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Region-free PS3
An anonymous reader writes "IGN writes that "In a QA session following the platform keynote address at GDC 2006 this morning, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President Phil Harrison confirmed what was heavily demanded for import gamers all over the world and yet previously thought unthinkable for a major corporation: the PS3 will be region-free for gaming." There's no chance that the MPAA members would allow the same for movies but at least it's a step in the right direction."
One of the biggest reasons mod chips tend to be "iffy" is that, while playing illegally-copied games is illegal, playing out-of-region games isn't. This move may buy them more than it costs, since that's one less reason to give for the legitimacy of mod chips. Now if they could just do something about that pesky "backup" excuse.
Region locks should never have existed in first place, they are only there so different publishers can publish the same game in different regions and to enable price fixing.
No matter why this was done, whether to make sure mod chips don't have any legal functions or to really do something useful, it had to be done. Region locks are attempts to suppress international trade and competition. They have been ruled illegal in some countries and are not protected by any DMCA-like laws. There should have been some fines over region locks but well, knowing the corrupt governments we have it'd end up being 5.95$ total.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
This announcement seems all flash and no substance -- Europe will STILL have to have a separate set of games because they use PAL instead of NTSC anyway. What this *might* mean is that more Japanese-market games will be playable by NA gamers. Now don't get me wrong, that's a good thing, but it's hard not to think that the real reason for this is Sony wanting to save money where it can by not creating unnecessary "editions" of the same games.
My sig is too lon
Root-kit free, no.
Even moreso, who cares about stability if Linux allows the moon people to make your computer explode?
(PS3 games will not be locked to anyone, stop repeating that rumour, it has been denied already)
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
One cannot help but wonder if the CD copy protection disaster has taught them something. Look at the MP3 download compensation they offered, and now this.
What's up with Sony nowadays?
In other news, Beelzebub has ordered a remote start and block heater for his Lamborghini Diablo.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Actually, what he really said is that the machine itself will not have any region restrictions, but it would be up to publishers whether they want to restrict their games to certain TV formats etc. Which they probably will for many major releases.
Still if a publisher, especially from Japan, knows they aren't going to publish a game in the US/Euro they can leave it region free and let importers have more fun. Still a good thing. Lets hope they get the system off the ground, so far my impression is one of a very expensive hype machine that has to play catch up to Xbox Live. Still, I'm all for having two (three??) great next-gen systems in my living room.
"who cares about region-coding when PS3 will have games locked to the first owner?"
do you have any proof of this?
Where the hell did this come from? Link to some proof?
After the rootkit fiasco, it's starting to sound like Sony is trying to be more consumer friendly. With this, and the no downsampling Blu-Ray analogue output, I might actually consider buying things made by Sony.
Perhaps Sony, touched with the debacles it's been involved in recently (the Rootkit being the most well known), has decided its time to rely on a modicum of common sense. After all, the market has done without regional coding since the dawn of time (well, until a few years ago) and prospered.
The simplest solution being the best (as is often the case) says remove the complexity that doesn't really gain anything, and see what you have. The copy protection on a console.. I can live with that.. I've never been that interested in backups, as I take great care with the disks.. I have, however, been most peeved when buying region coded items that refuse to play just because I'm in the 'wrong country'.
Hopefully it's the start of a new trend of business actually listening, rather than dictating. I doubt it, but hey. It's a hope.
The blurb says 'no chance' the MPAA will get rid of region coding for movies, but if the gaming industry sees a solid business case (as in, they end up with more money), then maybe the MPAA will see the light as well. After all, greed is eternal.
While this was one of the main things keeping modchips legal (as modchips SHOULD be legal), it is a good thing that restrictions like this are starting to be dropped. There's no good reason why games shouldn't work in every region.
They'll have to do a helluva lot more before I give them the benefit of the doubt again. Too bad, though, I really dig my Vaio laptop. Hopefully they get thier collective act together before it dies. (Not holding my breath.)
sony also announced that in order to make up for losses incurred by this, while playing games from other regions, a small unobtrusive ad will run across the screen during game play. ok, not really, but what's the catch, after the whole rootkit fiasco i have trouble trusting them to not be completely evil.
