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Blue Light of Death Plagues PlayStation 4
jones_supa writes "A classic game console freezing problem seems to affect the newest generation too. It has been found out that a bunch of Sony PlayStation 4s suffer of a problem which has been christened 'Blue Light of Death'. When a PS4 is turned on with a press of the power button, the light that runs along the side of the console should first pulse blue and then switch to white. At this point the console turns on the picture signal to the display device. Those who have a unit with the glitch are instead finding that their PS4 pulses blue, never goes to white and never outputs an image. We do not have accurate statistics of how widespread the issue is, but reports are popping up in Amazon reviews, Twitter, YouTube and other websites. PlayStation support is still in midst of investigating the issue, but has already posted a bunch of magic tricks you can try to get the console past the initial startup stage."
on all Sony stuff.
What's that?
It's blue light.
What does it do?
It pulses blue.
See this article: http://www.neowin.net/news/foxconn-intern-claims-ps4-was-sabotaged-during-manufacturing
Seems the workers were not happy.
"We do not have accurate statistics of how widespread the issue is, but according to Amazon reviews and Youtube comments, over 500% of PS4 units sold so far are suffering from this issue"
That's a little more than a "glitch" when the unit don't play games, display output, or otherwise do what it's supposed to do.
This story posted at 12;19... you posted 3 minutes later, it's the only comment visible but has a 3 score. You're manipulating the moderation system!!
Awww screw it... let's just mix and match memes...
Han Solo: "Oh yeah? Watch this!"
Pulse blue: Atomic Batteries to power
Switch to white: Turbines to spee... BLAM
Leia: "Watch what?"
If there's a troubleshooting step you can take to resolve the issue, so that the games display and can be played then it is indeed a glitch.
For some units, of course there's going to be hardware failures. Those folk certainly have my sympathy. Hopefully Sony have a well stocked return/replace process so those unlucky customers can be running quickly.
Videos and occasional complaints are somewhat meaningless. Unless there are hard numbers to show more failures than would be expected, this is just another product launch.
That's just what happens when you try to display a Blue Screen Of Death on a one-pixel display.
"Of course it runs FreeBSD"!
even more so if you have a boss like bill lumbergh so you work just hard enough not to get fired
Why in the name of all that is unholy would the firmware on your TV affect a game console? What, did they decide to make the console only compatible with Sony TVs?
... Pulsing Blue Dickpunch of Sadness
Ctrl-Alt-Del has named it the "Pulsing Blue Dick-punch of Sadness". I think that's way too good a name not to be generally adopted for the condition.
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Return to vendor for a refund or a replacement.
The entertainment system on the LH A340-300 I flew yesterday wasn't booting. We could see the Windows CE console boot sequence where it would hang. The pilot came on the loudspeaker and told us he had to power-cycle the entire aircraft. (I'm pretty sure he meant just the cabin power.) Several people said, "Makes sense if it's running Windows," and another asked, "They aren't using Windows in the cockpit, are they?"
(Once it did boot up, touch panel performance was poor, and video playback had a fair amount of stutter.)
Surely they could add a final check to production??.... Penultimate step... Plug into telly. .turn it on.
Check for PS4 logo on telly
Add QC sticker
Unplug
Hand to packaging line
Wow, this kind of stuff happens and will be fixed soon. Of course I would be unhappy if had a broken one but there are already easy fixes on the internet for the messed up HDMI port. Anybody else remember the XBox 360 red ring of death? Relax, get over it and move on.
Fuck you very much, MPAA.
Could be an issue with HDCP over HDMI. I would not surprise me if this is DRM failing thus holding up the boot process.
Life is not for the lazy.
Is Jones_supa really #4 from Ctrl-Alt-Del?
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20131115
Even linked to kotaku ^_^
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
You're right. I turned on a "+5 Informative" bonus setting for this very post I'm making right now but it'll probably get modded back down..
Back on topic: WTF would TV compatibility have to do with this? That sounds totally bogus since any HDMI capable tv should work, no? Does it have to be a recent Sorny TV to work with the PS4 or what?
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
Calm down everyone. Why don't we wait and find out exactly how many are being returned. So far folks are saying that it's only 500 people have complained about the blue light. 1 Million PS4 have been sold. Until 10,000 units have been reported as not working (which is only 1%) then we should maybe make a small deal about this.
