Please take a minute to answer a quick Playstation 2 survey!

[Jibbajaba]

In this month's PSM magazine, as part of a response to a reader's letter, editor-in-cheif Chris Slate said he "would like to see some survey data" on the Playstation 2's DRE problem. He calls the DRE-infected PS2s "a few bad eggs". I would like to see if he is right or if the problem is more widespread. So I was thinking that we could do it right here and I'll send in the results. I would like to limit this survey to those who have owned their PS2 for a minimum of 1 year. I would like to get as many reponses as possible so that the data will be more accurately representative of the general public. So if you have owned a PS2 for 12 months or longer, PLEASE answer the survey questions. Thanks!

I would like to limit this survey to those who have owned their PS2 for a minimum of 1 year. Also, please only vote once. The survey has a life of 7 days, after which I will send in the results and hopefully we will get printed!

[Crush Crawfish]

Hey! I've had one PS2 which got a DRE. I sent it back, it worked fine for a while but is DREing again! My friend also got a DRE on his, but he sent it to get fixed and it works fine now. DRE total: 3

[tholly]

PS2 -- 0 DREs
GC -- 2 DREs (metroid prime, elevator problem)
Xbox -- countless DREs (bought a replacment Halo Xbox and got a Dew U xbox)

[Hovoc]

a better survey (maybe after this one is complete) is to also go by production dates?

my friend has one of the original ps2's and is having issues with it reading blue bottoms, mine however was gotten 2 years ago and i have no problems what so ever

[Jibbajaba]

I think that if you asked people to check the production date of their PS@, you would get less respondants. I want a representation of the PS2-owning community as a whole. I just think that if a PS2 is too new (less than a year old) then it will be way less likely to have DRE problems. But I think that the new systems are just as likely to have problems as the old ones. I think it just depends on how long the system has been used.

[Hovoc]

I think that if you asked people to check the production date of their PS@, you would get less respondants. I want a representation of the PS2-owning community as a whole. I just think that if a PS2 is too new (less than a year old) then it will be way less likely to have DRE problems. But I think that the new systems are just as likely to have problems as the old ones. I think it just depends on how long the system has been used.


i watch several movies a day on my ps2, excluding playing games, so mine is heavily used, and again without problems

[lendelin]

I would like to get as many reponses as possible so that the data will be more accurately representative of the general public.

The survey is a good idea, just be careful not to present the results as representative of all PS2 owners. An Internet survey like this is never representative of the general public (even if you had 100 000 responses) because the participants aren't randomly chosen.

You can however argue that the participants are from a videogame collectors website, probably older than the average gamer, and certainly more experienced and more careful handling systems than the average gamer whcih suggests that the results would be slightly more damaging for the hardware reliability of the PS2.

I did a similar survey about a year ago including the GC and XBOX which in a broader way asked for serious hardware problems of the systems gamers experienced, and the results were worse for the PS2 than I expected. It seems that the GC is by far the most reliable hardware; back then around 20-35 people participated in each survey which allows even very modereate and siimple ststistical sampling error comparisons and variable strenghts estimates.

[lendelin]

I couldn't remember the results of the old poll, I looked them up and here they are:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19398&start=0

Your poll deals exclusively with the DRE, and the results will be very interesting. The poll will give you certainly a trend, and goes beyond the counter-argument that DRE's are just impressionistic anecdotal evidence of a system which sold three times as many as their competitors and therefore some insignificant instances act as a breeding ground for an undeserved image.

[Pantechnicon]

Bought my PS2 last year at Goodwill for $10. Perpetual DRE's (which is probably why I found it at Goodwill). Incredibly the thing was still under warranty so I had Sony fix it and it's worked like a charm ever since. Not a single DRE since coming back from Sony. Plays PS2, PS1 and DVD's all without so much as a peep. I even take it with me in the car on long trips so my kids can watch movies. You would think extensive in-vehicle use would knock those lasers out of alignmnet but nope.

So yeah, I'm one of these guys who wonders what all this fuss is about, `cos it ain't happening in my neck of the woods.

[DigitalSpace]

I have owned an 30001 model for 2 years, and the only time it ever gave me DRE problems was when I had it stored vertically for a month or so last summer. A friend of mine recommended not to store it vertically and since then, I haven't had any problems.

On the other hand, a friend of mine bought a PS2 early last year and just replaced it last month because of the constant DREs he was getting.

[NoahsMyBro]

I'm too poor to buy a Playstation 2, you insensitive clod!

(.. what? I'm on what site? oh, err, umm, never mind.....)

[alexkidd2000]

My PS2 Gran Turismo pack had DRE. Only with a few games tho. But after I installed a mod chip it gave DRE on every DVD-R. I took the PS2 apart and adjusted the laser frequency which fixed the problem for about 2 days. I ended up buying a new laser off ebay and it works fine now. Cost me $30.

[Ed Oscuro]

The survey is a good idea, just be careful not to present the results as representative of all PS2 owners. An Internet survey like this is never representative of the general public (even if you had 100 000 responses) because the participants aren't randomly chosen.
That's always a good way to cover your butt; unfortunately the standard reasoning doesn't really apply strongly here. Since we're game collectors, are we more likely to "take care" of our PS2s? Do some of us not place our systems on the carpet? Does that even matter? I think you'll find that DREs are more likely to attack when folks are careless with their system, but the PS2 is one system where they're apparently - from what I've read - going to show up from time to time on beautifully handled consoles and software. I've seen posts that indicate that some of our forumers aren't vigilant in handling their stuff with extreme care (as some of us are), and while I'd agree with you in saying there's not necessarily a correspondence between how we care for things compared to the public at large, I don't see any indication that our PS2s should work any differently or have some sort of magical curse or DRE protection +1 on them simply because we visit the Roundtable.