So the PS3 will be able to play PS1 and PS2 games... could this mean it'll be region free for those games as well? I finally get to play the Sakura Taisen games released for the PS2 but couldn't because they were dual-layered and wouldn't work with swap discs?
If older games are region-free, the good word of mouth import gamers will be giving Sony will be strong enough to carry over into other markets I think.
I might be very happy.
Seeing as the box office is continuing it's trend into the gutter (or the sewer, if you saw the preview for the new movie "American Dreamz" with Hugh Grant... *shudder*), my guess is that seeing legal region-free dvd players in the near future is even less likely as cheap AIDS/cancer drugs finding themselves in the hands of the impoverished. As more people spent more time on the internet and playing video games, the movie industry will try harder and harder to cling to their royalties and cheap tricks for profits.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Let. It. Go. Seriously. Its not even a horse being beat any more. It's the decayed remains of its carcass.
I gather that a lot of modern TVs will work with either PAL or NTSC inputs, so they won't have any trouble with this; and since the PS3 is being designed with HDTV in mind, PAL vs NTSC is really kind of irrelevant. HDTV is the same everywhere.
I personally wonder if this is something to do with Australia. They've ruled down there that region coding on DVDs is actually illegal; I hear that all Aussie DVD players are now multiregion. Region-coding the PS3 will get Sony into legal trouble in Australia. Region-coding all non-Australian PS3s will be kind of pointless - people prepared to import foreign games will presumably also be happy to import an Aussie PS3. So they may as well drop the whole thing.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Whilst it may have region-free games, will all the games actually be available in all markets at the same time? And will online retailers be allowed to ship games over to areas where a certain game hasn't been released yet?
Or is it because Sony is satisfied with the court decisions in the UK, etc. where they successfully sued importers of the PSP for trademark violations?
After all, why worry about the technical hassles of DRM when you can sue the pants off of somebody trying to sell Japanese games in the US, US games in the EU, etc?
Minimal additional cost for Sony (or the game producer) - especially since this wouldn't happen that often - and it eliminates the need for the user to make/copy their own backups.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Japan also has 810P as well. There are other "weird" HD formats circling around that would also need to be taken care of. North American HD is not the same HD everywhere for that very reason. Different resolutions, refresh rates, etc. makes this hell for a manufacturer. The biggest problem is that TV display equipment is not like computer monitors where they can switch around resolutions and refresh rates as necessary unless the device is designed for it. Although I don't think Sony will have much problem with this because these days most of the output circuitry/firmware will be given a certain set of allowable resolutions for each region. The only item to worry about then is whether the game will support the resolution and if it won't, then the Playstation should be able to up/down-sample the data for output.
Wouldn't this be more part of the BlueRay news instead of PS3 specific news?
Japan and USA to share BlueRay region codes.
Import games and movies here I come!
TFA suggests the possibility of a "no play" screen if an import game demands an output signal that is incompatible with your region coding so that things dont go bang. which to me suggests two possibilities.
1. the author is dumb
2. all my tvs have been magic tvs
currently (well, not this very second) i'm playing a US NTSC import of a PSone game on my PAL telly in the UK, sure the picture is a bit stretched but even this cheapo 19" tv has a 16:9 anamorphic button, squashing said picture back down to something more pleasant on the eyes. same goes for NTSC DVDs too.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
RICK: Oh, stop being so blinking bourgousie! All property is theft, Vyvyan.
VYVYAN: All right, then. Where's your girlie purse?
VYVYAN: [takes Rick's coin purse, removes some money] Ha ha! Found it!
RICK: You put that back! That's my personal property!
I'm very sober, and very very bored!
The real DRM question is HDMI.
This is a proprietary version of DVI created by Sony. Some new HDTV's have HDMI hookups in the back - most don't.