How many iPhone 4 or HTC One phones were found defective when they first came out, or even a year after they have been sold. There is always the % of units that will be DOA.
http://kotaku.com/good-news-about-our-once-broken-ps4-1464813671
hdmi is a horribly laid out spec that a ton of manufacturers do not conform to correctly or at least are very loose about it. Depending on their bootup sequence and when their drivers are coming up for hdmi and the timing that the tv is using could cause issues, however in the end it would be a driver issue on the ps4 side since its up to them to not crap their pants at the sign of trouble from a tv and at least try to keep going
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ps4-smash-launch-playstation-4-destroyed-video,25098.html
For giving Sony money. Don't people ever learn?
HDCP issues some hdmi switches / DD sound amp's can make it fail / flicker with mode changes.
"We told you not to connect something on HDMI, as we can't be sure that you are not a dirty pirate, we built Sony-autodestruct into the Playstation4." -- Sony 1A2B3-Department
... and the fanboy trolling for this generation begins.
This will be a long 5 or so years...
I just pooped your party.
Begins? Where the fuck have you been? The trolling for these 'next gen' systems has been running long before they were even announced.
For all the eager beavers that had to have the first PS4s I laugh at your gullibility. You are the public BETA testers. If you haven't noticed this trend in the last twenty years, here's some sage advice about new gadgets. Buy them a few months after launch once they get to Rev B or higher on their boards and more software comes out. First adopters are always the BETA testers for the hardware because of all the secrecy and money that goes into the development. Unless there's something especially good about the first units, i.e., some special edition or limited run made of gold, then the only thing you lose is juvenile bragging rights, and that doesn't last long if your Rev A model keeps BSODing. Hard to be cool with broken shit. But, have fun with your brand new, blue light pulsing space heater. I suspect that when I get my tax return in March I can walk into a store, pick a Rev B/C/D model off the shelf with three or four games and have more fun with one that doesn't hose up every boot.
since the PS1. The Saturn had troubles. The Dreamcast had troubles. This is nothing new. hat I don't get is why people act surprised.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's easy, take the cartridge out, blow on the contacts, wave it around if it feels hot, then put it back in.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I like how the "magic tricks" are power cycling it, and re-seating a user replaceable part.
Clearly this /. submitter has never owned a computer before.
Why in the name of all that is unholy would the firmware on your TV affect a game console?
So that the PS4 can make sure that you haven't been using your TV to watch High Definition Child Pornography :p
That's a good point. I haven't been following consoles for a few years now but, you're right, it was kind of silly of me to assume people would wait to actually get their hands on the consoles before trolling!
I just pooped your party.
Correction.
Its called the "Pulsing blue Dickpunch of sadness", in case you didnt know
Where did this start? On Windows it was obviously the "Blue Screen of Death", Zip Drives had the "Click of Death". Did this phrase have any widespread use before Microsoft/IBM? Wikipedia points to OS/2 as the original BSoD monkier, but I'm wondering if it has roots that go back further than the late 1980s/early 90s.
moox. for a new generation.
The Xbox 360's RROD made some sense, since they really were pushing things. It was a lot of hardware, quite high end, in a little box. Cooling all that was problematic. This generation of consoles, not so much. Their hardware is decidedly mid-range compared to what you see today, and is single chip. That is much easier to deal with, and shouldn't have nearly as much room for defects. That isn't to say there won't be some, there are always issues, but one wouldn't expect it to be widespread.
So I could buy that it is due to a manufacturing error, and I could buy that error was on purpose.
At least it happens now instead of the usual 2 days past warranty.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Always have. Always will. Get a real computer or get the fuck out.
This kind of got my hopes up. I thought Sony had come up with a method of alerting PS4 owners to a special sale at K-Mart.
This is why i miss cartridge based gaming. I dont recall any of my nintendo products prior to the gamecube ever haveing any issue doing its intended goal (play a game)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Never had it happen after a power outage, it'll do the PS4 equivalent of fsck (which is an actual BSD fsck) on reboot (just like the PS3 does)
I have.....NES and SNES cartdridge connectors can and do go bad.
did these include downgrading to a xbox one?
FTFY
FTFY
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
As usual with these sorts of things, you don't hear from the vast majority who don't have issues, just the few that do.
Personally I noticed one thing, when using the HDMI cable that came with the PS4, my powered HDMI switchbox with a remote didn't want to switch to/from the PS4...changing cables fixed it.
Otherwise it's just fine.
