I'm meeting some friends from German next week and they asked me to price shop the camcorder they are looking at (Sony DCR SX 44e). The US model is significantly cheaper than the model the best price they found in Germany.

I told them that the US model was NTSC and therefore somewhat lower res and they didn't care about the NTSC/PAL res. difference. My question is whether most PAL sets made within the last fifteen years or so can now play NTSC. I know that PAL VCRs and DVDs can handle NTSC just fine. I know that old sets used to play NTSC in black and white only, but I thought they had fixed that problem. My one techie friend from France says that almost all Euro sets now have a NTSC mode. I guess I'm just looking for some confirmation before I buy and schlep this thing across the world.

When I loved in Europe, all my TV's had no problems with NTSC signals. The only problems they may have will be with cables (Euro TV's tend to prefer SCART for composite/component signals). But with HDMI that won't be an issue.

FWIW; B&H has the PAL version for $264:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...dycam_PAL.html

Don't know what the price is in Europe though...

I saw the price at B&H and was about to order before I posted this. Unfortunately, I am flying out on Friday. Note the closure on the B&H's web page.