Basically, I think that's a load of crap and doesn't apply much here.

I think it also merits a mention that somebody mentioned their GC as having had two DREs - while playing Metroid Prime. That is not a DRE in the sense that the PS2 has them; it's a software problem. Similarly, if I messed around a bunch with my Morrowind save file and moved stuff in every town I came across, I also would get (and did) more than a few DREs. I'd suppose that's not what happened with that replaced XBox, but it must be said that there is a distinction between hardware and software DREs, and that we are only interested in the hardware kind.

[alexkidd2000]

The Dreamcast has a kickass laser btw. Too bad sony didnt learn from the ps1.

[dave2236]

We fix PS2's and all video game systems at my store. We only charge $20 for repairs on new age systems and if we can't fix it we don't charge you.

Anyways in the past 4 years(before my own store and at my old store) I persoanlly have fixed well over 150 DRE's for PS2, only 1 cube and 2 X-boxes

overall the store has probably fixed 300 ps2's and maybe 6 or 8 cubes and x-boxes combined.

Our recod is held by my brother for fixing 6 ps2's in one day


so if anyone in Wisconsin wants systems fixed cheap, stop by my store Video Game Kingdom, located on the East side of Green Bay.

[Ed Oscuro]

so if anyone in Wisconsin wants systems fixed cheap, stop by my store Video Game Kingdom, located on the East side of Green Bay.
+1 my friend. Looks like good information, but I must be a bit suspicious :ninja:

[tholly]

The survey is a good idea, just be careful not to present the results as representative of all PS2 owners. An Internet survey like this is never representative of the general public (even if you had 100 000 responses) because the participants aren't randomly chosen.
That's always a good way to cover your butt; unfortunately the standard reasoning doesn't really apply strongly here. Since we're game collectors, are we more likely to "take care" of our PS2s? Do some of us not place our systems on the carpet? Does that even matter? I think you'll find that DREs are more likely to attack when folks are careless with their system, but the PS2 is one system where they're apparently - from what I've read - going to show up from time to time on beautifully handled consoles and software. I've seen posts that indicate that some of our forumers aren't vigilant in handling their stuff with extreme care (as some of us are), and while I'd agree with you in saying there's not necessarily a correspondence between how we care for things compared to the public at large, I don't see any indication that our PS2s should work any differently or have some sort of magical curse or DRE protection +1 on them simply because we visit the Roundtable.

Basically, I think that's a load of crap and doesn't apply much here.

I think it also merits a mention that somebody mentioned their GC as having had two DREs - while playing Metroid Prime. That is not a DRE in the sense that the PS2 has them; it's a software problem. Similarly, if I messed around a bunch with my Morrowind save file and moved stuff in every town I came across, I also would get (and did) more than a few DREs. I'd suppose that's not what happened with that replaced XBox, but it must be said that there is a distinction between hardware and software DREs, and that we are only interested in the hardware kind.



alright, well yea..then the GC was a software DRE...but the XBox was a hardware DRE...i would get them in Halo, PGR2, and Rallisport Challenge 2 the most, but they would happen in plenty of other games....plus it was a thompson drive....

[alexkidd2000]

dave2236 - how many Dreamcasts?

[dave2236]

dave2236 - how many Dreamcasts?

dreamcasts aren't that bad. DC's burn up the controller ports more than anything. I've swapped a few lasers out, but for how cheap they are now, we just buy the broken ones for parts and sell them another for $25


Remember a DRE may not be because of the system, but becasue of a disk issue or a scratched up game. Especially Vice City and Madden 2002, both for PS2.

remember the Dc's on release day? I had a few copies of sonic adventure before I could get one that worked. I also had to bring back my ready 2 rumble becasue the system wouldnt read the disk. I think NFL 2k had problems too on DC.

Bring your disk to a reputable store and have it buffed out, a $50 cd resurfacer is not the same as a professional resurfacer. DC games should be buffed out and not resurfaced unless absolutely necessary.

[Nez]

I have yet to have a problem with my PS2. BUT it is a refurbished system so it probably had a DRE before.

Mt game cube had a DRE problem once playing Eternal Darkness, I thought it was just an insanity effect! LOL

[MarioAllStar2600]

2 of my friends had REAL bad problems and had to send there PS2's back. My ps2 never got enough playtime for errors.

[-hellvin-]

Had mine over a year, never had one problem.

[lendelin]

I think you'll find that DREs are more likely to attack when folks are careless with their system, but the PS2 is one system where they're apparently - from what I've read - going to show up from time to time on beautifully handled consoles and software.

That's exactly what I said and assumed. I admit that the assumption that guys on this website take better care of their systems/discs than the average console owner is just that - an assumption; but I think it's a reasonable one. If you are collecting 1) you are probably interested that your system plays ten or twenty years from now, 2) you have more than one system and probably older ssytems which means you have experience how to handle systems carefully, meaning you learned from previous mistakes.

If the assumption is reasonable and better handling leads to less problems with DREs according to your own admittance, then we can at least say that the reported percentage of problems isn't biased against the PS2, in all likelihood it's a positive bias.


That's always a good way to cover your butt;

That Internet polls aren't representative of the target population (=all American PS2 owners) becasue they are not randomly chosen participants of the target population (bias of the sample population) isn't a cheap excuse, it's merely a basic statistical fact.

Two million participants chosen with an inherent bias of the sampling population can be very misleading if you try to draw conclusions to the general population, these two million are NOT representative. (old shoolbook example the Reader's Digest poll of 1936 for the Presidential election which covered only voters with phones and cars, two times the predictions were right, the third time completely wrong becasue voters didn't vote along traditional social lines)

[dmhawkmoon]

I said never, but keep in mind that I very rarely play my PS2 either. How much you use it makes a difference I'm sure.

