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Many PS4 units dead on arrival

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Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#101

Post by ekianjo »

idProQuo wrote: post #34
thetrb wrote: post #28

I find it interesting that as of now with 516 5 star reviews and 332 1 star reviews (and very few 2, 3 or 4 star reviews) the average still shows up as 3.5 stars. It's interesting since the lowest value possible is 1, so more realistically it's not 3.5/5 but 2.5/4. I'm wondering if this makes a psychological difference and if less people would buy something on amazon if they changed their rating system to go from 0 -…

This has always bothered me, both on Amazon and the iTunes app store. No lie, when I published my first app, one of the comments was "I'd rate this zero stars if I could." and my first thought was actually "wait, why can't you?" Overall, I think YouTube was on the ball by switching to a "Thumbs up, Thumbs down" rating system. "Out of five star" rating systems are always sabotaged by the fact that most people think in…

up/down systens are stupid since they are so binary. It only remotely works to give you an actual picture of what people think about it. Having a five scale score is very logical, since it's symetric (and therefore not biased like the 6 scores rating you suggest if you could rate without stars), and you give a degree of satisfaction and not just up or down. It's way superior to tell you if the product is exceptional or just "meh".

Of course you have to look at the ratings distribution and not just the average. The average tells you almost nothing.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#102

Post by Lagged2Death »

threeseed wrote: post #79
Lagged2Death wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it's an overheating issue[0]. The 'red line of death' is not a sign that your PS4 is dead, but a sign that it needs to shut down to cool off. The Amazon reviews are complaining of a blinking blue "light of death," which I don't see described in the manual you linked to. "PS4 blue light of death" returns over 2 million Google results already. I'm no EE but I wonder if there is something really strange at pl…

"PS4 blue light of death" returns 101 results. If you mean searching without the quotes then that is just stupid since Google will return results that match only one of the search terms.

"PS4 blue light of death" returns 101 results.

Quite a lot for one very particular phrasing, actually.

I didn't mean to imply that there were millions of postings about the PS4 problems, just that the problem signified by a blue flashing light is apparently now pretty well-known. It's not just the Amazon posters talking about it; the issue isn't the overheating indication, it's something else.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#103

Post by lostlogin »

nitroburn wrote: post #98
lostlogin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I laughed at this due to the bad home wiring thing. I agree this may be possible, however its what my ISP would always say regarding crap speeds. In a fit of rage I paid someone to cat 6 the house - everything we own is brand new. The way we are running it, it is one wire from the side of the house to the router, no joins, shortest possible run, away from all power cables and makes crossings at appropriate angles. No…

Why would you do all that and not just connect something directly to the router? Could have saved quite a bit of money and hassle.

Umm? I think I'm missing something? The wiring goes lamp post to house, box on side of house, cable comes out, goes to router (sometimes with several bit and prices coming off for other jack points). I replaced all the wiring between the box on the side of the house and the router. Connecting directly to the router is what I was doing the whole time.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#104

Post by xtracto »

mcpherrinm wrote: post #46
idProQuo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always bothered me, both on Amazon and the iTunes app store. No lie, when I published my first app, one of the comments was "I'd rate this zero stars if I could." and my first thought was actually "wait, why can't you?" Overall, I think YouTube was on the ball by switching to a "Thumbs up, Thumbs down" rating system. "Out of five star" rating systems are always sabotaged by the fact that most people think in…

I find the 5 star system on Amazon useful. I don't always look at the average rating, but rather the distribution graph of ratings. For example, one common shape looks like this: 5 stars: ||||||||||| 4 stars: |||||||| 3 stars: |||| 2 stars: || 1 star: ||||||| There's way more 1 star than 2 or 3. That usually indicates the product shows up DOA for a lot of people, or is otherwise probabilistically totally unsuitable f…

A lot of times, the 1-star ratings are only "knee-jerk reactions". The 5-star ratings are sometimes added by people related to the product (or people who for some reason have an agenda). I usually drop those two and focus on the 2-4 reviews.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#105

Post by xtracto »

Legion wrote: post #61
city41 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The RROD was really crappy, for sure. But ultimately MS did do do the right thing, or at least they tried . On the other hand, Sony has never stood behind their consoles. From the PS1 cd drive wearing out prematurely [0], to the PSP's analog nub falling off[1] to PS2 disc read errors [2] to... on and on. Sony has never once helped the consumer in these situations. For most Playstation owners, buying multiple systems…

Don't forget the original PSP had an extremely high rate of stuck pixels in their displays. And while I have had multiple RRODs with the 360, I have all working 360s via replacement, while my YLOD (Yellow Light of Death) PS3 is dead without replacement.