It is rumored that Sony will require HDMI connections from the PS3 to the HDTV to prevent Blu-Ray movie piracy. If you need to run out and buy a HDMI capable TV (or an expensive DVI-HDMI adapter) there will be many unhappy people.
HDMI IS the reason why Sony has already pushed things back.
I think it is more likely that 360 games will be locked to a specific console. Nobody will be able to easily copy a Blu-Ray disc easily anytime soon, but pirating 360 games should be easy in a couple months.
Locking software to a piece of hardware is generally called "product activation" is patently Microsoftish.
Is that really much of a problem nowadays? I know my TV automatically switches PAL/NTSC based on the signal, and AFAIK pretty much every reasonably sized TV does, as do most smaller TV's.
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Give each PS3 a unique magic number.
When making a backup encrypt the copy so that it can only be accessed with the unique magic number.
The backup will be tied to one machine and it doesn't stop people passing around the master disk and their mates making backup coppies of the game to play, but it does stop people making loads of coppies and selling them / passing them on.
The backup could also prevent online games or multiplayer games from being run on more than on machine at once, to add greater protection the ps3 could be required to 'dial up' whenever you wanted to play a game from a backup.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Oh Hells Yeah!!
Isnt the music division separate from the laptop division and PS3 division, etc? I think they make good products.. the rootkit thing is pathetic, but overall I still think they make good products.
which is totally what she said
Region locks should never have existed in first place, they are only there so different publishers can publish the same game in different regions and to enable price fixing.
No matter why V dies in vendetta, whether to make sure mod chips don't have any legal functions or to really do something useful, it had to be done. Region locks are attempts to suppress international trade and competition. They have been ruled illegal in some countries and are not protected by any DMCA-like laws. There should have been some fines over region locks but well, knowing the corrupt governments we have it'd end up being 5.95$ total.
When Sony says that they will 'mandate' all games to be region free then people should get excited. All they have said is they will let games be region free. I expect they will let the decision be owned by the publisher. Some will and some won't.
Xbox & 360 are already region free in this regard. The choice is up to the game publisher.
Sony needs to do everything possible to keep people from buying a 360 in the next 8 months, and talking about region free gaming, without actually mandating it, is just a clever way of making people wait a little more.
"Region Free" "4D technology" "Emotion Engine" Sony is very, very good at performing the Jedi mind trick on an uneducated populous
I don't think I could have picked a less popular subject, however...
You don't get to make a backup of books, art, or other physical media that is non-electronic... Back when it was easy to have your electronic media easily destroyed at no fault to you, a backup exemption made sense. We no longer live in the age of VCRs eating tapes though, and on the rediculously rare (relative to tape eating) chance that your device does damage your disc, the player manufacturer should be responsible for procuring you a replacement. If, however, you roll over your favorite video game CD with your office chair (not I know anybody who has ever done that...), why should you have more right to a replacement than the guy who had his paperback fall out of his jacket pocket into the toilet on a bus (not that... well, you know)?
DRM should never prevent you from doing something with your media that would have otherwise been legal under copyright law, but I'm not convinced that there is a good reason for the law to allow backups.
Maybe Sony is just trying to invalidate legal reasons for modchips?
1. You don't need a modchip for homebrew development because you have PS-Linux.
2. You don't need a modchip for region freedom anymore.
This should make it easy to sue modchip makers.
HD-DVD has already announced they won't be doing region-encoding for movies. Hopefully, BluRay will drop their one, though they haven't yet.
