Hardware Silly question about PAL&NTSC

[acillatem214]

Just to clarify the terms PAL and NTSC...

Japanese Wii console is ________.
Japanese games are ________.
American Wii console is ________.
American games are ________.

Will someone be kind enough to fill in the blanks?

 

[g.crow]

ntsc, all 4

 

[acillatem214]

Therefore, I can play Japanese games on my American Wii with no modding?

 

[Devil_Spawn]

infortunately not, the games are still region encoded to NTSC-USA and NTSC-JAP

 

[acillatem214]

But with a Wiikey, that claims, "Direct boot of different NTSC region Wii games/backups on US and JAP consoles," I can play Japanese games on my NTSC-USA console.

Correct?

 

[Rayder]

So why did Nintendo region code the Wii but not the DS?

Why limit possible software sales overseas (importing) with region coding?

 

[Wanque]

Good question. It probably stems from the old (and not really valid anymore) problem of TVs in PAL-land not being able to display NTSC signals.

The DS has it's own built-in screen, and is therefore problem free.

Wish they hadn't, though

 

[bobrules]

So what is Pal then?

 

[Kaphis]

is so that people don't import games and significantly decrease sells of the game's America market. I have no reason why DS is not region locked ^^:;

 

[BlueStar]

PAL is just a different video standard. Nintendo want to discourage importing so they have control over where games are bought from. If they release a game in Japan, concentrate all their efforts on marketing, shipping etc over there and then by the time they've released it in the US half the people have already got it on import then it looks like a flop and it doesn't get to number one in the charts on the Friday of release. Same with the US -> UK. And they don't know if this is because it's more suited to the Japanese market and more Japs bought it or if yankies have been shipping them over by the bucketload.

I guess the DS isn't region encoded because Nintendo want to to take it travelling with you and be able to buy a game at any airport in the world and play it on your flight. Plus of course there's no problems with different video standards like there is with systems that output onto TVs.

 

[Azimuth]

is the ps3 region locked, just wondering

 

[imgod22222]

Um.. pulling this from memory, but i think that NTSC has a different resolution and framerate compared to PAL. I think PAL has a higher res and faster framerate. I know for a fact that NTSC is 640x480, with 30fps. I think that PAL is 720xsomething.
All i know, sorry.

 

[shtonkalot]

But with a Wiikey, that claims, "Direct boot of different NTSC region Wii games/backups on US and JAP consoles," I can play Japanese games on my NTSC-USA console.

Correct?

If that turns out to be true then yes, you are correct.
I would wait for a review first, my big worry with playing different region games is that if the game needs to access a feature in the Wii's firmware then it may well be able to detect what region your Wii console is and block it from running.
That is speculation and not likely to be a problem yet. I can't help but think that would be easy to implement though.

 

[Dirtie]

Um.. pulling this from memory, but i think that NTSC has a different resolution and framerate compared to PAL. I think PAL has a higher res and faster framerate. I know for a fact that NTSC is 640x480, with 30fps. I think that PAL is 720xsomething.
All i know, sorry.

Kind of.

NTSC has 480 lines and runs at a "smoother" refresh rate of 60Hz.

PAL has 576 lines (hence better picture definition) but only operates at a refresh rate of 50Hz.

So since the output on a standard TV is interlaced (which means it alternates between lines on each refresh, meaning that each full frame is actually divided into two), it means that the amount of frames output per second (FPS if you want to call it that - I'm pretty sure it's different to a game's internal FPS though) is half of those refresh rates. However on a progressive scan TV, the amount of frames is the same as the refresh rate.

 

[BlueStar]

PAL has 576 lines (hence better picture definition) but only operates at a refresh rate of 50Hz.

However, as long as your TV isn't old enough to be steam powered it can go up to 60hz and you can set your Wii to PAL 60hz mode. Most GameCube games had this option as well.

 

[Dirtie]

But PAL60 mode doesn't have the same number of lines.
It uses the same colour format, but operates at 480 interlaced.

Basically it's just NTSC with PAL colours :/

 

[kronicd]

is the ps3 region locked, just wondering

Yes

 

[iza]

is the ps3 region locked, just wondering

Yes

i've heard than it's not...