a blog by Peter Leonard
Because the paper I'm writing involves viewing several recent Swedish films, a DVD player capable of playing back European discs is important. There are two hurdles to jump over to make this happen: you need a way to view a European (PAL) signal on an American (NTSC) television, and you need be able to play back discs coded with Region 2 (USA is Region 1).
You might think this would be an expensive, specialized item. But prices on DVD players keep on heading lower and lower -- I just found an internally-converting PAL -> NTSC unit with component out for $39 after rebate.
The last player I bought for this purpose was twice the price, and involved swapping out a firmware chip to enable multi-region playback. People have figured out ways to take care of the Region Code problem on this device in a much easier fashion, as they have with most off-brand players.
The only problem is no progressive out -- but Norcent is allegedly coming out with one in the next couple months that has this feature for only $20 more.