So, you don't have fond memories of inserting and removing NES cartridges over and over and over, uselessly blowing on the contacts in between, hoping against hope that, this next time, the game would come up and stay up? I loved the NES and have many fond memories, but I could never afford the special edition Deluxe Set which came with not only R.O.B., but also the rose colored glasses you seem to have gotten.
Sony is one of the co-creators of the HDMI standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI_Licensing
Pulled the power cord, reconnected, powered back up, it went into "safe boot". It ran some diagnostics, then re-applied the updated.
Boom. Working console.
Mine made the whole tv stop working on all HDMI inputs until I restarted it twice.
It's amazing how much trolling there is over a fucking games console though. I understand the psychology of zealously defending something you spend a lot of time and money on (consoles, phones, many things in fact), but this is a sign of weakness and it should be something that we see as a failing, not a virtue, and work to rid ourselves of such behavior. Too many people though do not and ruin gaming forums as a result.
Put a gun to your head and pull the trigger, Deer Hunter style. On average, five times out of six you are okay. The Sony team is where that uncited quote originates. I would put it on a UPS.
Glad I decided to just keep using my Dreamcast again!
Xbox shills gonna go ape over this
I thought it said red for a second.
Phew
I highly suspect that this is completely due to Micro$haft. Look at all the forum posts complaining about it; the posters have like 1 post. ONE SINGLE POST WTF. The PS4 seemed much more anticipated than the XBOX One, so it seems a very possible strategy for Microsoft to sabotage the PS4s reputation. They should have been more creative than the Blue Light of Death, though, as this is just a product of their never-ending butt-hurt from the RRoD. I will believe the Blue Light of Death when I see it, but until then it is a myth in my eyes. I think we can all agree that Sony and Microsoft and relatively evil corporations at times, but IMO Sony is the lesser evil of the two.
I understand the psychology of zealously defending something you spend a lot of time and money on (consoles, phones, many things in fact), but this is a sign of weakness and it should be something that we see as a failing, not a virtue, and work to rid ourselves of such behavior.
Aggressively defending and proselytizing a games console has material benefit though. The more choices there are in console, the less choice there is in games on each console. If you own a PS4 then any game that comes out on the Xbox One or Wii-U exclusively is a game you can't play yourself.[*] Marginalizing competing consoles maximizes your own choice selection so it is an obvious response that follows from free-market capitalism.
Companies love this stuff, it's part of "Word of Mouth advertising" which is both "viral" and free.
[*] There's depth here in that it is implicitly assumed that your time spent arguing is less valuable than your money which you could spend to buy a second console. There's also the sunk-cost fallacy which causes you to value the investment you already made highly and not be willing to let it go. Then there's also Confirmation Bias / Buyer's Remorse that makes you want to rationalize your own actions as morally right, objectively correct, and justified (being wrong/failure, or at least admitting it, is selected against by evolution) which means that other people must be objectively wrong for choosing differently (see "Stop Having Fun Guy" and "Someone is Wrong on the Internet Guy"). Finally, there's social pressure; people like to associate with others who have similar ideas and interests to themselves which activates latent tribalism, it provides a shared cultural idol/symbol to rally around and form an us-vs-them ideological foundation.
is this going to turn into another lift-the-heatsink hack-fix?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
What the hell is everyone complaining about? You still get a cool pulsing blue light out of the deal, so turn out all the lights and dance and party like it's 1999!
you accidentally got a couple of punctuation symbols and an uppercase letter in there next time try to make sure none sneak into your post you wouldnt want to make it more readable would you the goal here is to disrespect your audience as much as possible and youre not fulfilling the goal here
And this is one of the reasons I'll get my PS4 next summer at the earliest.
The other being that there are fuck all games to play on it at the moment.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Yes but why would anyone ever want to use something that come out of Crtl-Alt-Del?
Do we really think that's the issue? Seriously, when tons of el'cheapo blu-ray and DVD players work just fine for these same TV's, how is it that an advanced piece of technology such as a 3rd-gen game console can't get it right? None of my computers or other equipment - even my $35 Raspberry Pi - have *ever* had any issues at least getting to the point of startup with any TV. Yes, some have had some issues with resolution or weird font scaling, but nothing that outright prevents bootup.
How about we just call it what it is. Game console manufacturers cut as many corners as they can to maximize profit, and QA at some point goes out the window because - frankly - people will still buy their shitty products if they work at least 60% of the time.
