UK warranty repair of US PS3?

[Strolls]

Hi there,

Late last night my PS3 started suffering video corruption - pinky-purple rectangles over the top of a generally blurry picture - and wouldn't restart when I shut it down. I tried repeatedly to restart the system with no joy - tried holding down the power button for 5 seconds when I restarted (I heard the beep and the lights came on, but no video) and even tried using the composite lead in case this had prevented the HDMI from being used.

Eventually I gave up and left the PS3 unplugged when I went to bed. After a restless night I tried again and it started first time!! It recognised the HDMI cable and went through the "detect settings" thing so that a minute later I was looking at the cross-menu in 1080p! Yay! I left the PS3 running whilst I went to google the problem and within a few minutes the screen was corrupt again - white pixels showing in front of the cross menu. It doesn't respond properly to the controller and next time I try restarting it it's dead again (lights come on but no video).

My PS3 is one of the "loud" ones with the noisy fan but I don't know if that's relevant because that does sound like that's spinning up when I power it on and I can feel a little air coming out the side when I put my hand there.

Mine is also a US PS3 which I imported from VG+. This really wouldn't bother me if I could pop down to Currys & return the console, but shipping both ways to North America will turn out a bit expensive.

So two questions, really:

1. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?
2. Has anyone had any lucky getting Sony to repair an "out of region" PS3 under warranty?

Thanks in advance for any comments or advice,

Stroller.

[doodledude]

Hi Strolls,

I maybe able to answer one of your questions, I recently sent my PS3 (UK version) back to Sony as the fan wouldn't spin back down after being idle. When I spoke to them I had to confirm my serial number on the back of the machine. So I would assume they could tell from this whether you've a US machine or UK version.
The new machine I received seems to have the same fan problem as well as the previous one, so I think I'll wait and see how it goes and then send it back closer to when the years warranty runs out if it persists.

hope thats of help

[Geezer]

Have a crack at it but Sony UK are unlikely to touch it and you'll probably have to return it. Unfortunately you're likely to be looking at a £100 round trip

[Pavey]

See what Sony UK say, but if no joy i could PROBABLY get it to the US, and then shipped from there.

Not promising anything mind, but i could try,as i'd hate to be in that position myself.

[themanwithapc]

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you're going to get very little help from Sony. I had an imported PSP which went a bit haywire, and they were of very little help. I think they were willing to 'repair' it for £180 or something (the RRP of a new model at the time).Best thing would be to see if someone can get it to the US for you, or perhaps try and sell it as broken and buy a new one.

[Strolls]

Yeah, in impatience I called Sony this morning right after posting. I kinda didn't know how to react earlier as this has come as a bit of a shock for me. I was thinking "oh, ****, oh, ****, oh, ****" as I drifted off to sleep last night and the first thing that came into my head when I woke was "I wonder if it's fixed itself overnight".

So Sony wanted me to arse around with a different HDMI cable & on a mate's telly - fair enough, but I just asked if it'd make any difference that it's a US model. I gave them the line about working in the US the last 3 years & only being back here for 12 months on a transfer and the girl was basically "oh, well, you don't have a warranty in the UK - you're best getting warranty support from Sony in the US when you're home, then".

So basically it looks like I'm shipping this back to VG+ and getting them to sort it. It's just such a shag on so many levels - I mean I keep saying to myself "I'll be really restrained - I won't spend ?100 on a DS or a PSP, I'll wait until next month before buying that $list_of_games" and then here my PS3 goes effing spending money-I-haven't-got for me.

Nick: thanks for the offer, but there's not much point in asking you to ship it over there for me. Unless you're somewhere local to me I'd have to ship it this end and (unless you have another cunning plan) I'd have to pay for the shipping back here from VG+. In all it'd probably only save me ?25, and it just seems more potential for foul-ups (no offence - I don't mean you, I just mean postal services & stuff in general) that it's worth.

I did think last week about cracking the case & taking a look at the fan. There was no way I was gonna try multiple shipments back & forward to the US over fan-noise and wondered if there was any chance of me improving the air-flow myself. I have to say that I'm VERY glad right now I didn't void my warranty like that.

I'm gonna test the PS3 at my mate's now this evening and prove it does the same thing on his telly (I'm sure it will) and then I might try formatting the hard-drive if it'll stay working long enough for me to do so. Again, I don't think that'll make any difference but I did read one report of the slow h/d format fixing the posters PS3 glitches and anyway it's a bit desperate - I figure I have to try everything I can before sending it back.

Stroller.

[Strolls]

As a quick update to this: I took this round to my mate's house last night, plugged it in & it worked perfectly! :/

It came up with the "an HDMI connection has been detected thing" and had no problems with his 1080p telly. He played Spiderman on it for about 15 minutes - I was expecting it to crash 2 minutes in - and then started asking "so, what's wrong with it, mate?" (as in "what's wrong with you, then?")

Brought the PS3 home, plugged it in and it was (of course!) dead. The lights came on, but no video. After a while I managed to get the cross-menu up and started a full format of the hard-drive. Again it died (animation in top-right stopped moving) after a few minutes, so I took the drive out, zero'd across it on another machine & deleted the partition. Put the drive back in the PS3 and it offered to reformat the drive again (good - that's expected) only to get spots across the screen and lock up. The screen corruption this time looked like a couple of dozen stuck pixels.

This morning the unit started up fine, formatted the disk completely & then the screen was blank after the reboot. I wonder how far it'll get this evening?

I have to admit that after my experience at Dave's I'm beginning to give a little credence to the view (expressed by the girl on Sony's technical support line) that this could be related to my HDMI lead or telly. I might try another mate's telly in the next couple of days - I kinda felt like I was imposing last night, so would like to spend a bit more time proving the point - but will get a new HDMI lead today, too. It seems silly to think that it might be such a simple thing as a digital cable but obviously I'd rather it be that than the telly!!

I've already done all the paranoid stuff like leaving the window open so the room's nice & cool and hauled out a h0nkin' big UPS to ensure the power-supply's nice & smooth.

Thanks for everyone's support,

Stroller.

[NoelEdwards]

Have you tried your PS3 with a component cable, s-video or rgb scart cable at all? Some else on here had problems with HDMI but was fine with component.

[Strolls]

Have you tried your PS3 with a component cable, s-video or rgb scart cable at all? Some else on here had problems with HDMI but was fine with component.

Not yet - thanks for suggesting it, tho'. I kinda had a try with the composite lead and I'll try that again later tonight. When I tried previously I wasn't sure whether I'd got the right channel on my telly for composite, but I can check that with my Wii.

Presumably if I do a graphics reset on the PS3 (by holding down the button for 5 seconds when you power it on) it'll then detect a composite connection if it's plugged in that way.
Does anyone know?

Stroller.

[NoelEdwards]

Not yet - thanks for suggesting it, tho'. I kinda had a try with the composite lead and I'll try that again later tonight. When I tried previously I wasn't sure whether I'd got the right channel on my telly for composite, but I can check that with my Wii.

Presumably if I do a graphics reset on the PS3 (by holding down the button for 5 seconds when you power it on) it'll then detect a composite connection if it's plugged in that way.
Does anyone know?

Stroller.

Yeah it will reset the display settings and it will detect a composite connection.