PS4 Units Aren't Defective; Video Reveals HDMI Issue

Reputation management from the opposing camp was probably super excited from news earlier today when less than a handful of people noted issues with their PlayStation 4 units. I wisely brushed off the issue like Taylor Swift brushes off boyfriends. Turns out that the issue is neither widespread nor as serious as kamikaze fanboys would have led you to believe.

If you watch the video above, editor-in-chief at Kotaku, Stephen Totilo, goes on record as saying that the issue they encountered with the PS4 wasn't that bad. Why? Because turns out it was just a bent pin in the HDMI port that occurs sometimes when trying to plug in the HDMI cord. This is an issue that sometimes occurs with 44-pin adapters for 2.5” hard drives, where one of the pins may slightly bend and won't go into the slot, and then your fingers get all sweaty as you're trying to force the connector over the pins and then they start to bend while a few actually go in correctly, but then your fingers slip and you accidentally force the connector over the bent pins, bending them even further. Yeah well, it's the same thing... sort of, but not really.

Anyway, the Kotaku video channels the inner tech-wizard and showcases that PS4 units aren't necessarily defective as some Xbox fanboys wanted so desperately to believe, even willing to sacrifice their first born, their mother and their third-mistress in hopes that it turned out to be true.

As you can see in the video, if you plug the same HDMI cable into the output slot in a unit where the port doesn't have any bent pins, the system works fine.

According to Totilo, Sony mentioned that after they straightened out the pin and plugged in the HDMI cable, the PS4 unit that was once labeled as defective was brought back to life, working fine and fiery like Perez Hilton rolling out gossip columns after gulping down a red candy apple frappuccino. Because that's how the PS4 rolls.

Hopefully the good news spreads like a venereal disease at an after hours Ibiza party; the last thing Sony needs is the continued proliferation of the negative news about PS4 units bricking like a day-one Xbox One unit without the mandatory patch. As we all know, the PlayStation 4 is nothing like the big black brick.

Anyway, if you have a PS4 early (or planning on getting one when it drops later tonight – in about two hours, if you want to get specific) be sure to watch the video if you run into similar problems. If you have an inkling of metal-bending skills with pliers or tweezers, you can use a flashlight, a magnifying glass and the aforementioned grips to fix the problem yourself. This does, however, not excuse the poor design of the HDMI out jack that could easily bend the teeth of the cord when plugging the cable into the back of your PS4, if not done correctly. Also, if you don't have surgical hands like Ben Carson, then just send the unit back to Sony and have them fix it for you.

Many future PS4 owners should just be thankful this isn't a major issue like the OS being bricked, the system overheating and dying or the GPU burning out due to not being able to handle multiplatform games that run at native 720p on the Xbox One.