[spoon]

Bullshit on the never. I have owend four and will never buy one again. I hear the new ones are nice, but, to hell with that. Once I got one DOA, that was it.

I will be waiting for the pstwo.

[Ed Oscuro]

I think you'll find that DREs are more likely to attack when folks are careless with their system, but the PS2 is one system where they're apparently - from what I've read - going to show up from time to time on beautifully handled consoles and software.

That's exactly what I said and assumed. I admit that the assumption that guys on this website take better care of their systems/discs than the average console owner is just that - an assumption; but I think it's a reasonable one. If you are collecting 1) you are probably interested that your system plays ten or twenty years from now, 2) you have more than one system and probably older ssytems which means you have experience how to handle systems carefully, meaning you learned from previous mistakes.

If the assumption is reasonable and better handling leads to less problems with DREs according to your own admittance, then we can at least say that the reported percentage of problems isn't biased against the PS2, in all likelihood it's a positive bias.
That works out amazingly well if you simply ignore - as you have - my comment that I see little evidence that the majority of forumers responding to this topic actually treat their systems better than most people. I think it's safe to say I'm not about to hand you a victory when you fail to address my most basic critique. I, on the other hand, will take this moment to flesh out my points some more.

Either you assume most people are exceedingly careless with their PS2s, in which case you sell the average gamer short and label them clueless (not very nice or even very close to reality for most gamers) or you make (as you have spelled out) that all of our Ubergamer forumers handle their PS2s with kid gloves. I think that's nonsense. We have folks here who cut off the tabs on their Genesis titles, and we have folks who have dozens of PS2 games. Even if you're very careful, hundreds of days using a PS2 and swapping discs increases your chances of damaging something or simply wearing it out. I also think it highly probable that many Forumers move their PS2s more than other folks due to having large numbers of systems. Of course it takes a pro to hook up a system - I'm sure it's fraught with peril and I thank the powers that be my feeble mind has to deal with no more than a single plug to the back of the system - but really, I see very little reason to believe our gamers are much different from gamers in general in this regard. What's more, the PS2 isn't a classic system; folks have warranties, and life takes its toll when you handle a modern system as much as many PS2 owners will.

However that's all not very relevant, because there's something you missed:

If our forumers are so good with their systems, why do we have less than 66% reporting perfectly operational systems?

If nothing else, given our supposed (and quite unproven) tendency to treat our systems delicately in comparison to John Doe isn't helping much.


That Internet polls aren't representative of the target population (=all American PS2 owners) becasue they are not randomly chosen participants of the target population (bias of the sample population) isn't a cheap excuse, it's merely a basic statistical fact.

Two million participants chosen with an inherent bias of the sampling population can be very misleading if you try to draw conclusions to the general population, these two million are NOT representative. (old shoolbook example the Reader's Digest poll of 1936 for the Presidential election which covered only voters with phones and cars, two times the predictions were right, the third time completely wrong becasue voters didn't vote along traditional social lines)
Real scientists and statisticians also understand that they have brains outside their coursework and calculators; they spend as much time (if not more) trying to figure out what, if anything, could be cause for bias in their work as they do crunching numbers. You don't get points for adhering slavishly to the textbook example, and I'm trying to get you to come up with a reason WHY our sample would perform terribly different from masses elsewhere. I see no reason to think that's the case. Of course I could always mention that I have a friend whom I know FOR A FACT had a stack of music CDs that were SEVERELY SCUFFED and among them were four (at least) discs for the PC version of Final Fantasy VII; and then there were two seperate occasions where I lent two different people my copies of Half-Life and Metal Gear Solid and got them back in worse shape than I had lent them. Clearly there's a pattern!

No, you would rejoin, that's bad statistics.

Yes, it is. To simply assume our forumers are "different" and somehow special compared to your average gamer isn't good work either.

I think the guy taking these figures has his work defending the PS2 cut out for him, and you can be certain he will take every opportunity to claim we all tapdance on our PS2s nightly given he works for the officially 100% independent PlayStation Magazine.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

In unrelated news, Plumbers Weekly magazine surveyed all the Super Mario Bros. enemy characters they could find for their series on increasing plumber/customer relations; all responding Goombas labeled images of Italian men as threatening to some degree and a perfect correlation was found to exist between size of said man and the percieved threat. Goombas also reported they were "always less threatened feeling" when traveling under low rows of blocks or when standing on the right side of a tall object.

King Koopa took issue with the results, citing various common aspects of plumbers the magazine failed to control for, such as the carrying of large hammers, red hats with wings, and noses more than a third the width of one's face.

[PapaStu]

Ive had my PS2 since April of '01 and its a launch model. Its given me maybe 1-2 DRE's ever, and even then it was years ago. Ive got 260+ PS2 games, all real, no burn no modchip, and its played a ton of them for hours on end. Yes its been neglected some in the recent months, but it still gets a workout. Ive had way more problems with my launch XBox and the DDE error (and yes its a Thompson).

BUT i have noticed that the inital boot screen takes longer and longer to load into the game then it ever used to. Still totally playable, but a annoyance none the less.

A big factor in this is the amount of playtime that these units get under their belts. Even us "Gamers" who take care of our shit can still have problems, but as they get used for more and more, those poopy DVD drives just start to go.

[Oobgarm]

I'm on console #3.

My original launch model started to give out a bunch of DRE errors around the time that the GT3 bundle pack was released, so I ended up selling it off and getting the bundle. That one worked perfectly all the way up until I traded it in for the newer '+' Progressive Scan model the day they came in.

I've always stored my PS2 vertically, and I use it as a DVD player too. I still think the whole 'vertical makes it break' and 'DVD watching makes it break' arguements are hogwash. I don't see why Sony would advertise the DVD player funcionality and always show pictures of the system sitting vertically if those two actions hindered the system's performance.

Cheap components break quickly. End of story.

