I hate Sony.

[naimis]

I just need to gripe and this seemed as good a place as any.

My second PS3 stopped working today.  The first one suffered the infamous "yellow light of death" (it won't boot, it just beeps and turns on a yellow LED).  This one, the bluray drive has stopped working.  The second PS3 is a "slim" model though this appears to have been a problem with the original "fat" model as well.

I had taken the afternoon off from work and was looking forward to getting in a bit of goofing off, so instead I'm fairly annoyed.  I can't find my original box/receipt but it's probably out of warranty.  This sort of thing really makes me want to point the "engineered obsolescence" accusation at Sony.  These damn things seem to break rather conveniently after warranty, and there seem to be a few reports circulating the web of Sony not honoring the warranty even when the device does fail in that first year.  I'm sitting on the edge of breaking the warranty seal.  It's really too bad I can't use the BD drive from my old PS3 in the new one.


In other, unrelated news, I saw some pretty spiff test gear at an auction earlier today.  One palette had a Fluke rack with test gear in it.  I failed to write down the model number and didn't have a camera (oops), but it looked like a 21" rack, about 2-3ft (maybe 16 or so rack units) high.. and IIRC it had two devices in it, one with a 5.25" floppy drive.  The model number was 25xx (i.e. four digits starting with 25) and was followed by 3 letters (mcs?).  I think it might have been a calibration rig.  On top of that was an HP 16500 with a decent set of expansion cards.  I was tempted, but not enough to stand around in the hot sun while they slowly made their way to lot 400-and-something.  Other nearby lots of interest were a "DNA fragment analyzer" and a laser from Coherent.  That's of course ignoring the palettes of CROs and what-not.  Some of you (Mike?) might have been like kids in a candy shop :-)

[KTP]

Other nearby lots of interest were a "DNA fragment analyzer" and a laser from Coherent.  That's of course ignoring the palettes of CROs and what-not.  Some of you (Mike?) might have been like kids in a candy shop :-)

Back a few years ago when Argon lasers were still cool, I was given 5 junked DNA sequencers, each containing a 100mW JDS Uniphase argon laser and supply, plus a 3.5KV digital controlled power supply made by Spellman (I still have a few of these).  Not sure what would be inside a DNA fragment analyzer, but sounds interesting.

[Mint.]

Mate, I had the same problem. But instead of complaining I went on eBay and bought a blu ray module and installed it into the ps3. It's only like 25 bucks.

[HardBoot]

Mine died 1 month after the warranty went up.

I know 7 people with PS3s and only 1 of them hasn't had theirs die, and the rest of us, it's always been between 13 months and 2 years.

$600 piece of shit is less reliable than my $40 Chinese computer; or any netbook/desktop under $200.

[EEMarc]

It's nothing new. I got the first run of PS2 and is had the same issues with the then DVD drive. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=sony_bullshit

[codeboy2k]

Sony is evil. Everyone hates Sony.  They're notorious and infamously known for developing their own formats for storage, never adopting anything that's already a standard, and always trying to push and license their own standards.

Later, they abandon them, and their customers, and force you to re-buy everything.

Furthermore, they abandon all software support for anything older than about 3 years... again forcing you to buy new hardware just to get a new software feature that you might need, that would be perfectly doable in the older hardware if they would only support it in an update to their older software. But this is Sony, and that's not going to happen....

It's great for Sony's bottom line, sucks for the consumer.

I used to be a Sony fan-boy as devoted as the Apple fan-boy is, but I got burned once too many after so many purchases.

Now I try to avoid them if at all possible.

[T4P]

Nah if you think this planned obsolescence only exists at Sony ...
Not really
The original XBOX 360 also has the bloody tin whisker issue (RROD)

My HP tx2028au that wasn't as failure prone to the tx1000 series went out again 1 month after my 3 year warranty

[FlyingBrickyard]

Sony is crap.

There was a time a lot of my electronics came from Sony.  At one point (the mid 80s to early 90s) they delivered high quality and good features at a very good price. 

That hasn't been true for a long time now.  I suppose I got lucky with both my PSX and PS2, as the PSX is still functional today and the PS2 which was a launch + 1 month unit worked fine for about 8 years.

