When looking to import my Playstation2, price was the most important factor. The second most important thing was finding one with the version 1.0 driver. For those of you that don't know the 1.0 driver allows gamers to play Region 1 (North America) as well as Region 2 (Japan, Europe, Egypt, South Africa, and the Middle East). After many hours of searching I had found what I was looking for, a good price and a 1.0 driver.

After waiting impatiently for five days, and driving the post office crazy, the mother all systems was here! I ran upstairs and placed it in the spot on my entertainment center that I had cleared for it. After trying all the games out, I decided to take a break and watch a movie. I popped American Pie in, grabbed the controller and sat back to watch Shannon Elizabeth. Much to my disappointment, the only thing I was watching was an error message. Unbeknownst to me, tricks were required to watch my DVD's. After scouring the net I found a way to get my DVD's to play. After putting in the DVD and closing the tray, one must push up on the digital pad until the movie starts to play. This seems to work about 90% of the time. Other techniques involve holding up on an old Playstation controller, this seems to help on a few of them Once the movie is playing, the controller is used to perform all the functions of a standard DVD player. One annoying thing is that captions seemed to always be on. Fortunately after a few minutes spent looking through the on screen menu I was able to find the icon to turn those off.

So how does the PS2 perform its secondary task of playing movies? I must say, suprisingly well. While not offering the options of the higher end DVD players, the PS2 performs as well as any other player in its price range. Picture quality was right on par with my Magnavox player, and the sound seems to be a bit better. The Playstation2 has the capability of outputting video through an S-video cable, and outputting sound through an optical out port. This is used for outputting Dolby Digital to receivers that are Dolby Digital ready. None of my equipment can handle these two options so I was unable to test it.

Keep in mind that not all DVD's will work on with the Japanese system. I could not get any of my James Bond movies to play, or Southpark: the Movie, and I've heard that many Fox movies are incompatible. Overall having to input a code and having to use a controller to watch DVD's is somewhat impracticable, especially when you have a regular player sitting right next to it. For those of you that don't have a DVD player, and are going to import the system anyway, it is a nice bonus.

Note from Bjrn: PAL region 2 DVDs won't work (atleast not the movies I tried). And recently Sony released a new version of the PS2 that has better region lockout. So unless you get one of the early Japanese PS2s you can't watch US DVDs on it.