[mousepod]

PAL & NTSC still matter on dvds unless you're using a computer monitor (pixels instead of lines) or a plasma tv. All other tv sets are still one or the other. DVD players don't care - they'll output whatever format is put in (that's where those pesky regions come in - Japan is NTSC, for example, but is region 2). There are plenty of cheap DVD players that will allow you to set the output - and will act as a converter. Most of those machines can also be set to region '0', effectively making region-encoding moot.