Quote Originally Posted by overture2112 View Post
I actually just went about researching all this for myself (wanted to play some japanese/undub exclusive rpgs) and it's not as expensive as I had originally thought. The installation of a tx coolrunner ($20) for a RGH mod isn't particularly hard but you still need all the basic tools like wires/soldering iron, flux, etc (which I didn't have in my apartment- plus my soldering skills were never great). You can pay someone else to do it for around $50-60 (usually plus shipping both directions, but I saw a few that ship back for free). So you could probably buy a new 4gb slim for $200 and have it shipped directly to a modder and then have them ship it back for ~$275. Also you could just buy a used/refurbished one that's already been modded for $130-210 (depending on which model). [pricing references based on what I saw on the tech game forum's marketplace]

Just buying and installing a xk3y or wasabi360 usb loader ($105-120ish) is pretty easy to do yourself, but will only work with with exact isos of discs (so no custom undubs) and I didn't look into if it bypasses region locking.

Either way, if your goal is, like mine, just to play a handful of single player jp or custom undub rpgs that you can't find on pc/ps3- it's actually not all that expensive to get a RGH job done or buy a pre-rgh'd console.
Those XODEs won't get around region locks.