PSP - some questions

deadl0ck

Hi all, From what I've been reading it seem like quite a few of you are importing PSPs from the US or Japan. I have a few questions:

(1) Where are the best online deals ofr importing - I'm only really familiar with Lik-sang

(2) Are PSP games region free, i.e will any PSP game play on any PSP ?

(3) For movies - I assume you just encode the movie you want to watch and throw it on the memory stick, or is there, region issues with movies also ?

(4) Will any sony compatible memory stick work with the PSP or is it a PSP specific stick (as I'd like to buy the memory stick on eBay or somewhere as cheap) ?

Any answers / advice would be appreciated !

Thanks !!!

koneko

The games (at the moment) are region free, but UMD movies will be region coded. You can put movies on memory sticks though and play those, no region protection there of course, but ripping from DVD and converting for use on the PSP while possible is technically illegal (not that that'll stop us, lol).

A PSP from Japan will be Region 2, so you can still play UMD movies from Europe (or should be able to). A US one would be Region 1 though, so you can only play Region 1 UMD movies on it. I don't really plan on buying any UMD movies to be honest, I just buy DVDs and convert and stick on a memory stick.

You can use any memory stick as long as it's Duo or Duo Pro. I have a Sandisk 512MB one and it works perfectly (bought on Ebay aswell).

savemejebus

Will the Jap region 2 movie umds will be compatible with european region 2s? A friend of mine brought his ps2 over from Japan (years ago) and couldn't play any euro region2 films or games, i think it had something to do with NTSC but am not sure.

koneko

Were those games though that your friend tried, or movies? I'm talking about UMD movies rather than games. The PSP is region free as far as games go. From what I've read, it's region locked for movies but Japan and Euro both use Region2 so it should be technically possible.

hairball

don't know about the u mds the games are def compatible across all three (us, jap, euro) psps in singleplayer modes anyways
as far as importers playasia and liksang are the two I'm checking out

dearg_doom

Yeah you're right, the Japanese games/movies your mate tried were Region2 NTSC, while euro ones are region2 PAL

NTSC and PAL are the different TV resolution standards we have:

PAL has more lines(and higher detail) than NTSC - which explains why all PAL console games have black borders above and below the screen.

NTSC refreshes at 60Hz
PAL refreshes at 50Hz

Which is why PAL games are always slower than NTSC games.



EDIT: that was a fairly half-assed explanation:)

savemejebus

koneko wrote:

Were those games though that your friend tried, or movies?

sorry i meant movie umds,we only tried euro region 2 movies (he didn't like european games) and we figured it should work because of the dvds and movies both being region 2 but no joy

deadl0ck

So, can anybody recommend some good sites to import from then ?

CiDeRmAn

up to now i have suggested dvdsoon but would say wait til launch day and see just how many people have had good service.

Mr. Fancypants

CiDeRmAn wrote:

up to now i have suggested dvdsoon but would say wait til launch day and see just how many people have had good service.

Was a quote from DVDSoon on another forum saying that if you ordered in March it may be several weeks before your PSP is shipped. My order is Feb 15th so i can only hope its in the first batch