[Tritoch]

BUT i have noticed that the inital boot screen takes longer and longer to load into the game then it ever used to. Still totally playable, but a annoyance none the less.

That's exactly what's happening with my launch PS2 right now. Half the time it'll take me to the menu screen, the other half it'll launch the game right away. No DREs yet...in fact the only ones I've ever gotten was with Morrowind for Xbox (and that was a million of 'em despite using Bethesda's "fixes").

[Flack]

I've had 2 PS2's, a launch one and a second one I bought over two years ago. No DRE's, ever. My xbox (bought used) locks up, but it's only in one game so I suspect the disc over the unit at this point.

[Hep038]

I have a launch day PS2 and about 6 months ago I started getting DRE's. I was just about to order a new laser and I opened the unit cleaned all the dust out and the lens and have not got a DRE yet.

[Spartacus]

Of the three PS2's I've purchased, only one has had the disk read error. That one was purchased near the launch date making it 3 yrs old, at least. I'll admit abusing the hell out of it. 4 gamers shared it in a smoke filled home. It also served as the DVD player for the first two years. It ran constantly and was moved around to various TV's in the house, taking the usual bumps, bangs, and drops in the process. I should also mention that besides taking direct blasts of exhaled smoke, it tolerated significant quantity's of dust, as everybody in this home is, shall we say, "domestically challanged".
The DRE on that launch unit wasn't much of an issue. Looked on the internet, found the fix, opened it up, turned the white gear two notches, and it was ready to go! That was, hmmmm, 6-8 months ago. No problems since. The second one's about two yrs old, it's in my room and substitutes as a DVD player as well. Get's maybe 10 hrs a week on it, unless I'm heavy into a game. Never had a problem with it. The third's a little less than a year old. Gave that to my daughter while she was in college. No problems I know of, or I'm sure I would have heard about it.
My experience says these reliable systems. They have handled less than perfect environments without complaint. Very few of the games it reads are new, as I prefer buying used games. I've got literally hundreds of games and some were scratched pretty badly, but they all played. And fixing the DRE was so simple and easy to accomplish for me, that I don't even consider it an issue.

[AMG]

I've never had a DRE on my PS2 and it's one of the first models.

[hezeuschrist]

I've had mine since two days after launch, and the only times I've gotten DRE's is when it's the disc being shitty.

Although, right when I got it I got SSX and Tekken Tag... the first night I had it both discs had been scratched to shit by the system. I knew I wouldn't find another PS2 at Media Play, so I just took the discs back and got a different copy of each game... no problems since. I still have both games and as far as I know, they both work fine.

I also had the problem with it just taking longer and longer to load games, then when my Suikoden III disc kept freezing on me, I cleaned the system with just one of those brush cleaners. Fixed that right up, loads as fast as it did on launch now.

My PS2 also served as a DVD player for quite some time, up until Christmas 03 actually. I work at Blockbuster and I get 5 free rentals a week, if that gives you any idea how many movies I've watched on the thing.

I know there are severe problems with this system, so I take care of it as best I can. It never goes anywhere without the original box and packaging (which has taken one hell of a beating, but it does it's job), and it's never used vertically.

[classic gamer]

I have not had a DRE yet on my PS2 (three years old now), but it is coming. But it is taking longer and longer to read the disc. Quite often it goes to the browser screen but it has not come up with the DRE yet. I don't know how much longer it will last but hopefully it will make it to the next price drop.

[dbiersdorf]

I voted

Often, but my PS2 is still usable.

I've had it for two years now, bought it new, barely ever used besides a few Twisted Metal Black games, SOCOM and Jak and Daxter the thing gave me an error usually every time but a few reboots and I could play it again.

The system sucks.

[showstoppa]

I've had to take mine apart a few times to clean it out and adjust the laser before it would work right for everything. I'm still not sure if it'll work for all my games and dvds. I used to use it often for gameplaying, but lately i've been playing more NES or SNES or Dreamcast, and it used to be my only DVD player too until I just recently bought one because I was tired of the DREs when I tried watching certain DVDs. I also have a few friends who have had the same problem with their PS2s. By the way, I have one of the first models... it worked fine for about the first 2 years I had it and then the problem started and became terrible.

[lendelin]

That works out amazingly well if you simply ignore - as you have - my comment that I see little evidence that the majority of forumers responding to this topic actually treat their systems better than most people.
Either you assume most people are exceedingly careless with their PS2s, in which case you sell the average gamer short and label them clueless (not very nice or even very close to reality for most gamers) or you make (as you have spelled out) that all of our Ubergamer forumers handle their PS2s with kid gloves. I think that's nonsense.

I didn't draw such an extreme pic at all. I'm not quibble and quabble about this becasue we both don't know if we are correct. I think we can agree that the participants of this poll in which experienced game collectors are overrepresented don't treat their discs and systems worse than the average console owner. (although I still think that my assumption is more reasonable)


Real scientists and statisticians also understand that they have brains outside their coursework and calculators; they spend as much time (if not more) trying to figure out what, if anything, could be cause for bias in their work as they do crunching numbers.

I understand this perfectly well, trust me; I think you misunderstood something. Crunching numbers is only one part of statistical work, the work starts with designing and wording of polls and exactly what we are talking about - to avoid inherent bias of the population polled.

Bias has to be avoided from step 1 (designing polls) to the last step (interpreting the results), and everything in between. There are a lot of traps.

...but this is a very simple poll, pretty straightforward, the only danger is the biased sample population (see below) which is there with every Internet poll independent from the number of participants.


You don't get points for adhering slavishly to the textbook example,...

I'm not a slave of textbook examples, you have no idea how often I critisize dumb stuff in textbooks. :) However, the example is perfectly fine and starightforward, the problem I referred to is the basic of the basics in statistics, it's like saying 2 plus 2 equals 4 and not 3.9. The knowledge is there for fifty years.



