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"Legitimate" modding of PS3 and DVD

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"Legitimate" modding of PS3 and DVD

Post by sierra2469alpha » Wed, 02 Jul 2008 9:06 am

Hi friends - no posts from us for a while as we've been overseas (again!).

Our PS3 and Sony DVD player are from Australia. I'd dearly love to be able to get them "modded" to:

1. for the PS3, mod to Region A (from Region B), as it's next to impossible to get decent BluRay movie releases for Region B.
2. for the DVD player - mod to region free (so we can watch DVD's we purchased back in AUS as well as buy new ones here in our new home).

I'll leave aside ethics and morality here as it's a legitimate need - I guess the manufacturers didn't figure that some of us are global citizens and move countries (by choice, not because we're being chased out!!)

Anyway, if anyone has any experiences, good or bad, with a shop offering this I'll buy you a beer or three for your efforts!

Cheers all, P & C

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Post by sillingw » Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:37 pm

There is a shop at ground level in Sin Lim square that sells region free PS3's I'd suggest a conversation with them to start with - Despite the bad reputation, there are some bright technical people in Sin Lim on this subject.

I got round the DVD problem by building a home theatre PC, I then ripped all my DVD's to a network storage disk and I can rip any region DVD - I stay reasonably legal as I own all the DVD's, But I do prefer region 1 and order from Amazon as well as buying local ones on impulse also having lived in US for 12 years, i had a similar problem

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Post by sierra2469alpha » Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:42 pm

Hi Silling - thanks. Yeh my main concern is ensuring BluRay quality. The only BluRay player I have is in the PS3, which is Region B (Australia etc.)., so hence my problem.

I'll wander off to SL and ask around. Not sure if I'll get ripped off, though!

Thanks again!

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Post by sillingw » Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:01 pm

the only time I have been taken at sin lim, was in my early days when I would impulse buu. Now I don't take any money with me until I know exactly what I want then I just play them off against each other - if they try and upsell anything, i just walk away. I only have blu-ray in my PS3 as well, my main point is that I do not see a tremendous improvement from my standard dvd's even though I have a very high end system and screen - just didn't meet my expectations. Anyway, if you don't like the price of replacing the chip, you don't have to buy, my guess is it will not be that expensive

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Post by sierra2469alpha » Mon, 07 Jul 2008 3:55 pm

Thanks sillingw - have decided to bite the bullet and go with an alternative. MOur PS3 came free with the TV we bought before being deployed here. I have a business associate up here tomorrow, so I am giving it to him to take back to a friend in AUS, who is paying me 50% of the value. She gets a PS3 at 1/2 price, I get 50% for something I didn't buy, but can put towards a local PS3 that's DVD Region 1/BR Region A.

I think all in all, a not-too-bad solution where everybody wins.

THanks awfully for your suggestions - my final solution came only yesterday!

Out of interst, how do you do the region-free thing with your DVD - Our equipment here is WinXP Pro and the DVD recorders on them allow only 5 region changes before one would have to effectively rebuild the machine? I assume you had a few long days of converting them? Did you need special software?

Many thanks, P

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Post by Jeppo » Mon, 07 Jul 2008 4:48 pm

Simplest solution for the DVD player is to buy a local one that is already region free.

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Post by sierra2469alpha » Mon, 07 Jul 2008 4:54 pm

Hi Jeppo - was kind of hoping that the SIN release of the PS3 would play non-Australian DVD's (ie Region 1), and the existing DVD Surround system (from AUS) will play the DVD's we bought in OZ) I.e. Region 2.

Cheers/P

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Post by sillingw » Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:16 am

Jeppo, the DVD's come region free, but the first time you play a DVD, you have to set the region - then if you play another region's DVD, you have to reset - as SA says, you can only do 5 time.

What I do is use a ripper (dvddecrypter, dvdshrink or AnyDVD) and Rip the DVD's to my hard disk - They do not care which region as they strip off all the protection anyway. I have a large amount of disk space on my NAS device and they play a lot better anyway (It's hard for my younkids to get digital signals dirty) I do buy all my DVD's, so I am pseudo legal although the industry does frown on the practice - I do not distribute my files, nor download. but have all my music, photo's and DVD's stored this way and played thru vista ultimate media center, a HD plasma screen and a 7.1 audio system (Boys toys, my wife calls them, although she uses the system more than I do).

