Day 22

I finally got my PS3 back yesterday, should have been Wednesday but... no I'll start at the beginning.

It went away on the 3rd, not hearing anything from Sony despite giving them my home number, mobile and email I called on the 10th to check it had arrived safely and was told that if I had given it to the courier and had the paperwork then everything was fine and that they had a 21 day return policy.

So this Tuesday being day 19 and still having heard nothing I call again. Details are taken and I'm put on hold... yes they have it, back on hold... it'll be sent out for tomorrow.

This Wednesday, day 20, a frantic call comes in apparently no-one had informed Head Office that they were supposed to be dispatching my console and were hurriedly trying to find it. Wednesday comes and goes and no console.

Given the traffic situation around here and said frantic call I give them that and wait Thursday and yay it turns up. The serial number is checked before being signed for and matches so good news there.

I have the console and an envelope which contains a bent piece of metal which is a disc caddy, four silver screws, and two blue screws. I check the console hard drive and find that it's missing the blue screw. Kudos to Sony they've actually taken on board both the problem and my desired action and left the screw that caused me problems out so I can replace the drive.

I boot up the console to check it's fine and it automatically displays in HD - yay.

My new 320Gb drive goes into the spare caddy and screws in neatly. I power off the PS3, slide the caddy out, and slot in the new one. I leave the blue screw for the moment, replace the hatch and boot up.

The hard drive formats in no time at all, and the OS is still the latest I upgraded to and my sign in user details are still there. So I guess they're kept in an internal non-volatile memory - very nice. I plug in my back-up drive and start the restore 1 hour and 41 minutes starting at 6pm. I eat dinner, watch the Simpsons, find I can't watch the latest episode of Veronica Mars as it hasn't recorded and watch something else. 7:45 and it's finished and everything's back except my trophies.

Oh wait no not quite on the reboot it didn't recognise that it was supposed to be outputting an HDMI single so another reset was in order which found and set everything automatically.

I log in and sync and it trundles through that. I go back to my show. 8pm and it's finally done. I slip in Arkham Asylum and the TV does it's dance and informs me it's now set to 720p...? I check the box and the game is supposed to run at 1080p. I back out the game and check the video settings.

My TV accepts 576i, 720i, 720p, 1080i, 1080p. I untick all but the first and last and try again. The TV flickers and shows up 576i I hold my breath and it switches up to 1080p.

[Update - a quick search reveals that 720p is the native, but you can force the upscale by doing what I did however smoothness and other things takes a hit. I think I'll set it back and see if I notice a difference]

I dally with Batman gain a new trophy and then end. I check this new addition to my trophy collection and find I have 2% for this game; I started with ~37%. Uh-oh. I re-synced and they all reappeared, but I hope I'm not going to have to do that every time and it's just a one-off for each game, or just that one.

[Update - 28/9: It seems the game needs only be played once and then re-synced for the trophies to 'stick'. However some of the games required updates and it appears those didn't require the re-sync after play. I'm guessing it's a case of the game thinking 'I'm new so I'll reset the trophies' unless an update comes in which appears to counter this assessment

On the plus side I hadn't played Force Unleashed online for a while and an update came in giving me trophies - yay! Then a notice came up telling me that to have them awarded I'd need to delete any save games I had - boo!]

My final act is to attach the blue screw which turns most neatly.

So altogether this seems to display a lack of communication between the Sony support centre and the Sony Head Office. They failed to pick up my console when they should have (the 2nd) and failed to deliver when they said they would (23rd) in both instances because they didn't know they had to. On the plus side they sent me a second caddy which I didn't ask for and made life much easier and did so for free as well as handling all the carriage charges despite being almost two years old and one year out of warranty.

I'll give them a thumbs up for that at least.