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.

Comments

Other suit

[DonkeyJimmy]

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).

I bet Nintendo's smiling right now.

[NanoGator]

"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.

Remote possibility

[lightspawn]

I'd like to sue Sony's Playstation 2 DVD REMOTE for not having a properly working fast forward.

Um, you're supposed to sue the company, not individual products.

Launch day PS2 and my old PSX

[jvmatthe]

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.

Hmmm... I just used google to fix mine.

[JofCoRe]

I think I may have had the problem they are talking about... a few months back, my PS2 stopped reading any DVD movies. Just kept saying "disc read error". After running a cleaner thru it many times, and dissasembling and blowing out any dust, it still didn't work. So, I turned to the mecca of all answers: google. W/in a few minutes, I had found a solution. I don't think this is the exact same link that I found back then, but it has the same information. The portion that mattered to me was the laser voltage adjustment. A minor turn of the screw, and it's been working flawlessly ever since. (Although I was stumped for a little while until I realized I was turning the wrong screw and adjusting the CD voltage instead of DVD voltage -- doh!) Of course, doing so voids my warranty, but my PS2 was old enough by then to be out of the warranty anyway, so...

Much easier than lawsuits...

However, I do see the point of the lawsuit, considering that apparently Sony's position on this is that you should send or take your unit in for service, costing you around $100-$120...

Sony should just fess up and fix them for free when people have these problems, since it seems to be a widespread enough problem and not just "isolated incidents"...