RoccondilRinon said:...NTSC discs don't play in PAL players. The jitter is a result of the format itself and applies equally to NTSC broadcasts as to DVDs. NTSC has a framerate of 60Hz; movies are made at 24fps. That works out to 2.5 video fields per film frame, so they show alternating frames for 2 and 3 fields each. PAL has a framerate of 50Hz, so they just speed the whole thing up to 25fps and show each frame for 2 fields. Some find the speed-up more distracting; others prefer it to the jitter (you notice it most in shots with steady motion or panning — the first shot of any Star Wars film is one of the easiest examples).
There's also the inevitable fact that PAL has a higher resolution — 576 lines as opposed to 486, or fewer in both cases for letterboxed pictures.
Some of your info is incorrect, RoccondilRinon. NTSC discs play in PAL players no problem pretty much all of the time, and 3:2 pulldown (jitter) only affects NTSC video which has been converted from 24fps to 30fps. If the video was originally recorded in 30fps (ie, TV programmes), then they run smooth. NTSC also has 480 lines of horizontal resolution, not 486.
The reason I posted, though, was to say I created a version of ANH:R which bypasses all of these problems. I took the video from the PAL DVD9, which has the highest quality image available due to having more horizontal lines of information than the NTSC9 release, and slowed this down to 23.976fps to have it run at its native speed. I then took the audio tracks from the NTSC9 release and added these to the video (which fitted perfectly - I checked the video speeds and there is only a 1/1000th of a second difference after converting the PAL video to 23.976fps compared to the NTSC version). I then ran the video file through MeGUI to create an x264 mkv file, muxed the AC3 audio tracks and the whole thing fits onto a 4.7GB DVD5. No more PAL speedup, no more NTSC 3:2 pulldown, and the image is transparent to the quality of the PAL9 video (the highest quality video image available) since the quants of the x264 file all fell below 14.
Obviously, this version can only be played on a PC (which is how I watch all of my films). If people are interested, I could up it to Demonoid?