...and I'm trying to get you to come up with a reason WHY our sample would perform terribly different from masses elsewhere.

I thought that's very clear, therefore I didn't mention it.

The sample is diffrent from the general population of Playstation 2 owners because
1) You only get PS2 owners with Internet access
2) You only get PS2 owners who use their Internet access
3) You only get PS2 owners who visit game websites
4) You only get PS2 owners who visit THIS specific game website
5) You only get PS2 owners who are interested in the Q asked in the poll
6) You only get PS2 owners who are willing to participate in the poll

Every other PS2 owner is excluded in the poll, therfore it can't be representative and generalizable UNLESS you had population data which shows that all these criterias are exactly representative of all PS2 owners. You might get the exact results of a poll in which participants are randomly chosen, but this would be a coincidence.

The other problems you seem to have (and others as well) is the fact that the poll isn't more refined, that means possible causes and important facts which influence the DRE problem. (how many use the system/discs, age of the users, time of purchase, used or new system purchased, frequency of playing time, causes of the DRE, etc. etc.)

A refined poll like this would make only sense if you had a couple of hundred participants, with the number of cases less than 50 it's statistically nonsense to even try to overload each Q in a poll with various items becasue the number of cases for each item isn't enough to come up with any meaningful statistics. (the results would become substantially and statistically absolutelly insignificant) The more stuff you have in a poll, the less cases you get for each item, and the more the statistics become meaningless in particular if you can expect only 50 participants.

If you have ONE case which reports that the DRE was casued after he gave the game dicscs to a friend, what does this mean? Nothing, you cannot identify it as serious problem, it might be an outlier, and the generalizability is watered down to a ridiculous extent. If you had 30 who report the same problem and it's cause from 400 participants, THEN we are talking.

The poll is fine, the Qs are well worded and not misleading, and it will give you certainly a trend which goes way beyong anecdotal evidence.

[mr_nihilism]

Not yet, but I've only had the system for less than four months.

[Ed Oscuro]

I admit to having posted my original comments at a very early hour and on little sleep and without as much careful thought as I am capable of. If I committed any errors I will work to correct them here. I didn't see when you posted yours, but in any case I think it would be fair to assume you also were working in a state of limited ability. That would explain why you commit such egregious errors in trying to present a picture of this poll is indeed flawed (it is, and the heart of my arguments appear past my response to your quote and extend to the last full paragraph).


The sample is different from the general population of Play station 2 owners because
1) You only get PS2 owners with Internet access
2) You only get PS2 owners who use their Internet access
3) You only get PS2 owners who visit game websites
4) You only get PS2 owners who visit THIS specific game website
5) You only get PS2 owners who are interested in the Q asked in the poll
6) You only get PS2 owners who are willing to participate in the poll
Don't be obtuse. What do factors 1, 2 3, and 4 (3 in particular is an example where these factors may not apply in some cases - it does not follow that one who visits the Roundtable must therefore have ever visited another gaming site, and some who have may still not have heard of the DRE issue) have to do with how we treat our game consoles?

That's mostly good work on your part, but it's far from the full picture or even terribly relevant in comparison to other questions which you could've addressed to greater affect.

You state, in part, that the poll in question is

a very simple poll, pretty straightforward, the only danger is the biased sample population (see below) which is there with every Internet poll independent from the number of participants.
The question sets out to find consoles thought to be most likely to exhibit DREs; we have missed a chance to see whether the performance of newer PS2s exonerates the series' reputation. If you're so good at statistics, why did you fail to point out one of the most relevant failings of the poll - mandatory exclusion of consoles less than one year old?

Don't wait for the translation, answer me now!

Five and six are indeed problems affecting all responses to PSM magazine, though there it might cause committed PS2 fans to mail in with their stories of perfect PS2s in order to outweigh the few "sour grapes;" indeed that's possible here as well and some opinions have said as much over time. You're barking up the wrong tree as far as that's concerned - the author of the question at PSM magazine is guilty as charged.

Further complicating things, you use a double standard to justify your reasoning. On the one hand you assert that these factors (minus five and six) throw this survey off, but you apparently have nary a clue as to what effects that would actually have. When you do try to reason out why our Forumers would be different you simply state (unless I missed some unknown variable you specifically reference) that Roundtablers are "more careful" with their equipment. That leaves us far afield from where you originally started. This is beating a dead horse and not really the main point I wish to make, but it seems I didn't come through clearly enough the first time.

The biggest problem is that you missed your chance to explain to us why the poll choices and question aren't worded well. It's true that they are, and instead of vague and easily confused choices of "Occasionally," "Often," and "I had to send my PS2 back for repair or buy a new console" actual numbers should have been used. The poll system itself is flawed because one cannot give an accurate picture of multiple PS2s owned - perhaps some people have averaged together their DREs across five consoles, and it's very likely that many respondents have simply reported their worst performing PS2 - the posted answers to NOT match the responses. The model number (not "age" as some consoles sit on the shelf, especially true if bought secondhand, only model number would be acceptable) could be relevant in showing a trend for newer PS2s to have different reliability characteristics. Length of time the console has been in use (again problematic because some PS2s are bought secondhand), if we could possibly come up with a measure of it, would further enrich that data to see how PS2s (if we combine this with model numbers we can break it down to specific models) perform over time.

That's not perfect, but at least one of us knows our statistics (here's a hint: his handle is most similar to Sinestro and Magneto).

[lendelin]

Ed Oscuro, your argumentation is getting very confusing. Please look up my latest post, and every Q and criticism you have is addressed there.

If you wanna believe that you can go in your backyard, take a handful of soil, andf think this sample is representative of all American soil when it comes to the durability of shoe wear, so be it.

