Sounds like user error. I've never had any problem with PSN being slow.

Anything is possible, but I know I'm not the only one who's had problems was PSN speeds, and I am certainly no novice when it comes to setting up networking options, gaming systems, and all other sorts of tech gadgets. Regardless, it's not the only reason I ended up returning it.

There were some positives though. The exclusive indie games on the PSN were pretty cool. I really enjoyed The Last Guy demo. I wanted to try the EchoChrome demo but after I installed it (another thing I found quite annoying), it asked me to update it, and when I did (it didn't seem to give me a choice) it said there was a licensing issue, and then quit the game.

No, it's not
Compared to what?
Downloads from PSN are excruciatingly slow - that is, compared to downloading on the 360, and especially the PC.

A few months ago, as a test, I downloaded the Burnout Paradise demo for both systems (not simultaneously) during non-peak hours:

- Xbox ~ 20 minutes
- PS3 ~ 2.5 hours

And then you have to install on top of that...

PSN is just slow - this isn't news - everyone knows this and deals with it.

Oh Lordy, the downloads from the PS3 are glacier slow.

"User error."

Are you people that are experiencing slow speeds all using wireless? Could it vary depending on where in the U.S. you live? Is it possible that some ISPs are limiting the speed? Just wondering, because while I get an occasional slow one when I'm getting something major that everybody else is also downloading at the same time, for normal downloads it's nowhere near that slow for me. My PS3 has a wired connection to my router, and my provider is Comcast; I downloaded the Burnout Paradise demo to test it and it took under 13 minutes. I'd be upset too if it took 2.5 hours.

I used to have my wireless router a foot from the PS3 getting a 100% signal and downloads were still ass slow. It's PSN, not "user error." I did the same "Burnout" test slop did to the exact same results back in January.

Wireless has nothing to do with it. The wireless speeds in your house from device to router are faster than your broadband connection anyway. The bottleneck is the speed from outside your house.

Same here. My wireless router is right next to the PS3, I have 100% signal, and any downloads or updates from the PSN are stupid slow.

In theory, yes; but if there is a problem with the setup, or if the PS3 simply has a fundamental problem with the way it handles wireless connections, it could be causing the slowdowns.

The only evidence I have is anecdotal; a friend had his set up with wireless and was having very slow downloads. He said he switched it to wired and it sped up.

That's why I was asking if anybody with a wired connection is having the problem. Is anybody with a wireless connection NOT having the problem?

Obviously some of us aren't having the problem. That's why I asked my original questions to try to identify some of the variables:

Mine is wired into a bridge, so it's PS3 ethernet but still technically wireless. I suppose that would avoid any possible inherit PS3 WiFi issue. While I don't use the PS3 very frequently at all. I don't download games or even Home. I get updates and trailers if I'm on. I get BD Live updates.

What I have experienced is slow, but I haven't done an A/B using my current setup against pure PS3 WiFi. I have done an A/B with downloading a demo back in 2007 with my 360 and the 360 blew it away.

I'm wired, and have no speed issues. Its quite fast, aside from thursday evenings.

Even if the wireless connection was causing the problem, it's still not user error.

Exactly. My 360 is wireless and it blazes! All the computers in my house are wireless and we all get over 15,000 down.

My experience exactly. I started out wireless and it was average speed. When I plugged in the network cable, it's as fast as my computer now. I didn't download the BP demo, but nothing I d/l takes more than 10-15 minutes.

Of course, I suppose it's possible that we have the secret super-fast PS3s.

My Xbox and PS3 reside in a rack that now has my wireless router sitting directly on top of. It never used to be this way, so I already had the wireless adapter for my 360, and continue to use it as I have never had any issues.

Prior to buying my PS3, I kept hearing how PS3 includes WiFi and how crappy it is for MS to not do so for the 360. People were using that as a justification for the increased price of PS3 over the 360, etc.

Yet, everytime I bring up the weird network issues (errors, slow downloads, etc) I get on my PS3, everyone I know that has one says "Oh, you have to hard wire". WTF?

Both systems are literally less than 3' from my router and my 360 flies and the PS3 is a dog for any updates, etc.

