Amen we are all slaves to the almighty dollar.

On a related note, I'm not sure how the GS manager knew what even Rockstar's employees don't

I called Tech Support and he did indicate that if it did not work by tomorrow to call back.

But YEA it still isn't working no video just audio, first cutscene...or the video plays a audio chirps and then video cuts out...or I get nothing and don't get past the Copyright information. 

I can't access the local (Australian) forums for some reason but here is my recent (yesterday) PS3 + GTA4 experience.

After playing for 1 hr when I got the game at the midnight launch I went to bed and was up to start playing the next day. Played for 5 minutes before a freeze occured during a cutscene. Could not shut down using any method except for holding the soft power key down after about 1 min the system restarted. After restart the game played the loading screen for about 2 mins before freezing also! Restart again and CD icon never showed up and I noticed the little circle animating constantly (for a few minutes). Ejected the game, tried COD4, tried a BD move, tried a normal DVD, NOTHING worked.

Tried GT5 Prologue off the hard drive and it worked fine. Called SONY support and went through resetting defaults, power cycle etc. etc. with NO JOY. Within about another 1hr it was on its way back for repair which is 4 weeks. So my experience with my fairly new PS3 and GTA4 has been sad to say the least considering it seems by BD has just died.

I have checked around a it seems a lot of people say this is a known issue and not uncommon but sony say it is very uncommon. Well of 3 people I know who have PS3s 2 of us have had this problem now. Considering the game froze 1st and then froze up again shortly after restarting before the BD died I am a little concerned as to why this all happened after gettng the game. I have been hammering the system for the past 2 months with not a hiccup and then this disaster.

EDIT: 40GB Australian (PAL) system

---

Blazin_arch wrote:
tried reinstalling with the save files deleted, and nothing still lockin up. BUT I backed up the saves in usb . Anyways, Im able to play for about 15 min before a lockup, so I play then reset.   Anyone know if restoring factory defaults will do anything? I might try it after backing everything up.

---

exact problem i think  my longest playtime straight is a half hour but i have had at least 20 lockups in my 2 hours of total playtime... i am very upset about this but I am willing to give rockstar a chance to fix it since it is such a Bad Ass game

I've got the 60GB version (PAL, bought 07' april) no problems yet.

Is this problem only for US consoles?

been playing for like 6 hours and not even one lock-up. 

just as a question...having read alot of these threasd in other forums this seems to be related to overheating in SOME cases...

how much do your fans kick in when you are playing....

on my fairly new 40 gig unit my fan is merrily going at full blast by about 5-10 mins into the game.....in fact i bought some head phones to play because my desk is small and the ps3 is too noisy to sit next to! LOL

however..have you tried blowing out your ps3 air instakes..chances are if these units are issues models then the dust accumulation inside will be fairly large. Get yourself decent air duster and blow all the air intake ports out, also make sure your ps3 is in a well ventilated location. (pc's have HUGE issues when full of dust and crap, and the inside of your ps3 is no different!)

sorry if this has been suggested already..but hey it might help sombody out.

Rockstar already announced that this was a problem even for the 360 so to fix it they said you need to delete everything GTA IV of ur HDD and reinstall it =)

HOME KICKS SECOND LIFE IN THE ASS!!!!! Premium Ceramic White Playstation 3 with 1 Terabite Hardrive and Ceramic White Playstation 3 controller
My PSN ID: tgc_leader