Watching a 24fps film converted to PAL and watched on PAL or converted back to NTSC is still a 4% speed-up. Annoying as heck, if you are listening to music dvds or songs that you've heard millions of times before.

Converting from film to NTSC is exact except you get something called a 3:2 pulldown, which increases "shakiness" during panning sequences.

PAL is not better than NTSC and NTSC is not better than PAL, they both have their deficiencies.

Also, I believe there are no progressive PAL players.