Brett Robson wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 13:48:35 +0900, Reg. Blank  ...
> 
>>
>>
>>jim figurski wrote:
>>
>>>does anyone here have a region free dvd player who:s living in japan?
>>>i:m living in japan, and was just about to buy a region free player
>>>off the net, but the salesman told me that even though most
>>>electronics are compatible between the US and JAPAN, the signal may
>>>not convert to NTSC if using a japanese TV.  Anybody here ever have
>>>that problem?
>>
>>Japanese TV are NTSC, i.e. you can watch a U.S. purchased DVD (region 
>>code 1) on your region free player on your Japanese TV. However, you 
>>won't be able to watch a U.K. purchased DVD (region code 2, same as 
>>Japan) because U.K. TV are PAL, which your Japanese TV can't comprehend. 
>> Unless of course, you have a multisystem TV.
>>
> 
> 
> 
> Quite a few NTSC DVD players will play PAL DVDs converting the output to NTSC.
> My Marantz 4200 is both region free and will play PAL DVDs. English and
> Australian DVDs are no problem.
> 

Yeah. There's a variety of region free DVD players available which do 
both PAL and NTSC conversion (ie, NTSC->PAL, PAL->NTSC)
I have one myself which I bought here in Japan about 2 years ago. Many 
are actually overseas models imported from Hong Kong or Singapore. The 
places selling them are usually ones which specialise in duty free or 
equipment intended for use overseas.
This is where I got mine from:

http://www.noguchi-nagoya.co.jp/

Some of the JVC and Sanyo players sold here will do PAL on an NTSC TV..

They don't sell the JVC model I have anymore, but I'm very happy with 
it. My DVD collection includes stuff from R1,2,3 and 4 and it happily 
plays any of them very nicely on my plain old NTSC-only domestic model 
Sony TV.

As Brett said, pretty much the only time you'd have to worry about NTSC 
conversion is if you get DVDs from the UK or Australia, where PAL is 
used. If you're planning on getting R1 DVDs from the US, then no problem.

Lately though I've noticed places like Sofmap have been selling el 
cheapo Chinese DVD players for about 10,000yen - a lot of these are 
region free, but may not be marked as such. Only one way to be sure though..

Graham