Black screen system freeze on PS2 in quest, "Picture Perfect"

Not sure if this have been posted in the Tech Support forum or this one, but I figured this was a better place for reporting things of this nature.

Platform: PS2

ISP: Cogeco cable

World: Siren

NPC: Umberto (in Bastok Markets)

Steps:

During the first fellow limit break quest, "Picture Perfect" I encountered two instances where the game froze during cutscenes. For the quest, the NPC Diederik asks you to choose between going to Umberto or going to Angelica. I chose to go to Umberto.

Both times it froze were when I was talking to Umberto and the cutscene was switching from my character's scene to my NPC fellow's scene (when my my fellow and I try to "contact" eachother with the Signal Pearl). This occurred both in the first cutscene with Umberto, where he asked me to find a Bal Shell, as well as in the cutscene when I returned the Bal Shell to him. This required a hard-reset of the system both times.

Hello Nicknick,

We're sorry to hear about the black screen result you've been receiving during the Picture Perfect cut-scenes. This is most likely related to a technical issue. If this is still occurring, we suggest contacting our support center at the following link:
http://support.na.square-enix.com/ > FINAL FANTASY XI > Contact > Get Support.
Support Center is open Monday through Friday between 9:00am to 6:00pm PST.
We will be moving this over to the technical support section for additional suggestions from our Community.
If you are still experiencing this problem after these suggestions, you are welcome to post another thread in the "In-Game Bugs" section detailing your results and we will be able to provide some additional support.

Thank you,
SQUARE ENIX Moderator

I too am having the same problem that nicknick is having wat can I do to solve this problem. Ive tried to do the cs from a friends sytem and they get the same result. I wa told its something to do with the connection to use a wired connection straight to the modem or router. I havent tried it yet but not sure it its goin to fix anything. Thank You.

What S-E employees won't tell you is that PS2 getting stuck in a scene change like that is a long-standing (and long-unresolved) issue with the PS2 version. A quick search will show you numerous other attempts to report the same bug, along with another bug that leaves PS2 players stuck while waiting to be presented with a choice menu from NPC dialog.

Before this thread gets locked with the usual "Thank you for reporting this, check back with the support website periodically" that this issue has been served with for years, know that the only solution you'll ever really have is to move on to an Xbox 360 or a PC.

I had numerous similar problems (PS3/PS2 emulator) while doing many WotG and past nation (Windy in particular) missions. Never got any SE solutions to this problem. Had to resort to getting a friend use his guest login to enter as me on his PC (was on phone with him to give him security token code) and spam-enter me thru the CS. Terrible support for the PS2/3 platform is now something I have grown to expect in all aspect of this game (I freeze 50% of the time I go thru a Cavernous Maw or Runic Portal), its sad but true.