Filed Under:
The PSP 3000 has taken Japan by storm even as owners report some glaring hardware issues regarding the portable's bright new screen.
The problem, as identified by consumers on the official Sony PlayStation forums, is the new tech present in the screen is creating visible, horizontal scan lines.
"Yes the color gamut is wider, yes the black levels are lower, but this screen now has what looks like scan lines that were not visible on PSPs before," said one PSP 3000 owners."I am not happy about my 'upgrade'."
Unfortunately, the news gets worse from here. On Tuesday, Sony said the problem is hardware-related, and there is nothing that can be done to fix the problem (e.g. firmware updates).
"On some occasions, scan lines may appear on scenes where brightness changes drastically, due to the hardware features of the new LCD device on PSP 3000," said Sony in a statement on the matter.
The statement continues: "Installed with this new LCD device, PSP 3000 offers more natural and vibrant colors on its screen, but the scan lines have come out to be more visible as a result of improving response time to alleviate the afterimages on PSP 3000. Since this is due to hardware specification, there are no plans for a system software update concerning this issue."
But the news is not all doom and gloom for the PSP Brite. Reports out of Japan this week revealed the portable was selling at a brisk clip, to the tune of 141,270 units sold in the first week. By our estimates, that could mean the Sony Japan forums could see a deluge of 141,270 complaints in the coming days.