I think the major issue here is: The blue pulsing light is a bit like the "blinking red light" or "check engine" light on a car. It can stem from a number of different things. There certainly seems to be QC issues with the HDMI port, and the provided HDMI cable is of rather poor quality. But another major issue seems to be Amazon shipping them with inadequate packaging, resulting in a lot of damaged systems that come up as "pulsing blue light."
The light could be from a bad HDD, faulty HDMI port, faulty cable, quirks with the TV's HDMI handling, etc.
Sabotage comes from the French word Sabot; that means clog, wooden shoe. It is said that sabotage originates from workers used to throw clogs in machinery to make the masters machine fail. I'd say they probably just bashed with their wooden shoes or kicked it, since they wouldn't want to go barefoot, but that's just a minor detail.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
People who blew intro cartridges were stupid. It's not going to help, it's just going to make the contacts dirty. The trick with NES cartridges that won't boot is to push the cartridge in just far enough that you can press it down; basically so the front label scrapes against the NES. Unless the cartridge is dirty or has a hardware fault, the trick works every single time.
Problem is, when is it trolling, and when is it not? I owned all the last gen consoles and will probably own all the next gen consoles so can hardly be called a fanboy troll, but I have a lot of criticisms for the PS3 compared to the XBox 360 and in fact, the PS4 product page I was looking at yesterday listed as it's main selling points a bunch of things the XBox 360 had since release like, "download games whilst playing" and that sort of thing.
So given the absence of these sorts of things was a legitimate complaint about the PS3, where do you draw the line between legitimate complaints and outright trolling?
I would determine trolling as the sorts of people still propagating the myths that the XBox One phones home and has mandatory Kinect that the NSA spies on you with - Microsoft have done away with always on internet requirement and have done away with requiring Kinect plugged in. These things were legitimate complaints when they were true, but now they're not are those people perpetuating the myth trolling, or are they just painfully uninformed?
Consider that it's possible that many of the people you think are trolling have legitimate complaints.
I did say "uselessly blowing on the contacts". But, you heard by way of your friend that his brother's girlfriend's father's cousin swore that was what you needed to do, so you tried it anyway. Your trick that "works every single time" didn't work every single time either.
Remember back when a console just worked? SNES, NES, PS1 etc. They really DON'T make them like they use to. No, dirty contacts on the SNES/NES don't count, that was user error for not keeping it clean and it was a simple fix that every child knew about; just blow on it.
Try blowing on those pretty lights, see how well that works.
B^U
Remember back when consoles were much simpler and didn't require all kinds of DRM and handshaking between the console and TV, and didn't have incredibly complex computers and peripherals inside them, and only had a tiny fraction of the possible points of failure that you would find in a modern console?
No, they DON'T make them like they used to. If they did, you would be playing Super Mario Brothers with no internet multiplayer and no game saving in shit SD output.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
... and the fanboy trolling for this generation begins. This will be a long 5 or so years...
We must let Lady McCormick decide!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I was not as clear as I should have been, I meant on launch day not years down the road.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Remember back when a console just worked? SNES, NES, PS1 etc. They really DON'T make them like they use to. No, dirty contacts on the SNES/NES don't count, that was user error for not keeping it clean
So you're saying it doesn't count when you view it through the rose-coloured glasses of your childhood nostalgia and/or it messes up your case? It might get a free pass for being a part of your childhood, but it doesn't from me.
The NES could have used the traditional- and far more reliable- slot mechanism used in the Atari VCS et al, but they intentionally used that video-style loading mechanism (and designed a robot toy accessory) to distance themselves from the former, because consoles were seriously out of favour with retailers at that point.
Which makes business sense, but doesn't change the fact that they intentionally went with an inferior and more error-prone design to achieve it.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
My guess is that you didn't actually play an NES much. Blowing didn't do anything. The problem with those was the design of the contacts and the insertion method; the contacts themselves were getting too fatigued to make good contact, and the NES10 chip assumed the cart was unlicensed or pirated... which caused the power light to flash.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Early adopters of a brand new electronic device are finding that some may have some issues that still need to be worked out?
Never before in the history of electronic devices has any of them ever had any problems on initial world wide launch and all of them always worked perfectly when introducing brand new technology.
That is just crazy talk. Crazy.
No it doesn't.
