Dreamcast-Talk.com

Hi All,

I am from Australia(PAL). I am looking to buy a DC.

Should I get a US or PAL DC?

I have a stepdown transformer for the voltage difference so that is not an issue.

Taking that into account which one should I buy?

I plan to play a mix of original and backups.

Would like to play imported games as well. I assume using a boot disk is best. I am trying to avoid hardware modding the DC.

Will having a PAL DC, then playing NTSC titles have strange framerates?
Will having a NTSC DC, then playing PAL titles have strange framerates?

I will be using VGA and also RGB connections. Will these 2 types cover all games?

I like KOF series, Crazy Taxi, Sega bass fishing, DDR, etc etc

edit: I am going to use it on a HDTV 1080P.

Cheers,
K.

The good thing that I love about the Dreamcast is that you don't have to worry about the video encoding that an import game uses because all games run at a resolution 640x480 and almost all PAL copies run at 60htz although it doesn't make a difference if the game runs at half of that (even if the it runs at 25htz) making it a very easy console to import for. As for the region in your case just get whatever has a good deal going for it and bite the bullet.

Thanks
Are all DC's compatible with RGB cables?

And, is it true that all DC's can play imported burned games on CDR's? without modifying or boot disk.

Cheers,
K.

k3nnis wrote:Are all DC's compatible with RGB cables?

I would assume so. I never heard anything about it not properly wired up to put out a certain signal.

k3nnis wrote:And, is it true that all DC's can play imported burned games on CDR's? without modifying or boot disk.

Just because Mil-CD doesn't have an intentional region lock since it was originally designed to be a karaoke CD the dreamcast will not even check for a region, however it needs a certain bin file at the beginning of the file because without it it will not boot the game. It will detect it as a foreign mixed mode CD rom format if the file is missing since that is the only anti-piracy protection that the console has on top of nothing to ever reproduce the GD-Rom format, nor to get the console to run unassigned codes.

ok thanks for the info. I guess I could get a cheap yellowed JPN DC and just change the shell? Although those third party shells don't look that cheap....

Also are the JPN DC's in english the menus?

k3nnis wrote:ok thanks for the info. I guess I could get a cheap yellowed JPN DC and just change the shell? Although those third party shells don't look that cheap....

That isn't a bad approach, although those custom shells are quite pricy.

k3nnis wrote:Also are the JPN DC's in english the menus?

Initially no, but it can be easily changed in the options just by toying around with the system. Do be aware that it uses military time for the date. It wouldn't even matter to you but when it comes to playing certain games online it needs to be set accordingly.

ok thanks. I think if I can get a PAL console for not much more I will go for that. If not I will gofor the best conditioned/prices NTSC-U or NTSC-J DC.