Alright my informative friends... PAL problems 2.0.
 

Well, a few of you (I'm very grateful for all the replies, by the way) mentioned various ways to combat the vertical stretching PAL anamorphic discs suffer on my 4:3 NTSC TV.

And, as so often is the case whenever I run into a DVD problem... nothing helped.

Played around with TV settings, DVD settings, you name it. So maybe I would have to purchase additional, external hardware to correctly convert the image? If no such hardware exists... point me in the direction of the nearest Malata.

You might as well just pick up the Malata. You could buy a video convertor, but their starting prices are about he same price as the Malata. Plus the video quality is going to be worse than using the player to convert the PAL signal. I think HK Flix still have a deal going on with this site, so you get the Malata shipped for 274.

I just looked for the deal it is in the coupon, which you can get to from the top of the page.