Reloading a PS3 is Easy But Will Glitches Return?
Less than a month ago I picked up a PS3 from a big box retailer. I exchanged it for a new one on Monday for reasons I’ll get into in a moment and I paid special attention to whether or not it was going to be difficult to re-download my purchased games onto the new box.
I’d copied my saved game data (except for The Godfather, which forbade me to copy saved game data elsewhere, and is being returned to the rental establishment) out to a USB thumb drive and easily reloaded it onto the new console. I had no problem reconnecting to my PSN account, browsing to my download history, and then queueing up each item for re-downloading again. Once the full games were downloaded, they installed and played just fine with no issues. I was actually even able to re-download a demo that I’d noticed had been taken down from the PlayStation Store.
So why did I exchange it? I’d noticed a few video glitches with the console. Glitches separate from my TV problems I mentioned elsewhere.
A few days before I was chatting on the phone with James while tooling around the XMB on the PS3 — he was jumping around hunting for orbs in Crackdown — and I saw my video flake out a bit on the PS3. I’ve already documented my issues with my television in a previous post, which I’ll post an update about soon, but this was different. It looked like the video signal was getting cut off for a brief moment, but not long enough for my TV to put up its HUD like it usually does when the video source goes away (like when I turn the console off). It happened a couple of times, and it got my attention.
The next day while playing God of War II through a section of the game I’d played before, the video signal showed problems again, but this time it showed a brief burst of static from the emulator. When the PS3 reboots into PS2 mode, there is often a brief picture of dark gray static without sound on the screen which looks to me like the emulator’s video output system starting up. While in the middle of the game I saw the video drop out and turn to a brief blast of gray video static twice within a minute or so, and then not happen again for the rest of the play session. The game was intact, but the video had just dropped for a brief moment those two times. This was very unusual, and it told me that the video problems definitely were not in my TV.
The next day I packed up the PS3 and exchanged it for another one. It was still within the first 30 days of the purchase date, giving me that option, and I’ve been watching it carefully ever since to see if this problem comes back. So far, everything’s good. While the worst case would be that it’s a firmware problem, the fact that it showed up a while after I got the 1.60 firmware makes me wonder if it was a hardware problem cropping up. Or maybe it’s the HDCP glitches that Popular Mechanics found with some HDMI sets, even though I’m using an HDMI to DVI connection.
See also:
The Moment I Try To Take My Save Game Out
My PS3 Is All About The TV
HD Copy Protection glitches in PS3′s too.
Image credit: igniq.com
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