They have moved the US and Japan into the same region, however, so for the vast majority of stuff you'll be fine with a US machine.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I bought a vaio laptop about a year ago. It was in May of last year to be exact. The dvd burner (+/-rw) will not read dvd-r's that have been burnt and will not burn anything. The onboard nic (intel proset) will not work. I have called them about getting warrenty service and while they see that my laptop has a one year warrenty, was bought in may, was built/released less than 1 year ago today, they will not give me my service because I sent in the reciept (had to be an original) to register the computer and I have to have the reciept in order to get warrenty service. They will not take a creditcard statement becuase it isn't itemized and the store didn't keep a record of the item number, just the amount paid. I may be SOL, but sony will never seen any of my money, or anyone who I consults money ever again.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
Awesome! Now it won't be so much trouble to play all of those console based dating sim games that never get translated! Not so sure that's a good thing, but it really was the first thing I thought of... In any case, I think an announcement like this is meant to keep the PS3 in the news and hardcore gamers interested until November since region issues generally are no concern of mainstream/casual gamers. Though I must wonder if breaking down the regional barriers will result in tougher standards for PS3 game approval. There are a lot of "wacky" Japanese titles that never escape Japan and thus are unlikely to cause trouble abroad for Sony. But without the regional lockout, the world becomes one big market and we all know that we can't have little Johnny in the U.S. getting his hands on some wacky Japanese game, right? The threat of this kind of trouble might cause Sony to take a Nintendo-like approach to controlling game content allowed on the console.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Unfortunately, I think that part of Sony will force this part of Sony to do something stupid again ...
Europe is PAL and has lots of different languages, US is NTSC english, Japan is NTSC with Japanese. Dont these things already give the games somewhat of a region code to the vast amount of general users anyway. The hardcore users have a modchip and dont care. Why would 90 percent of gamers import a Japanese Final Fantasy game that they cant read or understand the language.
or, you could understand what "nested" means and know that when something isnt a reply to a particular comment, it wont show up in that comment's thread.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
i don't even understand from a business perspective why you'd even want region coding. it's not like everybody's going to take a special trip to botswana to buy games or movies. it's just silly. it's a retarded idea from any angle and therefore must have been thought up by an MBA.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I see a lot of people with issues about PAL releases not being able to play on NTSC consoles. This can be done on the software side (in the game). I have a Resident Evil 4 disc that boots up in PAL and lets you change to NTSC. That implementation should be a standard option in PAL games. Heck, make it a global standard. Most of us would not mind a little prompt on bootup, as long as we get a choice and the ability to play wherever we want.
--MaxPowerDJ
At least we can afford to do that?
I welcome any legal-minded /. types to correct me if I'm clueless.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I was in Australia (which generally uses PAL) a few years back and my friend there had a TV which handled both NTSC and PAL signals. They also had DVD players which would handle both, or at least they happily handled my NTSC DVD's I brought from Canada.
They would still bork at region-encoding though, so I had to rip and then reburn the DVD's without the region handles. Annoying!
I cant imagine many North American gamers or those of any other country importing virtually every game they buy, so the import percentage of the market cant be much, so I doubt it makes much of a difference in their profits as far as I can see...
While region-encoding seems to be a valid-practice, aren't there laws in many places against preventing such shipping. It *is* a free market after all. And even so, there's always sites like ebay, etc for downloading out-of-region DVD's, games, etc.
is that companies distrbuting games and other content want to have it both ways. On one hand, they say that they have "licensed" you the content, and thus you do not have the right to make copies. Your license allows you to have one instance of the content. On the other hand, they say that they have "sold" you the physical media, and if anything happens to the CD/DVD, it's something you owned that is now distroyed. Your purchase allows you to have one instance of the physical object.
IMO, it should work one way or the other:
If they're licensing the content, then if the physical media is destroyed and you can't exercise your license, there should be some way to either get some money back (since you've lost the use of the "perpetual" license you were sold) or to replace the media so you can exercise your right to the license.
If they are selling a physical object, then you should be able to duplicate its contents freely, in case the object is destroyed.
The way things are right now, the content distributers have all the rights, and the content purchasers are in a sort of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" bind. Duplicate your content, and you're a piratical anarchist. Don't, and it's quite likely that you'll be out of luck when the physical object is damaged.
This is currently a problem for me. I bought Civ 4 to play on my Windows game machine. I played it for about three months before the CD got scratched. While the scratches were my fault (I failed to take into account how much dust was accumulating in the PC) now the $30 game that I purchased is unusable. Since I purchased a perpetual license, is it OK for me to download an iso of the game CD and burn it so I can play? Not according to the game publisher.