I still play Mario Kart 64 with friends when we get together. Granted, depending whose place we're at, it may be in a PC emulator, but...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I have an issue with all Sony products that I call 'Kiss My Ass syndrome" It seems to apply to all products manufactured by Sony, manifesting itself by my reaction to the concept of investing money in that company, a company that has repeatedly displayed a disdain for it's customers. Nope, done with Sony.
Sony is one of the co-creators of the HDMI standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI_Licensing
LOL!
I'll wait until there's a game I really want to play that's not available on PC (or Wii U, I'd rather buy one of those than deal with MS/Sony's crap).
And when/if I do get it, the console will be used, and will not be connected to the internet.
The port seems to have an issue where it's hard to plug in the cable and a pin gets bent:
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/PS4-Units-Aren-t-Defective-Video-Reveals-HDMI-Issue-60555.html
I laugh when I see people lining up to buy the latest, but not so greatest gaming system because we all know that the game system companies are in such a hurry to get their systems out to market that they ALWAYS have glitches and bugs that don't get addressed. It's always better to wait a while before buying to give them time to work out these glitches before shelling out $400 for something that is going to cause more headaches than entertainment.
In the end though, it's just a GAMING CONSOLE. It's a source of entertainment but ultimately not that important. At least, not important enough to want to insult people who don't like your particular choice of console and prefer something else. That is what I see as the biggest issue these days - the idea that you must take sides, that this is one great big war and that the fanboys are the soldiers fighting against the scum unbelievers. Or something like that anyway.
In the end, there's way too much attention to consoles disproportionate to other things that are more worthy of attention. I take it as a sign that people's lives have becomes so stressful and bad that they see gaming and its offer of escapism with far more importance then they otherwise would. I'm not even been sarcastic - it makes a lot of sense. Games are fun, but too many people treat them with such religions fervor that I have to assume they have nothing else important in their lives to focus their energy on.
Fair point I suppose. But of course there's complaints, and then there's biased, illogical, emotional complaints that haven't been thought through. And even for the legitimate complaints, there are too many fanboys that will ruin whatever you say by turning your complaints against you, making you seem like the idiot for "not being able to use your console properly", or something like that.
The signal-to-noise ratio on gaming forums is so damn bad it's a wonder people still bother posting sometimes.
They certainly were a lot less likely to fail on launch day. That doesn't mean that they couldn't and it was still possible when brand new. The issue with the contacts was a result of design flaws with the NES and with NES cartridges. It was a great game system, but it was far from technically perfect.
The DRM is actually part of the HDCP specification, not HDMI. Almost all HDMI displays have HDCP capability now, but HDCP can also be implemented on DVI and DisplayPort. The PS4 and XBox One have to do HDCP negotiation for Blu-Ray playback; I don't know if they bother with it for games.
That's funny, the 2600 cartridges didn't/don't always connect properly either.
Yes, it does. I have years worth of experience doing exactly that. Unless the cartridge was physically broken or dirty (usually from someone blowing in it), it would work every time.
I, along with numerous friends had NES consoles fail when the little 'L' shaped piece of metal that held the cartridge bay down failed. It could be fixed by taking it apart and replacing the part with a more sturdy piece of a bent paperclip but that's a lot more involved than blowing.
And the original grey box PS1 had major issues with the laser unit that required people to have to play them with the console upside down for it to read. Fixing it completely required complete replacement of the laser unit.
Almost every console, from Intelivision (controller problems), to Colecovision (problems getting cartridges to seat correctly), to Atari 2600 (Power adapters fried constantly, joysticks were fragile) all the way to modern consoles have had issues to some degree or another.
Thankfully getting warranty service these days is a lot easier than it was before the online age. To get my PS1 laser unit replaced I couldn't just take it back to Walmart and try to get one that worked like I did with my Red Ring of Death plagued Xbox 360. I had to call Sony's not-toll-free hotline and spend 2 hours on hold before talking to someone who knew no English and just read off a phonetic script of irrelevant troubleshooting steps before they finally give me the address to a repair center 60 miles away where I had to take it, then wait 4 weeks to fix it before having to take another 120 mile round trip to pick it up, bring it home and see if it worked. And of course, it didn't so I had to repeat the whole thing a second time before I finally got a working PS1; 2 months, $20 in phone charges, and 480 miles later.
That's funny, the 2600 cartridges didn't/don't always connect properly either.
No-one claimed that they were perfect, only that the NES-style mechanism suffered from the flaw to a much greater (and technically unnecessary) extent.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).