It seems that PS3 owners in Europe have been given the shaft again by Sony. Recent reports are indicating that when DVD movies are played back on SDTV sets (at the standard PAL resolution), all that some movie fans see is a big screen of green. The signal from the PS3 apparently has trouble making it through the AV-Multi/SCART connector when using the Blu-ray player and may also have something to do with the PS3’s failure to convert to a 60hz mode. The incidents have started a minor uproar on the forums of Eurogamer because the problem was evidently known before the European PS3s were shipped out to stores. The problem only occurs with standard televisions and not with HDTVs.
Not everyone is reporting this problem, but the condition does seem to exist as one of Europe’s largest game retailer, GAME, has already begun selling special cables which allow the playback of DVD movies in standard resolution mode. Other users are saying that Blu-ray movies played back on SDTVs display in black and white.
One forum member named whoslotte said, "What the hell is going on here ? All I want to do is watch a Blu-Ray film on my normal SCART telly and the bloody thing will only do it in black and white. It must be a software issue because the rest of the PS3 works in colour on the telly – games and stuff, even the movie trailers I’ve downloaded from the PS3 store."
Europe has not had an easy time with the PS3 arriving on its shores. First the PS3’s launch date was pushed back in Europe. Then Sony announced that Europeans would be paying much more for the console than in Japan or the US. Then it was announced that European PS3’s would not have the PS2 emotion chip for backwards compatibility of PS2 games. And now, it seems that the PS3 is incapable of playing back DVD movies in standard resolution on some European televisions.
Blerk, a user of the Eurogamer forums, probably expressed his frustration at Sony best when he said, "I just can’t quite believe that they’ve done that to the European model again. I mean, for f***’s sake – how hard is it to put a 60hz toggle into the firmware…?"