I'm not talking about what is currently legal. I'm making a point that the way things stand right now, a lot of people are frustrated with the seeming one-sideness of content distribution as it's implemented right now.
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The good thing about this for those of us in England (and before you ask, I'm American) is that it means less waiting to play games we want in English. Typically it takes about 6 months for a game to get from Japan to the US, and then another 6 months for it to get to Europe. Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 3 are good examples of this. The reason it takes another 6 months is because of the need for European releases to be much more Multilingual. Also, as mentioned earlier, most TVs here (Englad) now support NTSC (Japan and US TV format) Horray for us stuck on this bloody gamming poor rock!
You obviously don't have children. After buffing the scratches out of the Finding Nemo DVD for the fifth time, I was ready to go back to VHS. Then I discovered DVD Shrink. The original stays in the case and when the kids scratch the copy too badly to be played, I throw it away and make a new copy. Consumers need the rights to protect their property.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Where did you get that idea [of purchasing a license] from? We're talking about console games, not PC software, remember?
The following services on video game consoles roughly correspond to Valve's Steam service on the Microsoft Windows platform:
Region locks should never have existed in first place, they are only there so different publishers can publish the same game in different regions and to enable price fixing.
Not necessarily. Copyright in a game's underlying literary or audiovisual work expire at different times in different jurisdictions. For instance, any game based on the Peter Pan story is a derivative work of Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie. In the United States and Canada, Peter and Wendy is a work in the public domain, while in the United Kingdom, Peter and Wendy is subject to a perpetual copyright with compulsory licensing such that Great Ormond Street Hospital receives a royalty for each sale of a copy of Peter and Wendy or any derivative thereof. Region coding could have been in place to keep copies intended for sale in North America, which do not have the royalty, out of the United Kingdom.
Switched-mode power supplies are all of a sudden fancy now?
Power supplies that can automatically handle 100-120 V (Japan and North America) and 220-240 V (Europe) are more expensive than power supplies that handle only a single voltage range. Given the low (allegedly negative) margins on video game console hardware, I'd expect console makers to cut corners and use region-coding on the console's warranty.
Guppy06 wrote: "That doesn't mean the PS3 is capable of putting out both PAL and NTSC."
bri2000 wrote: "The PS2 is"
O rly? Then why can't my U.S. PlayStation 2 console (model SCPH-70012) play an all-region PAL DVD (Wobbl and Bob: Volume 1) that my region 1 PC DVD-ROM and region 1 Apex AD-1200 DVD player have no problem with? All I get on the PS2 is "TV system doesn't match."
Only reason I have a modchip is for importing purposes.
A Linux+OpenGL environment for messing around with this sucker wouldn't hurt either. God forbid Sony maybe learned their lesson with the PSP and the bitter fight going on there?
PAL/NTSC will still be significant [because] It will be many years before the majority of the customers have high-definition tv's.
Standard-definition TV sets in Brazil use PAL color coding on the same "M" (60 Hz) scan frequencies used by NTSC. In fact, one of Nintendo of Europe's Metroid Prime titles requires support for PAL at 60 Hz.
low resolution 2D games [...] emulation of old games
Does Sony Computer Entertainment want you to unlawfully copy low-resolution 2D games for the PS0 and emulate them on a PS3, or does it want you to buy brand-new high-resolution 3D games?
Isnt the music division separate from the laptop division and PS3 division, etc?
They share revenue and expenses. Developers within SCEA more than likely get a discount on licensing scenarios and characters from a Columbia Pictures movie and music from Columbia Records artists.
I think all of you are missunderstanding the original purpose of regional coding. I admit that they have been abused, but the original concept for region codes were with good intent.
The overall concept of region codes was that each country has a different purchasing power (ie. GDP per capita), so different products should cost differently. This means that a game sold in Latvia is considerably cheaper than what would be sold in the US because the purchase power of the consumer is different.