Haha, I remember: They even went to say that if you had less than 5 dead pixels (IIRC) even if they were in the middle of the screen, they would not replace your unit, because it was under the limit of "acceptable" dead pixels.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#106

Post by obsurveyor »

thetrb wrote: post #28

I find it interesting that as of now with 516 5 star reviews and 332 1 star reviews (and very few 2, 3 or 4 star reviews) the average still shows up as 3.5 stars. It's interesting since the lowest value possible is 1, so more realistically it's not 3.5/5 but 2.5/4. I'm wondering if this makes a psychological difference and if less people would buy something on amazon if they changed their rating system to go from 0 -…

It's possible that Amazon Verified Purchases are weighted higher than just a random person reviewing a product.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#107

Post by barrkel »

nsomaru wrote: post #99
threeseed wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course Google is not that dumb. If you don't put quotes in then it will return results that have any of the terms. They do this because they are an advertising company and so it is better to have lots of SRPs returned than none. What you are doing by not using quotes is dumb.

If you search Google with a quoted string, you will receive only results with a string of those words, in the order specified. However, if you do not quote the string, Google still searches for all non-common words, but they can be distributed variously around the document. Thus, the white space between search terms can be considered to be an 'and' construct.

the white space between search terms can be considered to be an 'and' construct

No it can't.

Google used to support + prefix on search terms to ensure they appeared on the pages in the results, but that was removed because of Google Plus. Now, to ensure that your query returns results that contain all the words searched for, you need to quote them individually.

https://www.google.com/search?q="PS4"+"blue"+"light"+"of"+"d... returns about 1.5 million results. A scan of the 10th page shows that many of them talk about other lights of death, and happen to also mention PS4 and "blue".

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#108

Post by ta_euccoin »

threeseed wrote: post #91
sgift wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PS4 "Blue light of death" ~ 18k results.

Seriously ? Do people not understand how Google works ? Search for PS4 "Blue light of death". Click on Page 10. You will see results about Wii U / Epic 4G blue lights of death. Google stopped requiring pages to have all search terms a long time ago now.

Seriously, not everybody will have the same results from google for the same search, don't you know about the filter bubble [1]?

Then again the number of google result never was a very good indicator even less since google search started removing search features and return only a single page of supposedly relevant results.

[1]:http://dontbubble.us/

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#109

Post by eropple »

mikeash wrote: post #88
silencio wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man. I live on Market too. OnTrac has done that same exact thing before, and sometimes I only discover it because someone passing on the street or a neighbor rings my doorbell to let me know I have a box outside. They also don't seem to be able to read, as they will accidentally deliver packages to xx30 when we're xx20 and vice versa. I hate them so much. I go out of my way to leave terrible feedback for shipping…

Here on the East coast we have LaserShip, which sounds like pretty much the same deal. They once delivered my package to a city 30 miles away to a family with a completely different name. Amazon loves to use them here too. It's a bit distressing that they don't exercise better oversight over their shippers, given how central that is to their business model.

LaserShip's been pretty good to me. They're the only delivery service that actually calls my cell to let me know the package is here (I WFH and can sign for it, and the intercom's been busted since I moved in).

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#110

Post by Bahamut »

barista wrote: post #8
minimaxir wrote: post #5

I read a comment earlier that made a good point that unlike the console launches of the previous generation in 2004-2006, we now have access to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to vocalize and demonstrate our complaints worldwide. It makes the vocal minority much more vocal.

If you clicked on the link above, you will see that nearly 40% of the Amazon reviews are 1*. There is a good chance that most of those people received a dead PS4. Agree that not everybody who received a good PS4 left a positive review but this certainly does not make it looks like a minority.

Those of us who got a console in good condition most likely don't post. I got a launch console from Amazon & even applied the update, and it worked like a charm. I've no complaints so far (minus the horrid launch lineup).
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