ver the holiday, unconfirmed Japanese reports flew around stating that Blu-Ray discs would have North and South America in the same region as Japan and the rest of Asia.  Currently Japan and Asia are a seperate region from North and South America.  The main reason for seperating regions is to prevent piracy and importing, but this could be some very good news for gamers and movie fans (anime anyone?) in North and South America who frequently import games and movies.

Unfortunately for our European friends, reports state that their region will remain seperate, and be grouped with Africa. 

The three regions reported are as follows:

Region 1: East Asia, North and South America
Region 2: Europe and Africa
Region 3: China, Russia, and other countries.

Currently, Sony's PSP is region free for games, but not for UMD movies.  If this ends up being true for the new Blu-Ray format, it's looking like import gamers and movie buffs have something to cheer about.

We'll be looking into this much further during this week's 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.