony then, that firmware patch that definitely in no way affects the BR drive, no sirree.

Luckily I haven't had this problem with the Slim, but my brother-in-law's phat version has done exactly this and they actually wanted to charge £99 (still a massive rip-off, mind).

I think everyone who has the problem should mention that Sony haven't recieved the best press recently with Watchdog and that they're sure the BBC would be very interested to hear about these problems.

Even if they're out of warranty, it's effectively the same as Sony coming into your house, breaking your PS3 and expecting you to fork out for the repair. It's actually quite sickening and some ass needs to be kicked.

This is an interesting read and does give some pointers - I think it's important that EVERYONE knows about this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2006/mar...

Sony are lying stealing crooks.

What surprised me after the Watchdog program was the vast majority of forum comments were quite vigorously defending Sony.
So are there any Sony fans wanting to defend them from these accusations now? Anyone?

Sony taking the Microsoft head in the sand approach huh?

Hold on £128 repair if my PS3 buggers? I can get a 360 arcade with a game for £135!!!

Sony you better hope mine don't bugger as that 130 quid will go on a stand alone blu.....

I don't know if the update brakes systems but it CERTAINLY does cause freezes. Something is buggy in the new friends/message code.

It probably isn't the firmware.

The Blu Ray diodes in some PS3's are incredibly sensitive and has a habbit of burning out, especially if you use the hard power switch whilst a game is in the drive. Lots of people have had their consoles sit around for a while, a game has come out that they want, so they dust off the PS3 to play, update it, the warn out diode shows signs it's failing so they assume the update caused the drive to fail.

Only seems to affect drives with a combination blu-ray + DVD laser. Ones with two lasers don't seem to suffer from the issue (which makes me think Sony know this is a problem as a dual laser setup is more expensive to produce)

Right well seeing as I haven't watched any Blurays and had to turn on my PS3 for a while I'll remember to ensure I cancel the update request then.

"What surprised me after the Watchdog program was the vast majority of forum comments were quite vigorously defending Sony. "

Maybe because the Watchdog program was BS?

English not your first language then davisorie?

@davisorle

I've read that twice and I have no idea what you are going on about. I can't even tell if you are pro-Sony or against them. Seriously.

@PrivateJoker You're probably right, I'm just a little cynical this morning ;)

Some of these comments sound almost like those "Yes, I've got RROD three times, but the warranty is so good I actually enjoy it" type posts we got back when Microsoft had a problem. Fanboys are weird.

I doubt (though I could be wrong) that these reported problems have anything to do with the firmware update. Those machines were about to die anyway and that they died after updating the firmware is just coincidence.

It's the same as all of the forum comments stating that Halo 3 caused a RROD. No, just shitloads of people bought Halo 3 at the same time, a few consoles that were going to die anyway just gave up the ghost, and therefore people put 1 and 1 together and come up with 4.

Sony lie with every breath that they can muster, and still the Sony fanboys follow like a group of suicide lemmings.

@kangarootoo

Against them as a company cause they always make you pay more than half their hardware's price for repairs right out of waranty. In general. Been pointing that one out a lot the past 1-2 weeks. I cant be apologising all the time for my english people.. ffs lol Gimme a break

I have a simple solution:

If you have YLOD: CLEAN YOUR HOUSE you dirty buggers.
If you got this failure: DON'T PUT TOAST IN THE DISC SLOT.

That is all.

@ rotmm

I dunno Halo 3 hit my 360 with RROD, but you are right it was probably due to the 2 7 hour sessions (I kid you not, I could not put it down) over a 24 period i battered my already abused 360 with.

/ hugs legendary mode

She's still battling on to the old workhorsel! :)

*cough* fixed for free *cough* ;)

I have updated to FW 3.00 and then 3.01 as well. Have had no problems whatsoever with BR movies or games. If it's not affecting everybody, could be some custom setting that's not working well with the update and the movie display?

must say that these type of reports are on the rise && I do not think people should pay for the repairs. 10y life cycle, so make sure your HW is up for it!

negotiator: do you think MS is anything different? with RRoD figures as high as they seem, they should have recalled. They did not? Any clue as to why that would be?