Hope this clarifies

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Post by Jeppo » Tue, 08 Jul 2008 1:01 pm

sillingw wrote:Jeppo, the DVD's come region free, but the first time you play a DVD, you have to set the region - then if you play another region's DVD, you have to reset - as SA says, you can only do 5 time.
Are we talking about a computer's dvd player? Or a standalone player? (you know like the one plugged straight into a tv)

If it's in a computer then you can also change the firmware so that it is region free permanently. I've done this on 2 of my dvd players and never had a problem, but then why would I want to watch dvds on my computer when it's so easy just to buy a standalone dvd player.

If it's standalone, then you don't need to do anything since they come region free and can't be changed.
sillingw wrote:What I do is use a ripper (dvddecrypter, dvdshrink or AnyDVD) and Rip the DVD's to my hard disk - They do not care which region as they strip off all the protection anyway. I have a large amount of disk space on my NAS device and they play a lot better anyway (It's hard for my younkids to get digital signals dirty) I do buy all my DVD's, so I am pseudo legal although the industry does frown on the practice - I do not distribute my files, nor download. but have all my music, photo's and DVD's stored this way and played thru vista ultimate media center, a HD plasma screen and a 7.1 audio system (Boys toys, my wife calls them, although she uses the system more than I do).

Hope this clarifies
A lot of work when you could've just bought a dvd player and plugged it staright into the tv and not have to worry about ripping/getting caught by the police/spending 5 times as much for the same functionality.

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Post by sillingw » Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:23 am

Thanks Jeppo for reminding me, yes I remember the web site that had the firmware change for region free dvd on a computer - It just scared the heck out of me when I first read it so I never got round to investigating further. This way, I have easy access to my whole collection, I can distribute them around the whole house, (There are 4 screens) I'm not messing around trying to find the DVD - I don't get the hanging, stalling that a physical DVD often gives, I can edit double disk movies into one stream (e.g. Lord of the Rings) I can change the aspect ratio to fit my screen, I need a computer anyway and I do have a DVD player - just don't use it a lot

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Post by Jeppo » Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:37 am

Silling

It's not that bad. I've flashed a couple and never had any problems, adn if it gets fudged a replacement doesn't cost that much. But then with your setup, you don't really need it do you? :D

Another way that I do streaming is through my ps2, not as fancy as you but it gets it done, and to be honest I don't use it that much, just wanted to see if I could :D

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Post by sillingw » Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:01 pm

I have a PS3 on the system as well, but never used it for streaming. All my data is stored on two NAS devices (about 4.5 TB) but with a RAID configuration that eats up about 40% of that. The main benefit is my nearly 5 year old kid can drive it - the whole DVD libarary is available and I have a utility that goes out to the internet, dowloads the DVD covers, details and actors, so my kid can just scroll thru all the covers and click on the one that he wants. I had a similar setup in the US so learnt a lot and then refined it when I set this one up here. The DVD is not so important to me as my office computer has region 1 and region 3 DVD R/W and my Home theatre computer has region 3 - I still do buy from amazon and locally so I still do rip the odd movie. It's more often for musice though, which we like to play outside in the garden where we have dinner every night

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Post by sierra2469alpha » Wed, 09 Jul 2008 2:51 pm

Silling - are you using DLNA to pump your content out from your NAS to your PS3 or media centre? That's what I'm doing.

I also RADI5'd my Buffalo Terastation Live 4TB box.

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Post by sillingw » Thu, 10 Jul 2008 1:05 pm

I'm watching DLNA and a lot of my setup is compliant, but not really using yet, no real requirement, what are you finding advanatgeous

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Post by sierra2469alpha » Thu, 10 Jul 2008 1:29 pm

Hmmm..well I guess my major "like" is that I can put the TeraStation in with the rest of the it gear like cablemodem and router, then stream it to the PS3. So therefore, it's a cabling issue for me, plus I don't have to buy an additional "tuner" to connect to the TV to pick up the stream - I just use the PS3.

Dislikes? The sofwtare is crap - Bufallo bought the company that made this particular version of DLNA software - PCast - and it's a bit cluggy. For example, there is an option to have it automatically update the content list, but that doesn't seem to work - you need to force it to do a manual check. No biggy, though - just a pain when putting new content on there.

HTH!

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