You seem to be the guy that knows your stuff.
As someone who does care about region codes and PAL and NTSC ( I travel a bit ) -
I would appreciate knowing if these Blue Ray and High Def machines will play all region codes as well as on both PAL and NTSC TVs. Thanks for your help.
I'm not an expert, so don't take my word for anything without verifying it ... but my understanding is that the various HD standards are standards unto themselves, and don't rely on either NTSC or PAL. In a quick search of players sold on Amazon, I couldn't find any Blu-Ray or HD-DVD players whose descriptions referred to NTSC or PAL, or to DVD regions.
What I know indirectly, from online friends who live overseas, is that dual-standard VCRs and multi-region DVD players are quite common in most places outside the US, and they're not that expensive or hard to find in the US if you look. Most Americans don't bother, so the main audience for them is folks who are into niche stuff like anime or martial arts flicks.
A friend who used to work in the movie business explained to me the rationale behind DVD regions. Not everyone has the big movie season at the same time -- all the big summer blockbusters in the US can come out months later in countries where the audience peaks in December. So DVDs were region-encoded so that you couldn't ship in discs from the US before the movie opened in theaters in Hong Kong.
But multi-region DVD players, hackable DVD players, and fast enough Internet connections to make movies downloadable pretty much made the region structure obsolete not long after it was adopted. I wouldn't be surprised if the next-generation players don't even bother with it. And these days, thanks to those developments, the big-budget movies usually open worldwide within a matter of weeks, and are playing in theaters everywhere long before they're available on (legitimate) DVD.
New TV’s in PAL and NTSC countries use the ATSC standards for 480p/720p/1080i/1080p I believe.
HD DVD hasn’t rgion locked any of its discs. Blu-ray leaves regon locking up to the various studios. Thee are only 3 zones though. US-Japan are zone 1. Europe-Australia are Zone 2. Asia is Zone 3. Most BD’s aren’t locked though IIRC.