Removing the region code will now mean that Sony has given up and decided to charge the same price universally. This is fine for countries like the US, but terrible news for the less wealthy countries such as Mexico, Latvia, etc.
aren't there laws in many places against preventing such shipping. It *is* a free market after all.
No. In fact there are laws that explicitly allow a copyright owner to prohibit importing copies of a work. See 17 USC 602 and foreign counterparts.
but I'm not convinced that there is a good reason for the law to allow backups.
I am. Why? Because
a) it's technically possible to do
b) *I* can do it myself
c) It's not specifically outlawed
Firstly, HDMI is not "a proprietary version of DVI created by Sony". See http://www.hdmi.org/
I just looked at the web site, and Sony is a founder of the HDMI group. Created (in part) by Sony: Check.
In addition, HDMI involves HDCP, parts of which are patented and parts of which are trade-secreted. Proprietary: Check.
But without the regional lockout, the world becomes one big market and we all know that we can't have little Johnny in the U.S. getting his hands on some wacky Japanese game, right?
Easy. Just require the player to solve a Japanese CAPTCHA every time the game starts: display a distorted kanji phrase and the grid of kana, and require the player to select the correct kana to start the game.
CAPTJAA: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Japanese and Americans Apart
Come on. Aren't you aware of the degradation of optical media when exposed to temperature fluctuations and/or sunlight? What about the fungus that eats its way between the reflective media and the substrate? What about a chip through the painted side, rendering the disk a coaster?
Troll.
Why would 90 percent of gamers import a Japanese Final Fantasy game that they cant read or understand the language.
In general, the North American versions of Dance Dance Revolution and the Japanese versions of Dance Dance Revolution have different songs, and playing didder does not require much reading of text. Do you expect games with not much text to use a kanji CAPTCHA to enforce cultural lockout?
i don't even understand from a business perspective why you'd even want region coding.
If your work is based on an underlying work that's public domain in one region but still copyrighted in another...
They'll still have to make localised versions. No way the French or Germans are gonna play games in English. Still, this is good news for third rate voice actors, who'll still have jobs to do.
If you don't expect a lot of pre-third-graders playing your game, then you can do it like Incubus or The Passion of the Christ. The movies were acted in a little-known language (Esperanto for Incubus and Syriac and Latin for Passion) and then subtitled into each national language. PC games Lego Loco and The Sims use the same technique.
Yeah, too bad the comment I was referring to wasn't a reply to anything but the article.
and yet previously thought unthinkable for a major corporation
I'm guessing IGN hasn't heard of every Game Boy model, ever.
Even if I grant that I should not be allowed to make backups (which I do not grant, and I think that all of the parent's reasons for allowing backups are good ones), I will have to insist that this law should not be used to rob me of other freedoms.
Passing a law that makes backuping illegal should not automatically make it ok for third parties to be able to conduct unwarranted searches of my property. My right to privacy should remain intact. If that produces enforcement-difficulties for some other law, then that means the other law is un-enforceable. It does not mean that I lose even more freedoms.
Many forms of DRM perform such unwarranted searches of my property (specifically, of my computer). This includes the potential to illegally scan my own private "intellectual property" (sic) which I have created myself on the same computer. I should not have to submit to such unwarranted searches just because I might try to do something illegal.
Also, making a no-backups law should not be used to justify passing other laws which require hardware to disobey its user. Hardware that does not do what the user wants and can reasonably expect it to do (like copy stuff) is "broken." Making it illegal to buy non-broken hardware is absurd, no matter the justification.
Are you implying that I wouldn't take a principled stance as soon as it was less convienient for me?
I hate when people say that.
It's not abiout convienience - it's about a valid use case. There is no "convienince" in buying or not buying another copy of a movie, it's a question of being able to make a backup so that repeated uses do not lead to more expenses to use the same product.
Basically he's just saying you've not though the problem through, which you obviously haven't - and I don't even have kids.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The last rumor I saw said that in fact Sony was considering allowing any HDTV player to play 1080i movies at full resolutiuon over analog (component) feeds - HDDVD downsamples to 720p (I think, could be lower) unless you are using HDMI.
