Is the PSP Region Free?

llabnip · Post by **llabnip** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 5:48 pm

A friend asked me this and I've seen conflicting reports searching google. Is the PSP region free? More specifically, can you play PAL games on a US PSP? If so, is it game specific or will any game from any territory play?

Thanks much in advance!

Kiken · Post by **Kiken** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 6:00 pm

It's my understanding that the games are region-free. The UMD movies however, are region coded.

vtmobius · Post by **vtmobius** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 1:25 am

I bought a Japanese Ceramic White PSP from NCSX and indeed games are region free as I own Star Soldier and it works fine, US games have no problem on the system either. I haven't updated the firmware since it already is at 2.6 so I doubt they will lock it out. But the PSP will only play its region specific umd movies though, Jap and UK are the same region but US is different and hence US movies do not play on my PSP. But if that is a problem you can always rip the dvd and decrypt it then encode it to mpeg4 and put it on the memory stick. I did this with SW EpIII but it was a long process and not worth the trouble.

Naiera · Post by **Naiera** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 7:05 am

There's no "PAL" or "NTSC" with regards to this system as that has to do with TV standards. And yes, the system is totally region free when it comes to games. This has been known forever and those google searches you made really shouldn't have been confusing you at all. Those who write anything else than the above deserve to be hit with a stick.

The movies are region locked though, as also mentioned. Japan and Europe have the same region, like with DVDs, so that may be an advantage to some.

llabnip · Post by **llabnip** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 2:19 pm

Naiera wrote:There's no "PAL" or "NTSC" with regards to this system as that has to do with TV standards. And yes, the system is totally region free when it comes to games. This has been known forever and those google searches you made really shouldn't have been confusing you at all. Those who write anything else than the above deserve to be hit with a stick.

I think part of the confusion came in because I didn't understand the PSP UMD format - and so I saw mentions of that being region protected and didn't quite understand the distinction from the games. That's my fault. It was also mentioned several places that while the PSP itself is not region coded, Sony did put in hooks to allow developers to develop region protected games - putting the decision on the game makers do determine if they wanted protection. So I wasn't sure if any games came out region protected - it sounds like none have. I'll let my friend know he can safely run any game (but not UMD movie) from any region.

Anyway, thanks to those that took the time to respond!

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 2:22 pm

The real question is why anyone would bother watching movies on a PSP.

nem · Post by **nem** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 4:46 pm

Damocles wrote:The real question is why anyone would bother watching movies on a PSP.

Nono, the question is why would anyone bother watching UMD movies when there's now a program that lets you run fullscreen (that's right, real 480x272) movies from the memory stick.