Playstation 3 And Regions.

[bkkvillan]

sorry if its been asked before but if i buy a ps3 in thailand will it play games i buy in ireland or are they regionalised? also do they have ps3 arcades in some malls like they did in with ps2? the game mainly played was winnng 11. the best on was at big c across from central world plaza.

cheers,

UTV,SOTC

[al warner]

The games are region free. The blue ray I think is restricted.

[MrSnrang]

sorry if its been asked before but if i buy a ps3 in thailand will it play games i buy in ireland or are they regionalised? also do they have ps3 arcades in some malls like they did in with ps2? the game mainly played was winnng 11. the best on was at big c across from central world plaza.

cheers,

UTV,SOTC

The game shop in Lido theater in Siam Square has a few PS3's.

[gunnyd]

If it is anything like the PS2 I wouldn't count on being able to play games or watch movies outside the region you buy it from. Sony is at the forefront when it comes to DRM (Digital Rights Management) They have enabled their Blu-Ray players to disable themselves and the TV their hooked up to if you violate copyright (yes that includes region encoding). Google HDCP and you will see what I mean. You will most likely have to install or have someone install a mod chip to get it to work.

[mmkin]

What about PAL blu-ray games? Will that work on NTSC PS3 since games are suppose to be region free?

[nikster]

Isn't the PS3 supposed to be HDTV? E.g. no PAL or NTSC...

From my experience, most TVs switch between PAL and NTSC automatically, and the standards don't include feedback from the TV. Therefore any machine will simply output either PAL or NTSC, the TV will detect it and adjust to it, and everything will work. That's my experience with an old hacked PS 1 playing both NTSC and PAL games on the same TV. Worked fine, though the PAL versions were slower due to more pixels which was lame. Playing Tekken 3 in PAL was like slow motion compared to NTSC.

[smacko]

okay.. just to clears things up..

for games the PS3 will play disks from any region... (australia pal PS3 can play games from US NTSC etc)

but for movies (blue-ray) will only work on the home region (eg australia PS3 (pal) only PAL blue-ray movies will work)..

so to answer your question...

you can buy PS3 games from anywhere in the world and play them on your PS3...

enjoy

[gunnyd]

Isn't the PS3 supposed to be HDTV? E.g. no PAL or NTSC...

From my experience, most TVs switch between PAL and NTSC automatically, and the standards don't include feedback from the TV. Therefore any machine will simply output either PAL or NTSC, the TV will detect it and adjust to it, and everything will work. That's my experience with an old hacked PS 1 playing both NTSC and PAL games on the same TV. Worked fine, though the PAL versions were slower due to more pixels which was lame. Playing Tekken 3 in PAL was like slow motion compared to NTSC.

There is no "world standard" when it come to HDTV. North America and Mexico use the ATSC standard, and most of Europe and Asia use the DVB standard. The only unifying element is the use of HDMI cables for connections between HD equipment e.g. Satellite recievers, PS3s, X-Box 360s. The ripple in the story come with the implimentation of the HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection)

which puts current DRM protection on games and movies to shame. I have a ATSC standard HDTV, but since it was made in 2004 it is not compliant, so I get to buy a new TV if I decide to go HD-DVD or BD. Personally I will continue to download HD content x264 720p and 1080p rips from the internet and hook my laptop to the DVI on my TV.

[Gluestick]

While games aren't region coded, some are finicky for online multiplayer. I mentioned before that Resistance will only work online with both the game and machine being from the same region. Call of Duty 4 was having problems due to the patch for the region 1 game coming out before the European patch came out. That made it impossible to play with friends that did not have the game from the same region until the patch was released world wide. These issues are more the problem of the game developers rather than Sony's.

If you have PS2 games, you will need the PS3 region from the correct region to play those games.

As mentioned above, the PS3 is region coded for Blueray. It is coded for DVDs also. I can't play my region 1 DVDs in my region 3 PS3.

Edited February 24, 2008 by Gluestick