Sony has a vested interest in making things work for older TV's since they sold a lot of them. It's probably the electronics division finally getting a little backbone and beating the media division over the head with the idocy that has gone down there like the rootkit fiasco. That group has got to have lost a lot of face and therefore, power.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What you are seeing now is I think a direct repercussion of the whole Sony rootkit fiasco.
Before it semed like the media division held all the cards in terms of power. They got the limitations they wanted at the cost of the electronics division feature sets and marketability.
So after the rootkit was uncovered, the whole media division lost a lot of money, face, and therefore power. I think some of the things we are seeing come out of Sony now are a result of the electronics people having more pull than before and able to resist demands from Sony Media.
Consider the other recent story about BluRay where Sony was going to allow movies to play at full resolution over component (non-HDMI) video. I think that's all part of the same deal, where the elctronics people are trying to drive Sony to actually be more customer friendly instead of some hulking DRM behemoth.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Parent hit the head in the nail.
This move from Sony is just as BS as what they announced on BR : the hardware allows region control, but do not force it. So it's up to the publisher to decide if he want the protection or not.
Just look at the already "region-free" xbox360 games. There are not that many...
This is a PR move to appear nice, but without substance. Just expect some more trademarks lawsuits from Sony UK on importers. It was really ugly with the PSP...
> Are you implying that I wouldn't take a principled stance as soon as it was less convienient for me?
Yes.
Suffering from the loss of favorite DVDs you can't very well replace any more will do that to a person.
And New Zealand is region-free too. :)
Given all of the different frame rates across the globe, I don't see how this will work. How can a game optimized for a 60fps display easily be run on a 50fps display, and vice-versa, without some serious display issues?
No, I will not work for your startup
Sony recently updated SonicStage, so you can now move atrac3-encoded tracks to and from a minidisc player with NO restrictions (provided you ripped it with no drm restrictions in the first place.) Sonicstage itself also lets you rip straght to atrac3 without any DRM restrictions - it actually asks you if you want to include DRM copy protection or not before ripping the CD. (well, duh.)
This means I can now rip music on one PC, download it to my minidisc player and upload it to another PC and play it there, or copy it to cd, etc. I believe that's more open than the ipod these days.
And before you start on how crap minidisc is, find me an affordable player with an AM/FM radio as well and i'll start listening. (Hi-MD - 1GB per disc - minidisc with am/fm cost me $AU140. )
Ignoring the fact Sony still force the use of use atrac3 rather than a more open/commonly used music format, this is a 180 degree shift in their DRM policy for minidisc. A while back there were heavy restrictions even for stuff you'rd recorded on the minidisc yourself. Again, perhaps this is in response to the rootkit debacle?
I suspect that the major reason for this is that Sony, after the bad PR recently is trying to be consumer friendly, but in a calculated way.
They have realised that games purchase over the internet is also profitable. So why not make the PS3 region free and tap into the online purchase market. People will buy games that arent released in other countries just cause they have heard great things baout them. Games are notoriously released in Japan without seeing the light of day in other countries, even if there is a demand for them. They effectively create a world wide purchasing market without restricting it to zoning.
This is also great for the consumer, because you will be able to take your PS3 to a different country, buy a plug converter and use it without having to worry about those pesky restrictions. Considering they will be losing money on the sale of a PS3, i think this is a wise a decision as it will minimise them having to produce a whole lot more just because people move countries.
They wouldnt do something like this if they couldn't see the profit in it.
Sales of less consoles + sales of more games = profit
I was pleasantly suprised the first time I came home from Japan and my JP GBA worked fine with everything. Then my US GBA SP worked fine with my Japanese games, and I my new JP DS plays everything I put in it (US GB, US GBA, JP GBA, JP DS, etc...)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
"Why are people so afraid to dicipline their children these days?"
