Planet Earth: $30 extra for stupid Americans?

[mousepod]

PAL has more lines than NTSC, but runs at 25 frames per second, as opposed to NTSC's (just under) 30 fps. This leads to an interesting phenomena when watching movies on video. The Wikipedia entry is as concise an explanation as I've ever read, so here it is:

Motion pictures are typically shot on film at 24 frames per second. When telecined and played back at PAL's standard of 25 frames per second, films run 4% faster. Unlike NTSC's telecine system, which uses 3:2 pulldown to convert the 24 frames per second to the NTSC frame rate, PAL results in the telecined video running 4% shorter than the original film as well as the equivalent NTSC telecined video. Depending on the sound system in use, it also increases the pitch of the soundtrack by 70.67 — ⅔ of a centsemitone, which only the minority of people with absolute pitch will notice. However, some movie enthusiasts prefer PAL speed-up over NTSC's 3:2 pulldown, because the latter results in telecine judder, a visual distortion not present in PAL sped-up video. This is not an issue on modern upconverting DVD players and PCs, as they play back 23.97fps-encoded video at its true frame rate, without 3:2 pulldown.