Can the PS3 be hacked to play Mutli-Region DVD's?

Robert1986

Robert1986

Robert1986

Soldato
Joined
17 Apr 2007
Posts
23,162
Location
stat city
I have a US ps3 and its the only way to play DVD's. Since its a US PS3, it only plays NTSC discs, all of my DVD's I own are in PAL. Is there a way to hack the PS3 DVD player to play PAL discs?

Thanks.
 
Unfortunately not. Just as a side note it's not really a PAL/NTSC restriction, it's a region zone issue but currently there's no way to get a USA PS3 to play anything other than region 0 and region 1 DVDs.
 
Robert1986 said:
Thats a shame. Looks like I'm going to have to put down a £100 to get a DVD player,HDMI cable,HDMI switch ect.
Click to expand...

Or buy yourself a pack of 100 blank DVDs and 'back up' your own disks, which will then be region free. Not ideal, but would solve the problem for now.
I've done the same with my collection of R1 disks. I bought some 25 packs of dual layer disks, and just did 1:1 backups, and can enjoy them on my UK PS3 again.

Vin.
 
V1N said:
Or buy yourself a pack of 100 blank DVDs and 'back up' your own disks, which will then be region free. Not ideal, but would solve the problem for now.
I've done the same with my collection of R1 disks. I bought some 25 packs of dual layer disks, and just did 1:1 backups, and can enjoy them on my UK PS3 again.

Vin.
Click to expand...

I've been doing that with a few of them but it would be insane to do that with a 100+ DVD's. It takes a good 30 minutes to rip+burn just 1 DVD. Sometimes the process will fail and I have to re do that 1 DVD, it can be a real pain the rear.
 
Robert1986 said:
I've been doing that with a few of them but it would be insane to do that with a 100+ DVD's. It takes a good 30 minutes to rip+burn just 1 DVD. Sometimes the process will fail and I have to re do that 1 DVD, it can be a real pain the rear.
Click to expand...

I know what you mean, I didn't do all mine in one go.
If I fancied watching a film "later" I'd leave it rip and burn while I was doing something else.

I haven't had a failure in ages though.

I use Taiyo Yuden for single layer, and I used to use Verbatim for dual layer, but found Pi-Data to be 100% reliable after I got a new burner, and only £12 for 25. If you're getting failures at all, I'd suggest getting a new burner, they're only about £15 these days, and should save you any hassle, and failures.
 
If you have Linux on your ps3 you should be able to do it as there is software that lets you play any region dvds.

It might be cheap enough for you to buy a dvd player from a supermarket or wherever though?
 
cb_linus said:
the cost of a new dvd player needn't be more than about £20 - £30, which would surely be a reasonable alternative to investing in blank dvdr's. Just suggesting a couple of options :)
Click to expand...

Think he wants an decent upscaling hdmi one though, wasn't actually commenting on you by the way ;) Just his comment on spending £100 on things.
 
Also, remember, you may not have to spend any money at all.

Depending on your level of PC knowledge, do you:-

Have a PC hooked up to your PS3?
You could rip your DVDs to your PC HDD as one big .mpg file (so no loss of quality) and stream to your PS3. No need to burn anything.

Or, rip the DVD to your PC, and use a free XviD encoder to covert it to XviD. No need to skimp on the quality like some dubious internet releases. Manually set the res, and filesize to 1.99gb (to avoid file system restrictions) and then stick the file on a USB key, or other method to copy to the PS3 HDD and play back.

There are softwares available, which I guess I'd better not mention in here, but Slysoft do one, that will rip a DVD to your HDD and encode it to h.264 .mp4 files, which could also be played back from a usb key/PS3 hdd.

Lots of other methods of watching your films on your PS3/TV, without having to spend money ;)

Remember though, if you spend £100+ on an upscaling DVD player, HDMI switch etc, chances are, the upscaler wouldn't give the same quality as the PS3 DVD player. I've seen about 7 upscaling DVD players personally, connected to the same TV as a PS3, and the PS3 beat all of them, easily.

Vin.
 
I have over 200gb of movies stored on my external HD and stream them from my pc to the PS3. Works great but sometimes I don't want to turn my pc on to watch a movie through my PS3.

Is it possible to hook the external HDD to the PS3 and watch movies straight off it?
 
Robert1986 said:
I have over 200gb of movies stored on my external HD and stream them from my pc to the PS3. Works great but sometimes I don't want to turn my pc on to watch a movie through my PS3.

Is it possible to hook the external HDD to the PS3 and watch movies straight off it?
Click to expand...

So long as it's formatted to FAT32, yep!

EDIT: Also, if you don't want your PC on, you can copy files from your PC drives, over the network to your PS3 HDD, and play from there... so if you want to watch a film, simply copy it over first... then shut the PC down, and play from the PS3 HDD?
 
I could do that, but then again, I only have a 60gb PS3. Would be easier to use my 500gb external HDD.

Thanks for the helpful replies.
 
Robert1986 said:
I could do that, but then again, I only have a 60gb PS3. Would be easier to use my 500gb external HDD.

Thanks for the helpful replies.
Click to expand...

Sure.

I didn't mean to keep on the PS3 permanently, just if you fancied watching a film, copy it to the PS3 HDD before shutting the PC down, and then watch it from there, and delete when done.

The better alternative is of course, to format your USB HDD to FAT32 and you can use it directly on the PS3. Or what I did, make a partition, so NTFS for the PC side of things, and a seperate FAT32 partition just for the PS3.
Anyway, that should sort you out, and let you watch your R2 movies on your PS3 :)

Vin.

EDIT: and for the sake of around £50, you could upgrade your PS3 HDD to 250gb. Still cheaper than the £100+ for a new DVD player etc.
 
I was in the same boat but bought the samsung hdmi upscaling dvd player. Cost £50 for the player, £10 for a decent HDMI cable and £6 for an optical switch box (But using the digital coax at the mo) and i am really happy with the setup. If you dont want the messing about just get the same setup you wont be sorry...
 
V1N said:
set the res, and filesize to 1.99gb (to avoid file system restrictions)
Click to expand...

why does everyone on this section seem to think FAT32 is limited to 2GB? I see it ALL the time here. FAT32 is a 4GB limit, which is PLENTY for a good xvid/h.264 rip as Vin points out
 
I have the opposite problem, I have a region 2 ps3 and want to play region 1 Blu Rays! I'd do a swap if it wasn't for all the Singstar DLC which is tired to the machine rather than my gamertag.
 
Pug said:
why does everyone on this section seem to think FAT32 is limited to 2GB? I see it ALL the time here. FAT32 is a 4GB limit, which is PLENTY for a good xvid/h.264 rip as Vin points out
Click to expand...

The reason I mentioned a 1.99gb restriction is because I remember years ago, avi files would appear as corrupted if they were over 2gb.
When I used to do video capture, back before I had NTFS drives, in the win 98 days, I had to set files to split at 2gb. Other files were fine at 4gb, but video files wouldn't play back, and would be reported as a corrupt file if bigger than 2gb. Very possibly that doesn't happen these days. I know it still does on certain DVD file formats, but can be overcome if you use UDF file format.

I don't use fat32 file systems any more, so no idea. All my PS3 video comes from my server, and you can use files as big as you like via that method.

Vin.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom