I just picked up my first PAL DVD ("Dobermann"). I have two players: A JVC standalone and a Creative PC DVD card.

The PC card can convert PAL->NTSC and does multiregion, so I have no problems outputting to the TV using the card. I have noticed one curious thing: When I play Video CDs (which used to be the only PAL stuff I had), I had to force my card to output NTSC, otherwise I would get a rapid flickering picture with vertical rolling image. With this PAL DVD, however, it outputs to my NTSC TV just fine - I don't have to force the card into NTSC output only.

My JVC standalone (XVD1000BK) is multi-region but doesn't do PAL->NTSC conversion as far as I know. When I play PAL Video CDs on it, the picture is stretched vertically and shifted down, but is otherwise stable. However, when I tried to play the PAL DVD, it just rejected the disc. It would access the disc for a few seconds, then eject it without ever playing it. Is this normal for a NTSC DVD player? Has anyone else experienced this?

Using the Alien box set, which is NTSC, I had to set my Tosh 2109B to auto select standards and also select the NTSC option on the Loewe (multistandard) TV.

When you don't select the auto option on the tosh, it just spits your disc out. When you do, but don't set the TV to NTSC, you get a scrolling picture as you describe.



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Simon - Perfect. Just what I wanted to know. Thanks for the info!