April 03, 2000, Issue: 1107 Section: News ---------- Sony issues recall of Playstation 2 disks TOKYO - To patch a defect that allows the Playstation 2 to ignore regional coding of DVD-Video disks, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. last week announced a recall of utility disks that were bundled with 1.25 million units of PS2. A technique to bypass the regional code has been widely reported on the Web. Sony is appealing to PS2 users to send their Version 1.00 utility disk back in exchange for the version 1.01 disk. Sony Computer Entertainment will pay for the postage. The 1.01 disk, which began shipping with new PS2s on March 27, disables the regional code bypass and includes code to fix two problems with audio reproduction. "We cannot force users to exchange" utility disks, said Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Entertainment. "But in the future, functions such as progressive scan output and sound quality improvements will be added to [upgrades], which will be an incentive for users to exchange [disks]." http://www.eetimes.com/
