I can not find a concrete answer. Will an HD-DVD from the UK/France etc...have playback issues on a NTSC TV here in the US? With all the talk about importing discs, this is never brought up as an issue in this forum. The Pianist and other titles are labled as PAL. 25 fps on a 60Hz TV never has worked well.

Where did you get that info, i tought that 25fps was not even in the game for HD Optical Media..

All HD DVD/Blu-Ray releases of movies shot at 24fps have been released at 24fps, which the player can then output as either 60hz (with 3:2 pulldown) or 120hz depending on the hardware itself. All European TV's marked "HD Compliant" (or something similar... 'HD Ready' is a rather vague term US TV specs love to throw around) have to accept 60hz, so if you have an HD set made in the last several it shouldn't be a problem at all.

25fps might still exist for HD releases shot on 50hz 'PAL HD' video, but insofar nothing shot at 25fps has been released on HD DVD/Blu-Ray, so I'm not sure what would happen. It's entirely possible that they could slow the footage down by 4% and encode it at 24fp like the US release of 28 Days Later...

They will work just fine on a NTSC set.
Many of the imports are labeled PAL region 2 but it really dosent mean any thing. I think they just put it their.

But I've got 9 imports from france,UK, germany and japan all play perfect will no issues.


Pal/ntsc isn't a issue with HD-DVD as it uses the same system worldwide..

Great news. I really appreciate the clarification on this.

PAL and NTSC are standard definition video systems. They don't apply on HD DVD unless you're using the Composite or S-Video outputs, in which the output of HD DVDs, no matter where you are in the world, is in NTSC.

It's entirely possible that they could slow the footage down by 4% and encode it at 24fp like the US release of 28 Days Later...

Good solution for PAL(25fps) HD porn - you can watch more minutes ;)
but this "slowdown porn" not acceptable for classic and pop music concerts, videos.

I hate these Toshiba's idiots who sell an European model of hd-dvd player and 6 months cannot release firmware update with support 25fps.

People who own PAL HDV/AVCHD camcorders can not author 25 fps HDDVD on DVD-R, use Ulead DMF or Pinnacle authoring tool because these toshiba players do not want play this 25fps content!

May be need to rip at toshiba a few millions euro? :D