[TheSkiller]

Originally Posted by Chibs

Why should it be 704x480 instead of 740x480 with a widescreen PAR?

I assume the latter is supposed to be 720x480. Well, that's exactly it, you're not taking PAR into account, you are just resizing your 1920x1080 source picture straight to 720x480. If you do not want to deal with PAR then just resize it straight to 704x576, it is perfectly DVD compatible just like 720x480 is and it will give you 100% correct aspect ratio on both TVs and PCs. Believe me, it is a good thing to do.

Originally Posted by Chibs

They don't have the option to be switched to NTSC

This is very unusual, there really should be such setting somewhere deep in the DVD-Players configuration setup. The only DVD-Player I know of that doesn't have this setting is a Playstation 2, it is on "Auto" all the time so to say.

Originally Posted by Chibs

Is it incorrect that PAL players will just play NTSC DVDs? Of course, it plays it, but in this state that's unusable.

That's exactly the point. Any DVD-Player is by itself able to play a NTSC DVD but this does not imply the whole thing will look correct or good on the TV.

Originally Posted by Chibs

Am I correct in choosing top-field interlacing all through-out the process?

Yes, your script looks correct it that regard (everything TFF) so you should select top field first in TMPEG.

Originally Posted by Chibs

Is there any other way to make a 'universal' DVD, perhaps mixed content with both a PAL and NTSC track? Is that possible?

It is possible and for all practical applications it should not cause more problems than a NTSC DVD. However most if not all authoring programs will complain and possibly not let you do it because it is actually not really allowed by the DVD spec if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, it is indeed the second best thing to do right after separate PAL and NTSC discs. The first menu of such a DVD should be a NTSC menu where you select your Region (to make it easier for the audience who don't know about PAL and NTSC). Worth a try. If your authoring program complains when adding a PAL video to an NTSC project you can try to patch the PAL videos frame rate and resolution to NTSC to fool your authoring program, you have to patch it back to it's original values after the DVD is compiled. You can patch MPEG headers with DVDPatcher.