Screw it... if this happens to me I will be forking our for £128 for a 360!

Still, I think customers should at least know what the specific problem is? It seems unfair and opaque!

No problems here either. Launch EU PS3 with 320GB HDD.

"Yes, I've got RROD three times, but the warranty is so good I actually enjoy it"

I don't actually enjoy it, but it's true that it makes no real diference besides not having the system for 18 days, as it costs zero euros, and I don't even need to leave my apartment. On the other hand Sony even refused to replace my PSP which came with 4 dead pixels out of the box.
And..., why you guys in UK only have 1 year warranty? I thought it was 2 years (like in Portugal) all across EU.

Just looking through that list of forum posts (on the PSBLog) you can see that people are blaming the firmware update for any fault that happened to occur over the period where 3.00 and 3.01 were released.

There's YLOD's, Blu-ray diode failures (where DVD's and CD's still play), stuttering issues (the reason for the 3.01 release), etc, etc... Basically everyway a PS3 can fail is being blamed on the update!

The thing is this, if Sony had done something with the firmware that caused machines to go pop, there'd be a lot more issues than there are being reported because everybody needed to install it. And I'm sorry a few hundred failures is a drop in the ocean when there are 20 odd million PS3's in the wild.

If there really was an issue with the firmware "bricking" machines, Sony would do something about it becauese it'd be too big a problem to ignore.

@ PrivateJoker:

How can Sony NOT make any money from repairs? Are you saying that all breakages cost EXACTLY half the price of a new console to fix? Different things breaking must mean different replacement costs and man-hour costs, surely.

"must say that these type of reports are on the rise && I do not think people should pay for the repairs. 10y life cycle, so make sure your HW is up for it! "

I'm not defending Sony's repair policy (or sick price!), but do you really expect Sony to offer a 10 year warrenty just because they claim a 10 year product cycle? PSone and PS2 also had a 10+ year product cycle.
Watchdog also hit this, which is quite misunderstood and something only the tabloid press would claim for cheap points.

Reading some angry and furious comments in here...

Some guys in here seem to have had a painful breakup with a PS3 - very sorry that she left you but now, not every PS3 is a bad PS3. It must be that or your PS2 was not a good caretaker and now you think all PS3 are evil and you are not giving them a chance?

@ GreyBeard

Exactly, as usual a vocal minority make it sound like there's a widespread problem, when there isn't.

Sony should of gave everyone a three year warranty I just find it a bit cheap of them to say that they want the Playstation 3 to be around 10-15 years but if you bought it on release you will only be covered for about 5% of the consoles commercial lifespan

@jonthepymm

Sony actually subsidies repairs due to the high cost of the equipment used.

People like munki83 are the problem. You see, people like that can't understand that when Sony say they want the PS3 to be around for 10 years they actually mean the brand, not each individual console they manufacture. Durrrr!

It all coincides with the launch of the Slim! Gentlemen, put your tin foil hats on and start spinning those theories.

PlayTV fucked my PS3 when I got it, and Sony didn't want to know about fixing it. They said "software can't break the machine".
Well it did you arrogant cunts.

Man without humour or sense of irony spotted above me.

"@seasidebaz You talk a load of SH!T ."clean your house" if you where in front of me saying that I would beep beep beep you."

You'd give him the YLOD?! :O

"@seasidebaz You talk a load of SH!T ."clean your house" if you where in front of me saying that I would beep beep beep you."

Uncensored: "@seasidebaz You talk a load of SH!T ."clean your house" if you where in front of me saying that I would break down and forgive you then wind you at a hip dicoteque then bring you back to my bedsit and undress you with my teeth - you beautiful you."

@ Greybeard:

Did they ever admit to the inherent faults of the PS1 or 2 though? That’s an honest question, I only ask as almost everyone I know had a fault with either one or both, I know my PS1 had to be turned upside down, have mugs rested on the disc tray etc. and the PS2 died a few times to Which Sony just asked for money…

My own PS3 went belly up not long after I'd installed the 3.01 firmware but I'm sure that was just coincidence as the console wouldn't even stay on long enough for me to be able to eject the game disc (the infamous Yellow Light of Death I believe). That made me realise that while disc slots are very modern and nice and all that, they're a bugger if the mechanism breaks down as removing the disc is near impossible. At least with a tray you can use the old pin trick to release it and make it open.