Yesterday I turned on my PS3 to "play" after a long time. I've turned it on before to play blu-ray movies...
First, there is one message from The Bus that wanted to be my friend, I hesitated a few seconds and then click Accept.
So, now let's check what's new in the PSN Store. Nothing really interesting, I saw a Pulse video that called my attention so I downloaded it.
I download a lot of videos from the PSN store, since it has a lot of developer videos, behind the scenes and stuff like that I really like to watch from time to time. So I went to check in XMB what videos I had pending to watch. BTW, I love that I can organize them in folders, that way I can have a "NEW" folder were I can keep all the videos I haven't watched. There are folders for my kids videos, movie trailers, game trailers, etc. So that's a really huge advantage over Xbox.
So, I watched the trailers for the "new" Pain add-on, the movie studio one, and decided to buy it. It downloaded really fast, also the Pulse video was already done (It looked really good. Really good production values, better than anything I've seen in Xbox... or even Qore, but I'll talk about Qore later).
So, let's play some Pain, hmm an update is needed. OK, install it. Then my wife called me for dinner... and to make a long story short, it took almost an hour to download and install the patch! For a PSN game! I think I read somewhere that it needs to patch the add-on too, so in my case it needed to patch the main game and the movie studio add-on, so maybe that's why it took so much time. So I had 2 hours to play in my PS3, but half of that time the screen was just waiting there for a patch to download/install... for a PSN game!

About Qore. I saw that I had downloaded the free December edition, so I checked it. I still remember that I thought about paying for an annual subscription. Good thing that I didn't do it.

I don't think anybody was saying that built-in wireless was a justification for the price difference. Especially when the Wii has built in wifi. As does the DS. The DS!!!

802.11b w/ no WPA can suck it!

I downloaded Pulse and didn't like it. I thought it would be like an online mag (though I guess that's what Qore is for), but it was basically a 10 minute long ad for movies and games. Which is still better than Qore, which is a 20 minute long ad with 5 minutes of content that you have to pay for.

And it was still crappy for MS to not include wifi, then sell their add-on for 100 bucks. 100 bucks! You'd think we'd get a price drop by now, or an updated version. At least there are other options for wireless connectivity.

I've been only wireless since I turned it on. Have downloaded a bunch of game demos and stuff, and it seemed pretty speedy. No more than a few minutes for anything.

Everyone that says their PS3 is a foot from their wireless router and they are getting slow speeds, why in the world are you using wireless? Is it really that hard to get a 1 or 2 foot ethernet cable to run to your PS3? Are you doing it just to be stubborn? I promise, if you hard wire your PS3 instead of trying to use the wireless, it will be a lot faster. If you insist on using wireless when wired is an easy option, you shouldn't complain about the speeds. And if you say "it includes wireless, so I should be able to use it", that doesn't mean you have to.

My first PS3 was the 20GB model. I already had a wireless bridge, so I didn't need the wireless built-in. I traded that one in for the MGS4 80GB bundle and tried the wireless at first. It wasn't nearly as fast, so I went back to the bridge. I now have no speed issues. Also, the people complaining about slow PSN downloads, the PS3 has a neat feature that was introduced a few months ago that allows you to set the PS3 to turn off when it's finished downloading. Just go to Turn Off on the Users section of the XMB and when you click it, if you have anything downloading it will ask if you want to turn off the system automatically when the downloads are done. It will also automatically install anything that needs installing before it turns the system off. This seems to work a lot faster than just downloading and installing things manually. So on Thursdays when the Store updates, I just do whatever I was going to do on my PS3 and check the store last, and set it to turn off after finishing whatever I want to download.

I have to say aside from the occasional network dropout (like, every few months), my PS3 has worked flawlessly. Maybe it has something to do with WEP/WPA/WEPPA/WHOO or whatever "security" (i.e. door leaned shut) you have on your router. I don't have any.

The PSN network, however, can be really, really slow.

The 17 people with a PS3 on this forum need to stick together!

I got a PM here from a user a couple weeks ago asking if I ever check my PSN messages since he sent a friend request that I hadn't accepted. I checked it that night and had 10 pending requests.