NTSC vs. PAL on an NTSC TV

[goweropolis]

This may be an easy question, but I've searched the net and haven't seen the answer, so I thought I'd ask here.

I use an NTSC standard CRT TV, but have a DVD player that plays all regions and can convert PAL DVDs to NTSC.

From what I understand, PAL DVDs are usually preferable because they have higher resolution.

But since my DVD player converts the PAL DVD to NTSC for my TV, am I getting any benefit from watching a PAL DVD vs. a NTSC DVD? (all other things being equal) I'm thinking that any resolution improvement from the PAL DVD would be lost on the conversion to NTSC (I'd be surprised if the converter in my DVD player is better than the professional conversion that would go into creating a NTSC from a PAL source), and that if I wanted to see an improvement, I would need a PAL TV.

Would the answer be different if I had a HDTV?

[JohnnyMalaria]

Even if you had an HDTV, the DVD player would still be converting the PAL frame size to NTSC frame size, unless it can play back PAL DVDs as PAL. In that case, the HDTV *may* be able to take a PAL input and display it as such. It will depend on the model. If it is an LCD model, then the video would need to be converted to the native LCD resolution - so you may not really see much benefit.

But getting an HDTV just so you can watch PAL DVDs in their native format would be rather excessive. The resolution benefit of PAL over NTSC isn't *that* great.