Hold on, surely your original encode was progressive 23.976fps 720 x 576, and DGPulldown applied flags to make it display 25fps. To be DVD compliant, I would have thought the file after pulldown has to be 720 x 576 and 25fps. What authoring software did you use, and did it complain at all?

(Or, was the MPEG-2 25fps to begin with, but you told DGPulldown to assume it was actually 23.976, so it re-wrote the frame rate and the repeat field flags at the same time? That would make sense.)

I'm wondering how a progressive scan DVD player would play such a DVD, and if any stuttering is noticeable.

The alternative to pitch correct (time compress) the audio, also has drawbacks with audible digital "stepping" artefacts. Although Belbucus tells me the Serato Pitch 'n Time plugin for Protools has an extremely high quality algorithm.