I have a bunch of Region 2 PAL DVDs and since I live in the US, they are unplayable except on my PC. I finally got around to
documenting a conversion method to NTSC that gives acceptable results, so that I can play them back on my standalone DVD player hooked up to my TV. You need some software (freeware and/or shareware), a DVD burner and plenty of disk space.
Hope it helps out others.
Note - I assume that you own the material you will be converting and am in no way trying to condone illegal copying of copyrighted materials.