I played Iron Man on BR last night and had it crash on me twice, which is the first BR to do that on me. Think it's the disc or the updates fault?

I played it before the update without any crashing or anything but haven't tried since I updated last night. During which particular parts did it crash?

It would be nice if you could tell it to download them all, then install them, then shut off.

Psn cards - bad idea
 

So, I made a mistake last night. I didn't know it was a mistake at the time though. I bought 2 $20 PSN cards with store credit at Blockbuster. I had to pay tax on the transaction but didn't think too much of it. I then redeemed the card and made a purchase to take advantage of the temporary price drop on Siren. To my 'horror' I was charged tax again. My $40 in PSN cards cost me an extra $3+ in tax.

If purchasing the cards was like purchasing a gift card, then we wouldn't pay tax at the register but tax on the PSN purchase, which I am fine with. However, since they are selling them like Wii Points cards and Microsoft Points cards, you are paying tax upon purchase and then tax on using them which I think is total BS.

If you live in an area with no sales tax or buy the cards from Amazon, then carry on. Otherwise avoid the cards unless they are a gift or you get a really good deal on them.

I also wasted about 20 minutes talking to support at the Playstation store and went two levels up the chain of command. All of it was a complete exercise in futility.

Is this because PSN doesn't have its own form of currency like Wii Points and Microsoft Points, but rather straight cash money?

Paying tax on the cards at POS makes sense, obviously. But not if you're going to have to pay tax on the $$$ purchase on the online marketplace.

When I bought my PSN card at Best Buy there was no tax charged it was a straight $20. I think you got screwed over Shumway.

Just went to the bestbuy website to try to order one and got the submission step and no tax is assessed there either. This looks like it may just be a company-wide Blockbuster screwup. I can handle paying tax on the purchase at the PSN side, but, not tax at point of sale for the card AND tax at purchase on the PSN side.

Scene 1 right before they were attacked and scene 2 towards the end of it. Thing is I fast forwarded past the skipped parts with no problem. I'm going to test it gain tonight to see if it was just some random glitch in the matrix.

Called the Blockbuster back on the phone and they stated that they shouldn't have charged me tax. They will refund the tax there when I go back in with the receipt. I guess we can all go back to buying PSN cards if good deals are offered, etc. I was pretty livid last night.

Good news that everything is going to work out and that I should be aware that PSN cards are supposed to be non-taxable. Thanks for the story, shumway.

Last time I used the function, it installed everything, too!

Sweet. I'll have to try it. Would have been helpful last night when I downloaded and installed all 12 eps of Siren.

A couple of newbie PS3 questions:

Is there a setting to speed up demo downloads or are they always super slow? I am used to downloading a demo in minutes on Xbox Live but every demo I have downloaded from PSN takes 30 minutes to an hour (and then adding insult to injury, several minutes to install after the super long download wait).

Do I have something set wrong? My downloads on Live still only take minutes and it is the same exact connection. Any else have this issue?

Also...I saw how you sign in to the PSN automatically when you turn the PS3 on but I can't seem to get any real "notifications" in the notifications box on the upper right. It just keeps running the same tag stating what notifications are and how to get them. I have my setting turned on to receive them (I believe...the instructions they give are worded a little differently on the actual PS3 interface).

So are they real notifications or is someone pulling my leg? What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

You aren't doing anything wrong. Welcome to the land of free online. ;)

Don't download on Thursday evenings. That's the only time its slow for me.

:shrug:

It's not even slow on Thursday nights for me. I downloaded the MGS4 demo last night in less than 30 minutes. Of course, it's 1.4 GB, so I didn't expect it to download any faster than that.

It's been any night or day, not just a certain time. That's why I thought I may have had a setting wrong or something.

Anyone have an answer for my notifications questions?

Played the demo of Warhawk last night and that game was fucking awesome! Wondered why I haven't heard more about it. I was extremely impressed.

30mins your lucky it takes me a hour to download a demo off of PSN.

I always thought it was a regional thing, my downloads are slow as shit 95% of the time.

I downloaded the Mirror's Edge demo last night and it took maybe 10 minutes. It took almost as long to install as it did to download.

Warhawk is a great game. I played the demo a couple of weeks ago and went out to pick it up pretty quickly thereafter. Target has it with the headset for $30. Wish I had known that before spending $30 for just the game at Best Buy.

And Wal-Mart is going to have the game w/o the headset this weekend for $19.99 (along with a couple other greatest hits)

Heres an idea, dont sit around and wait for the demo to dl! I just get the ones i want and do other stuff. I have no idea how long it takes to dl or install a game.

Don't totally know what you mean by "other stuff," but just as a heads up, items from the PSN store cannot download while you are playing disc-based games (and maybe downloaded games as well, but I'm not sure on that one.)

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure you can play games as long as they aren't being installed.

Um... no, I'm not sure, anymore.

It definitely doesn't work during online games. But I feel I've noticed the downloads stopping even with offline games (but maybe just the ones that have an online component?).