:)
I don't think they are, I also suspect you don't have kids. Unless you wrap your kids up with gaffa tape for 20yrs, disipline alone will not stop "accidents".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
i dunno if anybody's looked into it lately but a region free ps3 would be a bad thing as far as movies go. Warner brothers and a few other production companies have recently made changes to their disks making it so that anyone using a dvd player which is 'region free' won't be able to watch them.
I suspect you are bang on the money here, after the amount of lost face I guess there's been something resembling an internal bloodbath at sony and so far it seems that the customer is getting better value for it.
which means that if you go to some other thread, not the article (as your link did), you won't find the unrelated comment, dipshit.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Awww, did the fucktarded USian moderator's feewings get huwt. One word to describe the fucktarded USian moderator. Baaahh.
Tell us what, kindly go jump off a bridge somewhere. In fact that's what all of the USians should do.
GO AHEAD, FUCKING FLAME AWAY 0R WASTE YOUR GOD DAMNED MOD POINTS FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE.
It's amazing how so few have caught on to the actual truth. Obviously, PR spin actually works. It would be funny to see their faces when that import game they spent so much on is region locked. "But...but, they said...
^_^
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
Sorry for the shift off topic, but I wanted to reply to you in relation to a thread that is now locked to new posts.
Claiming TPM does not prevent you from running Linux, ever, shows a basic misunderstanding of the technology.
No, I am a programmer and I have read and intimately understood the 300+ pages of technical documentation of how the Trusted Platform Module operates. What I said was indeed correct. The TPM does not prevent you from running Linux.
If a motherboard maker chooses to do so, TPM can be used to lock out other OS'es that do not have the proper key.
No it can't.
What the motherboard certainly CAN do is have a BIOS that refuses to load an OS that does not have the proper key. However the fact is that the TPM in no way enables that, the TPM in no way even assists in that.
Do some research; this was the basic fear of TPM when it was first unveiled.
Oh, I agree. However this particular fear is entirely a myth. The TPM is incredibly evil, but not evil in the way many people think.
The TPM basically does two things.
(1) It acts as a spy recording what hardware you have and exactly what software you run, and can be used to securely send that spy report to other people across the internet. The spy report is secure against the owner. You cannot control or modify the contents of this spy report. The most you can do is refuse to send the spy report, in which case the internet connection will most likely be terminated.
(2) The chip has your master crypto storage key locked inside with the owner forbidden to know or control his own key, and software can actively call the chip to use this key lock it's own files securely against the owner of the computer. Only the exact unmodified program that created the file can read or modify the file (or to pass that file key to another program of which the unmodified software elects to approve).
Ability (1) above means that websites can refuse to send you any data unless you are running an approved DRM enforcing operating system and approved DRM enforcing software. And of course the approved DRM enforcing software will contain specific instructions to invoke ability (2), to lock any new files securely against you. Those files can only be opened by the exact unmodified approved operating system and only by the exact unmodifed approved application software.
In fact ability (1) means that your ISP can refuse to grant you any internet access at all unless you are running an approved operating system along with various mandatory software such as an approved firewal and other control software. This is called Trusted Network Connect.
So no, the chip does not and cannot prevent your computer from loading Linux. The BIOS could refuse to load Linux, but that has nothing to do with the TPM chip, and the TMP chip in no way enables or assists in it.
The issue is that websites can lock you out for running Linux (or if you don't have a TPM), and because new software can be designed to be impossible to install and activate without a Trusted online activation process with the TPM and with an approved OS, and because new filetypes will be impossible to read and use without online activation without a TPM and approved OS, and because new webpages will be impossible to view without online activation and a TPM and appoved OS, and because new hardware will refuse to connect to your computer without a TPM and an approved OS, and ultimately because in a few years ISPs may refuse you any internet access at all unless you have a TPM and approved OS.
So the danger and potential future is just as bad as you fear, the exact detail of the TPM "causing motherboards to be unable to run Linux" is false. What it does is send spy reports to other people (so that they can choose to refuse to communicate with you), and it allows software to optionally contain new instructions to lock your data against you. And the first part is
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.