Region free consoles

[Jei]

Oh, and the Amiga CD32 - What a thing!

[fahrenheit]

As has been explained, PAL and NTSC relate to video standards. The regional information is merely a code on the disc and matched to the console eeprom chip. Region coding and video standards are inter-related but operate independantly of each other.

For example, NTSC US and NTSC J are technically the same video standard (where consoles are concerned). Both consoles output the same video signal.
But the softwares that are designated with these labels are not interchangable between the machines.

Another good example of this is the way in which Xbox's can be made to be any combination of video standard and region. When people softmod their PAL Xbox to output an NTSC video signal (inorder to get High Def) they still retain their consoles ability to play region 4 games. If you wished, you could have an Xbox that plays only NTSCJ games (region 2) but with a PAL video signal.

What the publishers have decided to do instead of using the actual region code on the game disc and covers etc is to use the PAL, NTSC/UC and NTSCJ designations rather than the more acurate Region 1 (NTSC/UC) Region 2 (NTSCJ) Region 4 (PAL) labels.

The 360 is no different in this regard. Its merely a couple of bytes on the eeprom that determine what region and video standards your console conforms to.

[Commander Marklar]

But All regions 3do can display PAL AND NTSC signals for display, hence not being locked to either region

Nope, it's still doing PAL -- it's hard coded that way. There's a couple of games that pick up on the region too, display different logos (don't forget language too!) There's region there, I think Powers Kingdom is one but I'm not 100% sure. There's no region lockout but there's a difference.

A really pedantic difference, mind

[Jei]

My tv's display shows the input it's having (ie NTSC/PAL) and on my US 3do when I play my Pal SSFXT the screen flicks to PAL and I get lovely borders (Tis an FZ1 model) if that makes any difference - There's an ever so slight chance that this is something to do with the RGB modification thats been done

[fallenangle]

I always understood the way the coding on the discs worked was to tell the machine on boot up whether the game was the same region as the console and if not prevent loading In effect a lock/key system.

By using a freeloader type disc or mod chip I thought you were blocking that regional coding on the disc and simply replacing it with the right one.

However, even with this disc unlocking done surely if there is such a thing as a console that is regionally locked it still wouldn't output the right display signal. As an example, why does a PAL PS/PSOne designed to display 625 lines (or whatever) at 50Hz have the inate ability to run NTSC games at 525/60Hz?

[will2003]

There are fundamental hardware differences between some machines in the different regions - for example, the NTSC PS2s can be chipped to play all games including PAL, but even with a modchip that supports multiregion DVD playback will not work properly on an NTSC PS2 - they have different video memory to the PAL consoles, and physically cannot process and display a PAL DVD movie regardless of any mod.

A truly region free console would be one that booted games from any region, had an inbulit worldwide voltage PSU, and would output true NTSC or PAL video, not a pseudo signal, at both 50 or 60hz, based entirely on the game or film that you asked it to play. Short of meeting all those requirements, then you can't call it multi-region at all.