Ottotune,
Thanks for the good summary on the NTSC story, and especially for the color burst frequency explanation. I am amazed and happy that my overseas purchased multi-system equipment works over here.... but as laid back as Texas is I guess they just figure "close 'nuff is good 'nuff" on the broadcast frequencies, and I'm thankful for that (no disrespect intended for engineers, Texans, T.V. technicians, electricians, etc., etc., etc.).

John,
Thanks for the reply and best wishes on a successful stay in Japan.

Nick

The verdict is in (late...but in).

It works! No problems receiving any channels. Only one little thing seems to be different...and I'm not sure it can be attributed to the NTSC questions...but the voice audio is a bit too soft, while the music and sound effects practically blast me out of my chair.

Like I said...I don't know what would cause that. It wasn't like that before the move...but perhaps something is wrong with the TV now.

Overall, though...it works like any TV should. Speaking of which...time to turn it on to watch one of these great Japanese dare/endurance shows. Talk about a hoot!

John,
it might be because they broadcast the voice audio separately from the BGM, they usually play movies with a choice of the original language or japanese dialog, bilingual tv's and vcr's will have a subchannel button so you can switch between the two. I hate it when they broadcast a show in stereo so they don't offer the english and play it only in japanese. It also sucks when a movie is listed as bilingual and you sit down to watch it and but only japanese can be heard.

I picked up a new DVD player last week, the guys at the store told me the hack so I made it region free, YEAH!!! watched Kiss of the Dragon that my friend sent me from the states and last night saw Oh Brother Where Art Thou, a Tsutaya rental. Trying to ween myself from Japanese TV. BTW I got the Marantz DV4200, not a bad player for 18,000 yen.

Hey, Rik.
I'd be interested to see how well your DVD player plays DVD-R media. That's a good price for a region-free player in Japan.

rob,
I'm picking up the dvd you made from Tamaki-san on thursday, I ought to burn a video cd and try that as well. Did you use a maxell or apple dvd-r?

I think I used Apple on that one. Check out my post about starting a DVD authoring forum.