Platstation 2

[spannersatcx]

I have a trip to Hong Kong coming in the New Year I was wondering if anybody has any idea as to whether a PS2 from there would be ok in the UK. I'm not worried about the DVD and Internet access as I already have those. I suspect the output is NTSC but that's not a problem either. I guess the question is would the games from the UK work on it, or do you have to chip it.

[spannersatcx]

anybody?

[bodger]

Are psx games "regionalised" like dvd's,so that the manufacturer can apply some control to their sale and release.If so then I suspect that you would have to "chip" it

[Plastic Paddy]

This is my first post on pprune, so I hope it it is well received, I'm easing myself in gently, with a post on Playstations, before I go on to aircraft related matters.

As far as I am aware, the Asian Playstation 2's would need Chipping, to work with European Games, it's not an issue of the ouput, but that the games are actually 'regionalised'. The chipping was realatively easy on the PS 1's but I don't know anyone who has done it to a PS 2. I have seen chipped Japanese PS'2's offered for sale on the internet so it is definitely possible.

I hope this is of some use to you.

[spannersatcx]

Thanks

[bodger]

try a company <A HREF="http://www.mailuk.com" TARGET="_blank">http://www.mailuk.com</A> .They advertise chipping for uk playstation 2 so maybe they could help?

[Squiddley]

spanners,

Be very careful when looking for a playstation in HK. Whilst I haven't looked into PSX2, I did get burned buying an older one for my family in UK. It worked fine here, but when they plugged it in there, it didn't work. Although voltages and formats are the same here & there, something happened http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/frown.gif

Many of them are grey or parallel imports (locally known as 'water goods') from Japan, which have been tweaked for voltage and have a chip to allow them to use copied and/or PAL games to work. Japan is an NTSC region, and HK is PAL.

With the orignial playstation, some machines had to be "booted up" with a CD before pputting the game CD into it. Not clear on the purpose, but suspect it's the NTSC/PAL issue.

I have seen retailers in places like Golden Centre with hundreds of these things littering the corridors. Quite what they do I don't know, but they unpack all the individual components and separate them into piles, then box them back up again. Wouldn't surprise me if you get a combination of a real machine from Japan, and fake (but serviceable) controllers from China or something like that.

I don't see that anything will be different for the next generation of machines, so do check it out and look at the documentation. Also, if there's NO warranty, it's almost certainly grey, and if there's only only warranty in HK, then it's a "for asia/HK market only" product.

Hope this is helpful, and if you need more, post/email and I'll check with some chums who are more into it.

RGDS

[spannersatcx]

Thanks Squiddley, I think I'll give it a miss.

[Squiddley]

Spanners,

This from today's paper, confirming you're wise to wait (unfortunately).

<A HREF="http://technology.scmp.com/personal/Daily/20001218073243506.asp?Section=Main" TARGET="_blank">http://technology.scmp.com/personal/Daily/20001218073243506.asp?Section=Main</A>

Best wishes.