cyber home ch-dvd-500 player, region free, and PAL to NTSC
 

my malata started acting screwy on me this weekend. so for the hell of it, i went to best buy and bought the cyber home ch-dvd-500 player for $79.99 i found a have for it that made it so i can play any region now, out of curiosity, i put in tartan dvd of RING 2, and appears to do a decent job of converting PAL to NTSC. nothing as fancy as the malata and it's features, but hell, for 79.99, i figured that i'd let people know. i just tried my suriyothai and my police story dvds (both PAL), they work fine.

the region hack is as follows:

1) Eject the Tray.
2) Press STOP on the Remote.
3) Press 1 9 9 9.
4) Select the Region Menu and hit ENTER.
5) Use the arrow keys to change the Region to ALL.
6) Press Enter.
7) Press RETURN to exit this hidden Menu.

hope that this of any use

How is it with anamorphic PAL conversions, i.e., does it do it?

i just tested some other PAL dvds out. I set the player to 4:3 letterbox, because i have a 16x9 tv (i switched since i believe that most people have a 4:3 tv). i played my HKL dvds of
Mr. Vampire
OUATIC 2
Tai Chi Boxer
and the thai dvd of Suriyothai

i didn't see any of the stretching that has been mentioned. it played just fine in 16x9 and in 4:3 letterbox mode.
you only have to do the region hack once, if you do the hack that i listed above, it brings up another menu where you can select the regions (in this case, ALL)

as for the picture, honestly, after some tweeking of my tv settings, i think that it looks a little better than the malata does.
i recommend this player, hell, $80, you can't go wrong.

Thanks, I just read your thread at asiandvdguide. Looks like a winner.