However after having a few poor experiences with Sony products and customer service, and then having Sony essentially enter my home and commit theft with respect to my 60GB PS3's functionality, I'm through.  The PS3 is the very likely the last bit of Sony gear I will own, and given the influence I have over the purchases of those in my extended family (they always ask for advice on major electronic purchases), Sony have already lost a significant amount of business as a result. 

They are not entitled to my money, I am not a resource to be abused and squeezed for cash at their whim, and I resent being treated as such.

[SeanB]

I have a nice Sony DV camera, with the common Sony problem of bad capacitors ( only in the monitor of the viewfinder so not a total fail yet) and a dead battery ( found donor cells from an old laptop that fell down stairs).

Second is a very nice ICF-SW1 with Sony capacitor plague. Someday I will order them from RS and replace them so I can use the internal speaker again, but currently use headphones..........

Third is a Sony photo printer, dye sublimation, great quality output, but no more consumables available. When the dye films run out it will be torn down. Nice unit, but so slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww to run thruogh the menu's, and of course only takes Sony Memory Sticks not greater in size than 128k.

The rest was ripped to shreds and tossed. Not going to buy Sony again, unless it is like all the above and given to me for free.

[vk6zgo]

Sony used to be a great company,who made well engineered equipment & supported them with a really good parts supply setup.

That was before they started producing children's toys.......

[gregariz]

Hiring western CEO's doesn't seem to have been a winning formula for Japanese companies

[T4P]

Hiring western CEO's doesn't seem to have been a winning formula for Japanese companies

Neither did any of the japanese companies ... that hired western CEO's

[Fallingwater]

There are many, many reasons to hate Sony. The foremost as far as I'm concerned is that they make such sexy hardware, then they go on and ruin it with awful proprietary stuff to appease their marketing department, which is probably headed by a bunch of half-trained chimps. As for their legal department, that's probably headed by Satan himself.

If they hadn't willingly crippled their own products for the past several decades they'd have Apple bent over nowadays, instead they're being driven out of more and more markets. *sigh*

[AntiProtonBoy]

They made decent products for sure, particularly in the 80s and 90s. Sony's PR spiraled downhill after the introduction of their PlayStation, presumably because of the mod chipping community and the ripping culture of PS games. What's ironic is that piracy is what made the console successful in the first place and allowed Sony to get a foothold in the gaming market.

[vk6zgo]

They made decent products for sure, particularly in the 80s and 90s. Sony's PR spiraled downhill after the introduction of their PlayStation, presumably because of the mod chipping community and the ripping culture of PS games. What's ironic is that piracy is what made the console successful in the first place and allowed Sony to get a foothold in the gaming market.

Like I said ,"children's toys!"

[_Sin]

Like I said ,"children's toys!"

Children apparently have plenty of disposal income. Keeps a roof over my head, anyway.

Anyway, don't blame me for any hardware failures, I just do the software.

[HardBoot]

Like I said ,"children's toys!"

Children apparently have plenty of disposal income. Keeps a roof over my head, anyway.
Anyway, don't blame me for any hardware failures, I just do the software.

Why is it PS3 games can crash the entire system, that's just plain bad OS design, not to mention a big chunk of the ridiculously small amount of system RAM gets eaten by the OS.
The XBOX360 runs Windows and it uses the same, less when running a game.

[T4P]

Just to clear things up, The XBOX 360 doesn't run windows of the sort we are thinking
If it was it would have taken 5mins to get to the front page
The XBOX 360 runs a second-order derivative of Windows 2000 that has been ported to the custom triple-core IBM PowerPC processor

[kaptain_zero]

Perhaps a new player in the industry will shake things up for the better. This startup company wanted to raise $950.000 on Kickstarter....  They ended up with over $8.5 million.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console

I'm not a gamer, but this device does appeal to me.

Regards

Christian

[T4P]

Games for free? Don't expect them to last long after the initial start ...
OR they make games really expensive after a few months

[kaptain_zero]

Games for free? Don't expect them to last long after the initial start ...
OR they make games really expensive after a few months

The way I understood it, the base game must be freely available to try, much like shareware. And like shareware, you would then have the option of purchasing it for additional features, levels etc. etc.  I happen to like that as I have been burned more than once by "cannot be returned for a refund if opened" crap. Nothing irritates me more than purchasing software that is "claimed" to be suitable, only to find out it's utter rubbish.

