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PS2 Class Action Lawsuit Against DVD Player
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing us to this class action lawsuit against Sony regarding the Playstation 2's DVD player. You can fill in a form on the page to be informed of 'material developments' and assist the case, which alleges that the PS2's "..DVD player component suffers from a number of defects that prevents it from playing a wide-variety of DVD movies." Unfortunately, it seems the lawyers forgot to change the page title, which still reads 'Palm M130 Class Action Home Page'. Uhm, whoops.
I'd like to sue Sony's Playstation 2 DVD REMOTE for not having a properly working fast forward. I've spoken to at least half a dozen other PS2 owners (with varying brands of remotes) and all of them have the same problem (if you hold fast forward it only goes for about a second and then you have to press it again).
I really was going to rely on my PS2 as my primary DVD player, but this caused me to have to get a different one (an X-box).
"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." -Philips
"Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing us to this class action lawsuit against Sony regarding the Playstation 2's DVD player."
Nintendo made a pretty strong stand with the GameCube that a game machine should only be a game machine. Gotta admit, they had a point. The GameCube was $100 cheaper than the PS2 or XBOX, plus it was considerably smaller. From what I gather from this story, the DVD player on the PS2 wasn't exactly a stellar. For the cost of a DVD Player and a GameCube, you could get a Playstation 2 that wasn't exactly stellar at either. I realize that the PS2 has games people like, however at launch Dreamcast games were looking better because of a nasty little bottleneck the Playstation 2 has.
Well I've drifted away from the point a bit. When making a game system, focus on making it play games. Not everybody is happy to spend $300 on a game system.
"Derp de derp."
"Sleazy lawyers.
..."
I wonder if lawyers get spam with "make money fast, do a class action suit against
Sleazy Lawyers? Sleazy Sony! A class action lawsuit wouldn't be possible if people weren't irritated at being lied to.
"Derp de derp."
Any lawyers in the house? Is this type of "explanation" normal in a lawsuit? Or even necessary?
You know, his honor might not be a GTA fan. In fact, he may not even own a PS1, let alone a PS2.
If you'd like a ruling based on the technological merits, you'd better let people explain them.
Not to mention that some parents (I know this scenario is hard to imagine, but stay with me on this) may buy consoles for their kids; these people may have no idea what they do (some of them may have professional and/or personal lives) but they need to understand the issues before becoming part of this class action lawsuit.
There have been a lot of complaints about Sony's hardware. Just read USENET newsgroups for a while to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Here's my story, although not all of it has to do with the posted class-action lawsuit.
I stood in line on launch day, 26 October 2000, and got my PS2 at a local Best Buy. Ever since that day, it has traveled four times on trips to visit the in-laws (12 hours away, by car) and over to a friends' apartment several dozen times, always travelling in a padded case. It has always been used standing in the upright position. I have completed several PS2 games and even some PS1 games during that time. I've watched dozens of movies on it.
I've never had a problem playing a game. Well, ok, I did once, but that turned out to be a dirty disc and once cleaned it played without problems.
I've only had trouble with two movies that I can think of. One of them was Jurassic Park 3 and the other was The Mexican. Everything else has worked flawlessly, to my knowledge. The glitches have always been at the layer change. One or both of these might have been before I go the updated DVD drivers with my Sony-made remote control.
Others have had trouble with PS2 consoles. Many also had trouble with PSX consoles. Back then, I suspect much of that was because the machines were put on carpet and didn't have adequate ventilation. I always put my PSX on a hard surface, like a large book or a shelf, and never had trouble with it, after four years of heavy use. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the problems with PS2 consoles you read about on USENET and so forth were from habits similar to those that caused problems with PSX machines.
I've had good luck with my systems, using a little care. Others have had trouble. Perhaps it is Sony's problem, but I've seen more than enough games and hardware that were obviously abused to think that much of the problem could well lie with the consumers. Is there a link to data that shows that it's Sony's problem and not the consumers? Something like "here's a list of movies tried with a just-out-of-the-box PS2. See how they don't play?"
I sure hope my luck holds.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
playing DVD movies rock. I love the zoom and pan ability as well. Maybe all DVD players have that, but it was a nice touch on the XBOX.
I used to use my PS2 to play DVD's. I never had a 'remote' for it though, I justed used the joystick. That wasn't the greatest. But the XBOX DVD/Remote combo worked really well. It's my primary DVD player, you get the AC3 out, as well as HDTV if your TV can handle it. All that other jazz. I'm sure the offset the cost of testing and perfecting the DVD playback capability by forcing users to buy the DVD remote to playback DVD's.
Well worth it in my opinion.
The only issue I had with DVD's and XBOX was when playing Morrowind. I later found out the losers at Bethesda used the "Dirty Disc" error as their catch-all exception handler. So whenever you saw "Dirty Disc" you essentially had an uncaught exception coming from the software. Pathetic.
-Malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage