new UMD movies are region-free??

Yeah, I know at least half of you guys are immediately saying, "He still buys UMD movies???", but I noticed a few odd listings on both eBay and Amazon. For example, did you know that WB made a Dark Knight UMD? I sure as hell didn't:

http://www.amazon.com/DARK-KNIGHT-U...ef=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1256370334&sr=8-1

http://cgi.ebay.com/PSP-UMD-DVD-The...D_Film_TV_OtherFormats_GL?hash=item3ef91ed3f4

both of these ads say that the UMD was created overseas but will be Region Free?

Has anyone here bought an UMD imported and was able to play it on an USA PSP?

Thanks

 

PSPs are universal to my knowledge, like the GameBoy

 

The games yes, but not the movies.

 

Actually, my first thought was "They still make UMD movies?" followed by "Do they even make UMD games anymore?". I guess they think they can get at least someone will buy a UMD movie if it's region-free..

 

wait, so PSPs are region coded on the firmware side?the hardware side?how does the umd movie know?

 

I want to say firmware, simply because I think it can be made region free with custom firmware.

 

Can you put US or JP firmware on an EU unit by downloading and installing? I ve never heard the opposite..

 

It is one install file for all regions, the hardware determines which region will be installed.

It is right that you can override the region with CFW; sometimes it doesn't work, though.

 

Actually alot of the porn UMDs for the PSP from Japan are region free.

 

same with bluray.

 

UMD movies are region encoded. If you use a custom firmware you can tell it to return a specific region encoding back when the system is asked. However, because of the UMD drivers being used, if you plan to watch a UMD movie via ISO file, you need to have a UMD inside your PSP to fool the mechanisim.

 

UMDs are region encoded for films & audio UMDs only. The security check for this is in the UMD Drive firmware which is seperate from system's firmware. The only way to bypass this for films is to rip them and run the iso on a CFW psp unit as it bypasses the UMD drive firmware that enforces the region lock.

Quite a few UMD films are no longer made with region encoding on them since the format never really took off. They still exsist in japan and europe but are primarly dead in USA.

 

There are audio only UMDs? Never heard of that.

-hl718

 

there are in the white paper but just like DVD audio it's probably something no one would need

Besides, what would the benefits of a disc-type you can only use on a PSP be? That would be more obscure than the minidisk ever was;p

 

Damn you Japan. :banghead:

 

Japan has some and I think a very small batch came out in the UK. I've never tried one. It's possible the UMD sampler disc that all PSP came with might have some audio on it as well (the video portions of the disc are region encoded).

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-14-71-bd-49-en.html

 

Wow! The prices are really out of this world.

 

They still sell the audio UMDs here too, for around 10-15 euros each.