It's really amazing that a guy who thinks that "real statisticians" are concerned about bias is ready to introduce the most obvious and starightforward sample bias based on an assumption. How in the world do you know that the bias of the sample population of this poll has nothing to do with DREs? How do you KNOW that? How do you KNOW that when it comes to DREs the participants of this poll are representative of all American PS2 owners? Statistics are there to introduce as less assumptions as possible, and to TEST your assumptions! Polls not based on randomly chosen participants are in almost all cases not representative and cannot be generalized. Bang. Period.

If you don't have sociodemopgraphic data of all American PS2 owners, and the same data of all the participants of this poll, and cannot determine which population strata of the ones polled are over- or underrepresented or roughly equal to the genreal population, there is no way in the world you can't generalize this poll.

Look, let's keep this as simple as it is. It's a very starightforwrd and meaningful poll about the experience of PS2 owners who experienced DREs. It goes from 'Often' to 'never,' and this is very appropriate for a poll which doesn't have 500 participants as I explained.

It doesn't go into cause effect realtionships, it doesn't look for factors who might explain it, and that's more than appropriate for this kind of poll. Quick and dirty Presidential approval ratings most often do not ask WHY you disapprove and WHO diisapproves, and that's perfectly fine.

The guy who introduced the poll asked how many and how often PS2 owners experienced DREs, and nothing else. Bang. That's it. Period. I don't understand what youir problem is with the poll at all.


...and instead of vague and easily confused choices of "Occasionally," "Often," and "I had to send my PS2 back for repair or buy a new console" actual numbers should have been used.

That's ludicrous. What would actual numbers change from 1 to 20? Do you really think that guys who experience once or twice DRE checked 'often' insted of 'occasionally?' You know, we had presidential thermometer approval scales from 1 to 100, and I never understood what the difference was between a 82 and a 84. One to ten is enough, or from 'heavily approve' to heavily disappprove."


The poll system itself is flawed because one cannot give an accurate picture of multiple PS2s owned - perhaps some people have averaged together their DREs across five consoles, and it's very likely that many respondents have simply reported their worst performing PS2 - the posted answers to NOT match the responses. The model number (not "age" as some consoles sit on the shelf, especially true if bought secondhand, only model number would be acceptable) could be relevant in showing a trend for newer PS2s to have different reliability characteristics. Length of time the console has been in use (again problematic because some PS2s are bought secondhand), if we could possibly come up with a measure of it, would further enrich that data to see how PS2s (if we combine this with model numbers we can break it down to specific models) perform over time.

I already addressed this issue BEFORE you brought it up, and I addressed the issue of wording BEFORE you brought it up as well. To refine a poll like this would make only sense if you had lots of participants (number of cases), otherwise it's substantially and statististically pretty meaningless. Others and I could refine the poll without any problems thinking about all kinds of factors which influence DREs, but the pollster shouldn't even try that for already mentioned reasons.

One piece of advice: please don't come me with below-the-beltline arguments questioning my knowledge about statistics and at the same time brag about your knowledge! I try to keep this non-personal.

Should I be blunt? Your criticism about generalizability and details of the poll shows how little you kinow about statistics. Sometimes you put your head way out of the window, and the result is embarrassment. I don't like to justify my criticism with the line of work I do becasue common sense guys without expertise have very often great criticism and see the forest and not only trees. But let me tell you that I created three data sets in my life (that was three times too many) from designing the poll, running ststistics to interpreting the results. I punched in data, decoded, use usually existing data sets, ran bivariate and multi-regression analyses and weighted time series regression analyses; and while I'm writing this Stata runs in the background becasue a colleague asked me if I could replicate his results of a multiple regression analysis for him.

I'm not a number cruncher, but I have done my fair share of it when I had to. I think the belief in the US in statistics is vastly exaggerated, a couple of numbers and a lil' graph don't make empirical analyses more 'scientific' than qualitative analyses; but I can assure you that I have at least as much knowledge about statistics than you have, and I didn't question your knowledge about it in my previous posts, so please don't question mine.

[Captain Wrong]

Sheesh, get a room you two.

[Jibbajaba]

Sheesh, get a room you two.

Hey it's keeping my poll towards the top of the forum so I say let the catfight continue.... 8-)

[Algol]

I've had my PS2 for a year and a half and never have gotten a DRE, except for when I put in a PC disk just to see what would happen. :P

There have been a couple times however, when the game would freeze and a message would come up saying the controller was unplugged, even though it clearly wasn't. Another time, I barely nudged my PS2 while a game was playing, and the screen just went blank. It worked fine after a hard reset, though.

[Rev. Link]

I've had my PS2 since about a year after it launched, and I've never had a DRE. However, I play my GameCube much more than any other current gen system.

My PS2 doesn't get much play.

[Ed Oscuro]

If you wanna believe that you can go in your backyard, take a handful of soil, andf think this sample is representative of all American soil when it comes to the durability of shoe wear, so be it.
Whenever did I say that or even allude to having such a belief..? Wow. Bias is fun stuff, but you know this fellow we're collecting figures for at PSM already knows he's going to have a bunch of crazy figures thrown at him. It seems to me that we could put together data for number of PS2s that suffer DREs/total PS2s owned by forumers. That all may be out of the scope of this question, but do you really think that one lone guy wouldn't use such statistics if he got them? That would be more worthwhile that simply having X number of folks they had or didn't have DREs. You're right - the whole thing's a big mess - but I still would like to see what we could do with the data.


How in the world do you know that the bias of the sample population of this poll has nothing to do with DREs? How do you KNOW that?
Exactly my point! I don't, and you don't know it does, either. However, I see reason to believe the way the poll was worded does have an obvious effect on the poll data. That is strictly speaking not a scientific approach, but I feel this "non-forumers treat their consoles differently" is more than slightly hogwash. You may be right on, but I feel we have more casual gamers who happen to have lots of games than we have extremely picky and fussy folks such as myself. The demographics are a stumbling block - but there's nothing wrong with trying to achieve perfection in a limited sphere, eh?


