A PS3 Cautionary Tale...

[Captainhawk1]

Recently, I got Season (Series) 5 of Doctor Who on Blu-ray and since the moment I popped it into the PS3 and played it, I've had nothing but audio problems through my Onkyo TX-NR609 receiver.

Basically what's been happening is that the audio has been dropping out and dropping out randomly and it doesn't happen automatically or at specific points it just starts off slowly, randomly and then the frequency just speeds up and it's beyond unbearable. Mind you, the only other discs I've ever had this issue is last year's Doctor Who Christmas Special The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe which I got about two months ago, so I'm thinking that it's an issue with these BBC discs from 2entertain and my receiver.

I went through the process of downloading the latest firmware update for the receiver and installing it and even in the notes it claimed the latest update resolved audio issues with some BD's so I thought I was all set... no effect and I wasted an hour. Next, I hooked up my Sony BD-680 BD player to the receiver in place of the PS3 to ttry totrack down the source of the problem and while I had no audio problems, per se, the receiver processed the audio track as "Multichannel" so now, I'm thinking, "aw crap... am I going to have to go and change the settings on the PS3 every time I want to play these?"

So, at this point, I disconnected the BD Player from the receiver and reconnected the PS3 and before I screwed with any audio settings, I thought for sh*ts and giggles that it might be a good idea to check to see if I have the latest firmware update on the PS3... even though the system is set up to automatically tell me when an update is available.

Sure as sh*t, wouldn't you know it, 4.21 was available. Downloaded and installed it and lo and behold, all audio issues have been resolved.

So, the moral of this story is after three hours of troubleshooting and dicking around, I discovered that if you're having trouble with your home theater setup and your PS3 is involved in any way, check to make sure that it has latest firmware update before you do anything else, because your PS3 is retarded, may or may not inform you of an available update and chances are, it's what's causing your problems.

[Prim]

Isn't there an option in the PS3 to download and install updates when they're available automatically? I can't say for certain, but I seem to remember there were multiple choices in this regard, much like updates to a PC (download/download and install/ask every time, etc).

EDIT: After some digging, it's exclusive to Playstation Plus members it seems. Maybe it was available to everyone at an earlier firmware.
http://manuals.playstation.net/docum...odownload.html

[boredandlazy]

Even if you aren't a Plus member, you'll still get a prompt to download any mandatory updates when you try to sign into the PSN.

[Captainhawk1]

Originally Posted by boredandlazy

Even if you aren't a Plus member, you'll still get a prompt to download any mandatory updates when you try to sign into the PSN.

That is absolutely correct, but as I noted, that didn't happen. Now, 4.21 is "optional" and therein lies the problem. They don't even tell you about the optional updates, which in this case, were pretty important, but they compel you to download the mandatory ones. There were two optional updates this year. 4.11 "improves aspects of system software" and 4.21 "improves system stability." Who knows which one fixed the problem but like I said, I wouldn't haveeven known it existed.

[Captainhawk1]

F*ck it... nevermind. The problem has reared its ugly head again!