Fortunately I took out a three year extended warranty when I bought my launch machine from GAME and that purely based on the dodgy reputation of the Xbox 360 at that time. Sony quoted me £128 to have mine repaired by them when I rang, an obscene amount considering I'd paid £425 for the console some two and a half years ago, and then it only came with a lousy three month guarantee. Depending on the condition of my returned unit, which will have six months left on the GAMEcare plan, I may trade it in for a newer slim PS3, although I'd lose out on all the nice extras my launch model has.

I'm a little disappointed that my PS3 broke down but accept that these things do happen and at least, for me, the machine has lasted far longer than any of my Xbox 360s have. That said, you're pretty much covered with the Xbox 360 for free repairs for three years so that does help soften the blow of having to keep sending the console off for repairs twice a year (which is what it honestly seems like in my case).

My mate docbarnett the ps3 owner got his PS3 returned from consoledoctor.com who done the job much cheaper than pretty much anyone else. He updated firmware and guess what?! Back with the consoledoctor.com and he thought it was them not doing a good repair but it certainly looking like firmware as his latest problem was disc not being read and not ylod.

Seem there are fanboys on all sides, but denying apparently clear link of PS3 fine and post firmware of PS3 not fine points to a strange coindence OR some unforeseen code having sideeffect somewhere.

Sure my PS3 not affected by the update, yet there have been many many firmware patches and different component suppliers, that PS3 is already approaching the complexities of PC hardware and software compatibilities?!

Sony still need to be on top either way and being seen as arrogant would do more damages... If at least to the concerned PS3 owner with the faulty PS3!

Also is it reasonable to expect to have to pay to have a console repaired after just a year anyway or even three? I mean can the user really be blamed for a faulty or dodgy component? Sure, nothing lasts forever and wear and tear will eventually result in electronic goods failing at some point but after one year? That's not acceptable in my opinion and asking £128 to repair a console that is no longer in production through no fault of the user is just mean... downright mean, in fact.

Personally, I think all game consoles should come with a minimum warranty of three years and ideally five. They've become so complex now that the likelihood of them developing a fault before they've exceeded their useful life is much greater. Most consoles don't break down through wear and tear or misuse but poor design or dodgy components that aren't made to last in the first place.

Anyone else agree?

@ Beano
"I'm not defending Sony's repair policy (or sick price!), but do you really expect Sony to offer a 10 year warrenty just because they claim a 10 year product cycle?"

I wouldn't expect a 10 year warranty, but for a premium product at a premium (launch) price, you would expect a longer warranty than what you would get with a pocket calculator. Under UK law, a product should last for a reasonable time, it's called being 'fit for purpose'.

A 3 year warranty like the Microsoft one would give Sony customers more peace of mind, assuming Sony have faith that their products will last for 3 years.

@EarlBassett

Thanks for translating, I had absolutely no idea what "beep beep" meant. What a wonderful language English is, so rich and subtle.

"Sony has told Eurogamer that a firmware update cannot affect the Blu-ray drive on a PS3. [...] Sony customer services have been telling sufferers that they must send their machine back for repair, which costs £128 if out of one-year warranty, but there's still no real explanation for what's happened."

Very smooth there.

Fortunately, I don't seem to be having these problem. Granted, I haven't been using the PS3 too much lately, but those few Uncharted and Singstar sessions didn't have any trouble.

Woo, original comment on -3......

OK then. All you people whingeing about this. I have a PS3 which works brilliantly, didn't get borked by the firmware updates, hasn't YLOD'd, anything like that.

I also have an Xbox360. It's 1 month out of warranty. 1 MONTH. And the DVD drive has given up the ghost. It started to fail at EXACTLY the same time as the NXE came out. Coincidence? I don't know, I don't care. It'll cost me £60 to get it repaired. I could buy a similar DVD drive from eBuyer for about a fiver. I'm not whingeing about it, though. It's an electronics device. THEY DON'T LAST FOREVER.