That's ludicrous. What would actual numbers change from 1 to 20? Do you really think that guys who experience once or twice DRE checked 'often' insted of 'occasionally?' You know, we had presidential thermometer approval scales from 1 to 100, and I never understood what the difference was between a 82 and a 84. One to ten is enough, or from 'heavily approve' to heavily disappprove."
This is really the heart of what I'm getting to - do you understand that some people will introduce their own bias in looking at these choices, or don't you? To some, ONE disc read error - even software based - will be enough for them to send it back to the store. There is no explanation given of what's "occasional" and what's "often." If I was patient I might say that 10 DREs a week was "occasional;" if I had a DRE every other time I turned on my PS2 but only played it a few times a month I might judge that to be "occasional" as well. My goal isn't to criticize Jibbajabba needlessly; it's to try figure out a way to better measure how our Forumers fare with the PS2. I also think you misunderstood my meaning - I was hinting that something along the lines of "never," "less than 3 times in a week of play (but discrepancies in how often one plays their consoles show up...) and so on. Indeed I also understand that Jibbajabba's original poll questions are judging opinion, rather than fact. However I sense there is some interest in the forum as to what the actual numbers are, rather than seeing all too easily agitated opinions rule - though that's informative as well. Whatever the case, I certainly never would've said we needed more than five different grades! I also find it hard to judge the significance of a difference of two percent.


To refine a poll like this would make only sense if you had lots of participants (number of cases), otherwise it's substantially and statististically pretty meaningless.
Oh, so 72 votes and counting is "pretty meaningless" now? You're saying it would be alright to have badly chosen graduations between choices and to introduce bias into the poll right off the bat in the "year or more" rule if it was only a certain number of people's responses affected. Granted, I'm not losing sleep over this either, but it doesn't made sense to me to decide not to do things the right way if you're going to start talking statistics - if indeed we are communicating on a hypothetical level and not trying to fault anybody here.


I think the belief in the US in statistics is vastly exaggerated, a couple of numbers and a lil' graph don't make empirical analyses more 'scientific' than qualitative analyses
Indeed! Then why was it that you felt it necessary to point out that certain qualifications should be added when the data will be submitted? Because you want to do things right, it would seem. That makes your use of halfway measures rather mystifying. I'll accept without reservations that you are a true statistician, but I'm bemused to say the least as to why you wouldn't offer up ways to improve the methodology here and instead simply slap a "Tainted!" label on the results. I myself have no wish to see the PS2 proven to be unreliable - or strong feelings that it should be proven reliable - but I feel this is losing an opportunity to take stock of what our community's been up to.

@ Capt. Yash: Yes, indeed! LOL

[Jibbajaba]

I hate to get into the middle of this, but to me the most important two figures are the "never" and the "had to send it back". Only 60% of the PS2 owning population around here has never had a DRE, while over 10% felt the need to send back their PS2s or buy new ones. Thats scary in my opinion. I have a PSX from 1997 and it has read every PSX disc I have ever put in it. I dont know what happened to this latest generation of consoles....

Anyway, I'm sorry that you have some problem with the way the poll is worded, but I did that on purpose. As far as I am concerned, if a particular user feels that the number of DREs that they are experiencing is "often" then they can vote for often. This poll not only gauges the percentages of DRE occurances but is also a measure of peoples satisfaction with their system's performance. I am not trying to employ scientific method here. There will be no standard deviation associated with this poll. This is a quick and dirty poll to get a sense of peoples experience with PS2 DREs. What this poll says to me is that only about 60% of PS2 owners on this board are completely satisfied with their systems performance, and that has to be unacceptable by anyones standards. Now please quit arguing about this before my thread gets locked!

Chris

[lendelin]

Ed Ocuro, do me favor and just READ what I posted. I won't repeat myself again, you put stuff completely out of context, and implied things I never said.
I can't be clearer:

1) the poll is completely fine!!!!!!!

2) the only limitation is it's generalizability which goes for every Internet poll. That doesn't mean the poll is meaningless at all.

3) A 30 Q survey of potential factors which might influnece DREs (average playtime per week, model of the PS2, time of purchase, number and age of users, specified kind of problems, etc, etc, etc.) is only meaninfful if you have lots of respondents. Otherwise, you can't use these meaningfful information becasue you can't work with it satstistically.

4) if you do a survey you always get peoples perception/misperception. It's always their opinion, impression, never yours. No gamer keeps an exact record how many times he experienced DREs, these are estimates anyway in any case, no matter if actaul numbers are used or from 'never' to 'very often.'

You are very confusing and contradictory.

On the hand hand you can't understand why the respondents of this website might have different experiences with DREs than the average PS2 owner and wanna generalize it; that means you think it's meaningless if you get guys for this poll who have more or less PS2 systems, play more or less, are older or younger, play more often or less often with friends, let their kids play more or less often, etc. compared to the average PS2 owner. On the other hand you critisize the poll becasue it's not refined enough becasue the same factors suddenly play a role when it comes to DREs.

When it comes to generalizabilty a potetial bias of the sample regarding these factors aren't important, when it comes to designing the survey the same factors influnce DREs suddenly. This doesn't go well together, does it?

[lendelin]

I hate to get into the middle of this, but to me the most important two figures are the "never" and the "had to send it back". Only 60% of the PS2 owning population around here has never had a DRE, while over 10% felt the need to send back their PS2s or buy new ones. Thats scary in my opinion. I have a PSX from 1997 and it has read every PSX disc I have ever put in it. I dont know what happened to this latest generation of consoles....

