Commercial conversion of PAL recordings to NTSC seems pretty expensive. I understand some DVD players with Faroudja chips will play PAL DVDs, some players are “hackable” and some are designed out of the box to deal with multiple encoding.

Is there software I could use on my PC to copy a PAL-encoded DVD and convert it to NTSC for replay in the U.S., or is it much more complicated than that?

Perhaps this (http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/Convert_PAL_NTSC_DVD_page1.html) will help.

I've had at least 4 different players that play PAL DVDs on an NTSC display without any problems - most of them Philips, but my new LG recorder works just fine too. I've also tried LiteOn, Daewoo, Cyberhome, and... I think that's it. Think of it, I never had a player or a recorder that had a problem with the PAL to NTSC conversion. Some have a setting in a menu, some don't. My LG recorder doesn't, but it still works just fine. It's also very easy to hack for the region coding. To me converting files on a PC is a very tedious and time consuming task. I only do it when I want to put some DVDs on my PDA.

Perhaps this (http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/Convert_PAL_NTSC_DVD_page1.html) will help.

The "patch" method is pretty unreliable, hit and miss at best with many players.

On a PC, the only real method for conversion involves a re-encode of the MPEG to it's new resolution. If done right, there shouldn't be much loss of quality, and nearly all video editing programs will do this.

Of the players here, Toshiba and Panasonic do not play back PAL, but JVC does. this assumes that the region coding has been dealt with.

There maybe and easier way if I understand what you want to do. Most if not all LCD's are multi-system able to display NTSC or PAL. All you will need is a region-free DVD player or, if possible, upgrade the DVD playback software in your PC to region-free. Upon playback the LCD will do the video conversion.

I've just purchased a Panny Blu-Ray DVD player (actually it was included as a rebate in my recent puchase of a Panny plasma, already paid for), so, without purchasing an additional all-region player, I think I'll stick with the Panny for a while, and give up on the PAL disks. I've purchased three different (from different vendors) so-called "region-free" DVDs and none play on either my RD-RV32 Panny or on my DMR-E80H DVDR.

Is it possible to purchase a DVD R/RW unit for a PC in say England and just simple install it in ones computer.
For my NTSC DVD's i play them on my Writemaster which was less than $70.
Thanks
Ken p.

Internal drives don't have the PAL/NTSC issue-- they just read the data off the DVD. I've never had a problem playing a PAL or NTSC disc on the computer. The only "gotcha" is the region code-- most drives are shipped unset, so you can set them to any region BUT You can only change them 5 times, and then it locks to the last region.

There are 2 ways around that-- finding hacked "RPC1" (i.e., region-free) firmware for your drive (Which voids the warranty on the drive, but do you really care if you only spent $30 for the drive? If it fails buy a new one-- I've never had hacked firmware hurt a drive), or buy a program like AnyDVD which installs a little software driver between your DVD drive and the computer that allows it to be region-free, no tweaking needed.

Internal drives don't have the PAL/NTSC issue-- they just read the data off the DVD. I've never had a problem playing a PAL or NTSC disc on the computer. The only "gotcha" is the region code-- most drives are shipped unset, so you can set them to any region BUT You can only change them 5 times, and then it locks to the last region.

There are 2 ways around that-- finding hacked "RPC1" (i.e., region-free) firmware for your drive (Which voids the warranty on the drive, but do you really care if you only spent $30 for the drive? If it fails buy a new one-- I've never had hacked firmware hurt a drive), or buy a program like AnyDVD which installs a little software driver between your DVD drive and the computer that allows it to be region-free, no tweaking needed.

Ripping a disc to HDD with any of the popular tools also removes the region coding.

True, I was just thinking of "plug and play" methods.