US PS3 in CH?

Tech, TV, Mobile, Internet and Geek Corner
1
Hello all,

Quick question. Has anybody brought over a US PS3 and have they had any issues using it over here?

I was considering bringing one over, esp as many good Blu-Rays are region free anyway. PAL/NTSC is not an issue, most movies I have so far (less than 10) are US purchases. Just wondering if it was worth the effort or should I just buy a European 320GB Slim and leave the US one with mom.

Appreciate any feedback.

Regards, Jim.

2
Remember about electricity. We run on 220V here and if I recall correctly, the PS3 (the first ones... I don't know about newer models) were not "universal". That's what had stopped me from getting one in NYC back in 2006. Maybe thhe story is different now...

3
As mentioned before you'll face 2 chellanges: power and video signal.

Power is solvable with a transformer (my 1Kw one costed about 80$ 2 years ago). You'll find transformers ranging for 100w, 250W, 500w etc.

Video signal dependes on your setup. If you are bringing your TV than it's not an issue. If you are not then consider the following:

A) Non HDMI: you most likely will output an NTSC encoded signal, so you'll have to find an NTSC TV (the PS3 might have a way to force output to PAL, but I don't know that console).

B) HDMI. In theory HDMI should work, but I read a while ago of people who connected European DVD players to their US TV via HDMI and received messages such as "unable to set video frequency". Unfortunately there's no way to know in advance.

I am on the same boat: US TV, 2 US Xboxes etc. It's a pain in the butt. If you are not taking your TV with you I'd recommend to sell the PS (or give it to mom)

bye

michele

4
The PS3 is the most import friendly console of all time, you'll have almost no problem with it in Europe.

All games are region free and most Blu-rays, too (just check which ones ahead of time). There's no problem with the image if you use an HDMI cable. All PS3s have a universal 110-240 v power supply. You just need a new power cable and you're good to go. If I'm not mistaken, the power cables that the PS3 uses are the cheap PC ones that can be bought at any store.

5
I have a US PS3. Just need to use a Swiss power cable (or change the plug). This is because they fitted a universal PSU that auto detects the power voltage and changes...

Games are meant to be region free (althought I heard this was changing?).

BD movies can be region coded, so check this before buying a movie in Europe.

Local DVD's won't play on it though as these are mainly region coded, but US one's will. The PS3 is good at upscaling SD DVDs to HD.

6
This rumour keeps getting brought up, but as far as I've heard, there still hasn't been a single region locked game. (We're talking about physical media. Online games and downloadable content are region locked.)

7
Hi Russkov (Dexter and Cello too),

From my research a while ago, I was under the same impression. That the PS3 had a universal 110-240v PSU I just had not heard of anyone who had brought one over. Glad to know your experience is what I had thought. Great!

I know not all movies are region free. It's annoying that Sony persist in region encoding this technology. ( http://www.blurayregioncodes.com/ ) Has anyone noticed that with Blu-Ray Japan is in region 1 with the US and not with any Asian country? Too funny! Not sure why the EU hasn't looked into this before now. Anyway...

Great I will look into it further (Sony spec pages etc.) and see what my next trip over brings! :-)

Thank you all for your input and help.

Jim.

8
szhjcn,

Thanks for the info. I know what Santa will be brining me this year!

Regards,

JIm.

9
Well, it's not really Sony's fault, since it's individual studios that want to region code their product. So Sony kind of has its hands tied. If you look at www.axelmusic.com , they'll tell you which American Blu-rays are region coded or not, you'll surely find all the ones you own. They also have an interesting chart which provides info on which studios region code their stuff. Blu-rays from studios like Sony, Universal, and Warner Brothers are region free across the board. Other studios like Fox are more inconsistent.

10
Russkov, thanks for the link. It has CH prices. Mine was a US link.

Here are some more links for region free Blu-Ray movies with US prices.

http://regionfreemovies.com/

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/

Hope this helps anyone buying from the US.

11
Just to clarify on the power, the US PS3 actually states 110-120V only however it works with 220-230V.

I hesitated to hit the power on button but since I did not hear a bang nor did I have smoke in my Swiss basement all is fine

12
Apologies for being wrong about the power unit. I guess at the time I trusted the Sony employee and decided not to risk ending up with a brick instead of a console :-)

And as stated by acf69, yes the power unit is universal although it is marked differently on the label.

From Wikipedia

The power supply can operate on both 60 Hz and 50 Hz power grids. It uses a standard C14 IEC connector and a C13 power cord appropriate for the region it is being used in. The power supply on the "fat" model is capable of delivering approximately 380 W, although the PS3 has never been measured using this much power. The power supply was reduced to 250 watts in the 120 GB "Slim" model. PS3 Slim models have labels indicating localized input requirements for power (110V 60Hz for North American and Japanese models and 220-240V 50Hz for European and Australian models), however teardowns have revealed the power supplies are still universal .

13
I brought my PS3 from the US to Geneva 5 months ago. I have not had any problems using it in Switzerland. I changed only a powel plug and it works just fine. As has been said before, games are regional-free.

14

Michele, you can take out your power converter. As for the signal, you are right, I brought my NTSC TV with my NTSC PS3 and only play NTSC games I buy in the US. As for PAL / NTSC conversion, I bought this device to sit between my NTSC TV and PAL satellite receiver.

http://www.atlona.com/Atlona-Pal-HDM...ter-1080p.html

However, the issue is the same for non-HDMI and HDMI, you cannot project an NTSC signal to a PAL TV and vice versa, not even if it is used as a monitor with HDMI connection...

15
Unfortuntaly I thought it was a rare case, but I my TV is affected as well. I connected the comcast PVR (2 different models) to my TV and I get zero signal.

So, is the device you showed us all it's needed to get an EU source to a US TV? In other words, is the frequency the only issue?

16
There are no garantuees, but yes it only should be frequency and the amount of horizontal lines. I used the device for my HD Satellite receive and it works like a charm. I also have a UK build Slingcatcher that uses PAL as a default but can be set to NTSC. However, everytime the Slingcatcher reset I will hook it to Atlona device first to actually get the menus on my screen, once I have set output to NTSC I can remove the Atlona device. So it works with multiple devices I have used and should work in your case. The have a lot of different products, you can check their website. I do feel though I am losing some picture quality from a straight NTSC signal.

17
NTSC - Never Twice the Same Colour

The US PS3 works fine here just need to change the plug as the power supply auto switches. I know as I have one!!

All European TV and projectors should support NTSC or PAL. HD over HDMI is a global standard (from my understanding) so should just work.

18
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ALL (as far as I know) European TV's and Projectors will support NTSC, PAL, SECAM

But the US devices will NOT.

Reason being that PAL requires extra components in the video section to work. So why increase the costs when manufacturing TVs shipping to the US!!

Hence a PAL TV has the components to deal with NTSC. Also probably due to demand as well becuase people have been importing Videos from the US for a loooooong time.

Even my old TV and VCR which was over 15 years old supported PAL and NTSC out of the box.

I have both US and European DVD's and Blurays (even some HD-DVD's thanks to winning them from Amazon.com). All play fine on all the TV's and projectors I have owned.