With the open source development software, freely available to developers, start up game authors have a low cost way dipping their toe in the water. If they meet with success (or not), they are always free to port the game to other consoles and charge up front.  The question will be, which, if not both business models will succeed?

I will be watching with interest as to how this goes....

Regards

Christian
 

[_Sin]

Why is it PS3 games can crash the entire system, that's just plain bad OS design, not to mention a big chunk of the ridiculously small amount of system RAM gets eaten by the OS.
The XBOX360 runs Windows and it uses the same, less when running a game.

Hate to disappoint you, but I'm only on here to indulge in hobbyist electronics, and not as some kind of official spokesman or whipping-boy for anyone's personal issues with my day-job employer.

[Bored@Work]

Sony has left a lot of scorched earth, and they are going to pay for this.

I myself already had enough of Sony after the rootkit scandal in 2005, and I know a bunch of people who boycott Sony since then. Others avoid Sony for other reasons.

Small episode: Some time ago Sony Ericsson, now Sony again, announced they would unlock some (but of course not all) Android phone bootloaders. And they invited the community to do "exciting" hacks on those phones (the typical marketing trash talk). They got more than an earful in response. People were citing the Holz case why they wouldn't touch a Sony Ericsson device with a ten foot pole. Even when Sony Ericsson pointed out that they were only 50% Sony people said "f*uck you".

I can't blame the people. And with Sony Ericsson now being 100% Sony again people probably had the right gut feeling not to take up that offer.

[WorldPowerLabs]

Sony is crap.

There was a time a lot of my electronics came from Sony.  At one point (the mid 80s to early 90s) they delivered high quality and good features at a very good price. 

That hasn't been true for a long time now.  I suppose I got lucky with both my PSX and PS2, as the PSX is still functional today and the PS2 which was a launch + 1 month unit worked fine for about 8 years.

However after having a few poor experiences with Sony products and customer service, and then having Sony essentially enter my home and commit theft with respect to my 60GB PS3's functionality, I'm through.  The PS3 is the very likely the last bit of Sony gear I will own, and given the influence I have over the purchases of those in my extended family (they always ask for advice on major electronic purchases), Sony have already lost a significant amount of business as a result. 

They are not entitled to my money, I am not a resource to be abused and squeezed for cash at their whim, and I resent being treated as such.

Couldn't have said it better!  Sony used to be good -- not anymore.  In my opinion, their consumer electronics went to crap in the mid-1990s, while their pro equipment was (is?) always seemed quite a bit more reliable.  Their parts support absolutely sucks.

I needed a reel table for an older 8mm camcorder.  I called their parts line several times.  Each time, the response was the same:  S: "Is this part of the lens?" me: "No, it's an internal part of the tape deck mechanism."  S: "Is this an internal part?"  me:  "yeeeessss...."  S: "Well, that camcorder's pretty old.  I don't think we have parts for it anymore."  me: "Think?  Does your system show the part or not?"  S: "It's discontinued"  me: "Can you give me a part number?"  S: "It doesn't show one"

Contrast this with Canon:  I needed the DC input jack for an older camcorder (at least a decade old).  I called Canon and I had the option to buy just the jack, without even having to purchase the entire flex-PCB it's mounted on!  Ten bucks later and I had a new jack on order.  I also needed some tiny, metric screws for this camera.  No problem, they were available and not even very expensive.

I won't buy Sony, unless I can get something second-hand for very little money.  Then, I'll take the gamble.

Sony's optical disc mechanisms seem to have a near-100% failure rate after only a couple of years.  I have a 20-year-old Panasonic CD player that works fine.  A Technics, too.

[AntiProtonBoy]

My expensive Sony hifi system I bought a while back had its MiniDisc deck die shortly after. They didn't replace it under warranty, they sent the damn thing off for repairs... and it kept on dying. The clear plasic face plate on the radio deck slid off, because the bonding glue started to melt over the years. The CD deck died after a black-out. The only thing that works now is the power amp, but even that shows signs of trouble after a cold power-up.

It still sounds bloody good though, which is the only reason why it hasn't made it to the trash yet.