Please Allow Me to Vent For a Moment

Last March my PS3 unceremoniously broke while I was playing Oblivion. With no warning it just stopped being able to play discs. Several months and a $200 loan from my parents later I have a working PS3 again courtesy of Sony tech support. Since then I have been extremely paranoid about my PS3 convinced that even the slightest bump or nudge might break it again. So imagine my horror when my beloved console started emitting loud feedback noises and displaying flickering lines across the screen whenever it was used.

At first I was angry, thinking that it was about to break again just as my extended warranty was up. But then I realized that the noises and lines showed up even when I hadn’t put a disc in and seemed to get better or worse at random. So I poured over Sony message board posts and tech support pages trying to figure out the problem but kept coming up empty. Finally under a heading that didn’t make any sense (at least to me) Sony advised me to try to unplug any coaxial cables connected to my TV. The moment I did this, the horrible noise and flickering lines stopped. Apparently the signals from my cable provider were interfering with my PS3. Thrilled, I played Street Fighter 4 for the rest of the afternoon in celebration and later pulled my roommate away from studying to play Virtua Fighter 5.

As I said above, I really am glad to have found the source of the problem, but unscrewing my cable connection every time that I want to play a game is a real pain. Mostly it’s annoying because my hands become spastic whenever I try to screw the cable back in. And just leaving the cable plugged in all the time isn’t really an option because the noise and lines had been getting bad enough to drown out dialogue and music in games.

Writing this I feel kind of pathetic for complaining about something so silly. But if anyone can understand my frustration I think it would be the Bitmob community. So thanks for reading/listening!