Watchdog says it has been contacted by over 150 PS3 owners whose consoles no longer work, all of them displaying the same fault indicator - a yellow flashing light. If outside of the one year PS3 warranty period, Sony charges £128 to rectify the problem.
The show spoke with a number of independent console repair businesses who said that the "yellow light of death" can be repaired by heating up specific parts of the PS3s circuit board in a process called solder re-flow, which is commonly used to repair fractured connections.
In a statement issued to the BBC, Sony acknowledged that around 12,500 of the 2.5 million PS3s sold in the UK have broken in this way, but the company strongly denied that there is a single fault afflicting all of these consoles.
"We entirely refute the suggestion that PS3 consoles have an inherent defect or other design issue...Of all PS3's sold in the UK to date, fewer than one half of one percent of units have been reported as failing in circumstances where the yellow indicator is illuminated," the company said.
"The phrase "yellow light of death" has been adopted by certain members of the online community to describe the situation in which PS3 systems have shut down following the illumination of the yellow light on the PS3's front panel. The yellow light indicator is simply a non-specific fault indicator that can be triggered in a range of different circumstances.
"As regards the purported solution to the supposed "yellow light" issue adopted by commercial repairers, effecting a reflow correctly, to the required engineering standards and in a properly controlled static-safe environment requires the use of an infra-red BGA soldering station, which must be set up and programmed to run at very specific temperature profiles. Each such station costs tens of thousands of pounds.
“Consequently, even if a yellow indicator/system shutdown were triggered by a soldering issue, it would be misleading for you to suggest to viewers that the basic solder reflow process you describe....is necessarily a reliable procedure when performed in that way, or that it can properly be done cheaply and quickly.
"It is standard practice for businesses in the electronics and many other consumer products sectors to provide free servicing/repairs only during the warranty period, but to charge for out of warranty repairs. It is therefore unfair to criticise Sony Computer Entertainment UK in this way."