Just a quick question

[AnthranDawn]

I wanted to import some games pretty soon... so is there anyway to use free MC boot to play purchased Japanese import games? Any possible way?

[JNABK]

Sure, use IMGBurn to rip them to an ISO image, then use the ESR Patching app to patch them for use with ESR. Burn them to DVD (use good quality media) and then as long as you have included ESR with your FMCB install, they should auto-boot without any region problems.

If you used the noobie package, it is already included and would be installed with FMCB, so your good to go on that part then.

[Bootlegninja]

1. rip the game image with IMGBurn

If your console is NTSC U/C, then skip to step 3
If your console is PAL, use step 2 then step 3

2. Patch the region with NTSC2PAL
3. patch with ESR patcher from the main thread
4. Burn image using IMGBurn at 50% the maximum speed of the blank disc.

[Kennedy]

I think that GSM (topic in the Homebrew forum) has become a suitable replacement for the NTSC2PAL patcher mentioned in Bootlegninja's post. If you are using a PAL console, you won't even need to force the game to display in PAL, since (assuming that your TV supports NTSC signals, which most produced within the last 10-15 years should) you can simply centre the NTSC image to your liking.

[Bootlegninja]

for repeated use, it would become troublesome to do as you say. what I mention, you only have to patch it once and run it.

[izdubar]

Take no offense ... but I agree with Kennedy

There are only two reasons to patch from NTSC to PAL:
- your TV doesn't support NTSC/60Hz (should not be the case with all modern one)
- you have some bad video cable between your PS2 and TV, in this case the game might be in black&white. But in this case you will greatly benefit to change your cable with a true RGB one, more than the colors, the image will be more accurate

The cons for patching, are that you change the original framerate of the game (thus is plays 17% slowly), and worse, you get a letterbox format (with black border on top and bottom)

In conclusion try one game before, and if your seup is ok, never patch your games.

Read this guide for more precise information (document the PS2 case also):

http://www.ntsc-uk.com/tech.php?tech=TvCompatibility

Regards

[Gnom]

Actually I doubt that bad cable would cut out the colours, since composite signal is <6 MHz so you're cable should really have a high resistance and capacity to filter that.

It is true however that some PAL TVs will display NTSC signals in black and white, but it just means that the TV can't decode NTSC color coding, BUT it can sync to 60 Hz. And the reason you want to use a component (be it RGB or YUV) is that this way color is no longer modulated and is not coded (or if you talk about YUV it's coded the same way).

This is also the reason why calling NTSC or PAL a component signal is improper since those are methods to code the color by frequency modulation and only apply to composite signal. Usually calling a component signal PAL/NTSC refers to its resolution, and although everyone understands the proper nomenclature would be 480/576.

Well, that was a little bit off-topic but some things could be useful for future questions.