Region Free for Pioneer 104

[staniks]

I hope this isn't a forbidden topic here but I want to ask anyway.

I just got a Pioneer 104 drive with the latest firmware and would like to flash it with the universal flash to make it region free. Could I then run the latest pioneer flash to have the latest firmware plus region free? or will the latest flash change it back to locked region?

The reason I'm interested in region free is I have relatives in Germany and would love to send them some home movies in PAL instead of NTSC.

I really am from Germany but live in the US :P

Thank you

[Thorn]

A hacked version of the firmware replaces the unhacked one. So to have the latest version you would need to use a firmware that was hacked from the latest firmware -- and since 1.32 is pretty new it will likely take a little while for those to appear (assuming it does appear).

More importantly, you don't need a region free drive to burn PAL movies. Region limitations only prevent you from reading CSS encrypted commercial movies from another region. You can burn the your home videos in any format you want, you just need to encode them to PAL before burning... There are guides around, and posts about the topic of converting NTSC material to PAL (as I assume your home video is from an NTSC device). It may be difficult to get the video to look as good after the framerate conversion, but you can certainly create a DVD that looks just like a PAL DVD without any hacked firmware.

[staniks]

Thank you very much Thorn!

[BJ_M]

the latest firmware 1.32 is already out "region free"

[staniks]

where?

[BJ_M]

http://pioneerdvd.firmware-flash.com/a04_131.zip