Anyway, I'm sorry that you have some problem with the way the poll is worded, but I did that on purpose. As far as I am concerned, if a particular user feels that the number of DREs that they are experiencing is "often" then they can vote for often. This poll not only gauges the percentages of DRE occurances but is also a measure of peoples satisfaction with their system's performance. I am not trying to employ scientific method here. There will be no standard deviation associated with this poll. This is a quick and dirty poll to get a sense of peoples experience with PS2 DREs. What this poll says to me is that only about 60% of PS2 owners on this board are completely satisfied with their systems performance, and that has to be unacceptable by anyones standards. Now please quit arguing about this before my thread gets locked!

Chris

AMEN!!! Thank goodness for the reasonable guys.

It's indeed a bad result for the PS2 when ten percent sent or intended to send a PS2 back, and when 4% more gamers experienced often DREs. I think it's also troublesome when almost 40% of system owners had slight to heavy DRE problems. That doesn't speak for the reliability of the hardware and software.

Be careful though not to read too much into the poll. You can't say much about the overall satisfaction of the systems performance. You didn't ask this Q, did you? :) There might be guys who have occasionally or often DREs and just don't care much about it as long as the game runs. There might be guys who don't care much becasue they love the games which are on the PS2. I'm pretty sure you'd get different results if you polled for this Q.

Otherwise, your interpretation is perfectly fine, and the results are really interesting. 73 participants for this website is a lot, and the relatively high total number and high percentage of gamers who experienced DRE troubles excludes that the difference DRE probs/no DRE probs is a statistical or substantial coincidence. (which would have been the case for 5 participants)The result is a reliable trend which goes way beyond anecdotal evidence. You have a good weapon here to make your case. :)

[ECWSandmanECW]

Ive had one around a year ago, took it apart, cleaned the lens, works fine now *Knocks on Wood* LOL

[lendelin]

btw, I completely forgot to mention that I have two PS2s and never experienced a DRE problem.

I had only one problem with the PS2 (color switched to strong greenish after playing for five minutes), I jumped to conclusions and blamed the PS2; it turned out that it was actually the component video cable (from Monster!) which caused the problem.

For all three systems (GC, XBOX, PS2) I had one game for each which froze once. Otherwise, no problem.

I never had probs with cartridges at all, but the freezing prob....pfft...God help us that consoles won't become more and more like PCs in this regard.

[kainemaxwell]

I dunno if I should post this here or if there was another topic at some point regarding this but, has anyone else here had their PS2s go into the menu screen when loading a clear-bottomed PS2 disc instead of one the colored (black, etc) discs?

[jonjandran]

Well I couldn't keep quiet any longer.

For those who responded " I've never had a DRE but I have put in a game and it didn't load but went straight to the browser screen "

THAT IS A DRE !!!

Its a Disc Read Error. It didn't read the disc. Sheez people pay attention here.

[Funk Buddy]

I voted:

Ocassionally

But it only has happened two or three times, and only one was a game (rental).

I have the GT3 bundle from right around when that package was released. I also had a JPN system from around the same time and never had one with it.

[lendelin]

Ed Oscuro, if I reacted to harshly to your posts, I apologize. No harsh feelings, ok?

It's just that I reacted to some strong words you used, at the end you put certain aspects out of context, and to question someone's credibility is never a good idea. I have statistical experience, but I never refer to it because someone with zilch knowledge can have much better arguments.

All your points about refining the poll (not so much the generalizability question) were valid and well thought-out. IF we could make a 20 Q survey it would be ideal to ask for age, gender, number of games owned, approximate number of games played on the system, average playtime a month, model version number, time of purchase of the system, number of other users and age of users, distinctions of hardware probs in general and distinction of DREs in particular, etc. Some of these might (!) affect DREs (like age and gender), it would be great to test it, and others we are pretty certain that they affect DREs indeed (like average play time and the number of different games played)...and with a distinction of DRE probs we could relate them to other factors and measure their impact on DREs.

The big prob is you couldn't do this with the poll design on this website in the first place, and to work with such a survey statistically is almost impossible if you can expect 50 responses, even the 90 responses right now wouldn't do it. The individual case numbers of the refined items go down dramatically, and that means you end up with s statistical significance of 3.0 or 4.0, which means the likelihood that the findings are based on a sampling error is 30 to 40%. The commonly agreed ststistical significance level is .5 (5%).

Another big problem of surveys like this is that the response rate goes down dramatically. People are lazy and don't wanna invest a lot of time. Reduce the number of responses by two thirds compared to an easy poll like ours, and you're right on target.

Your actual number-argument is valid; but doesn't make a big difference. 1)People can't remember EXACTLY how often they experienced DREs even if you offer numbers, three times or 5 times? In most cases for a poll like this you group numerical varaibles anyway together and give them labels (1-3: occasionally; 4-6: often)

The advantage of your proposal however is indeed that we could clearly identify the number of perceived DREs and therfore it would be more clearly up for criticism. In one case you leave it it to the respondents what "often' means, in the other case you leave it up to the decoder, and then the decoder can be corrected if the groupings don't make sense. With your proposal the interpratations would become a tad more reliable. In any case, it's always the perception of the respondents which is key. It would be nice to have objective measurements of DREs to correct for misperceptions and bad memory, but ussually that means technological equipment and lots of money.

[SegaAges]

I had the error, but I cleaned the lens and actually did a method where I manually turned the cog, and it worked fine. I did also drop that one while it was open (back when I had about 6 or 7 burnt ps2 games), and well, if you drop a ps2 that is opened, you no longer have one. the disc read error is not that hard to fix, but dropping it on the floor is a much worse problem.

p.s. - the walmart swap is awesome

[Jibbajaba]

I'm just bumping this in the hope that anyone who hasnt had the chance to answer the poll will do so. Also, thanks for all the responses!