I have the BRHD50-U NTSC deck.

IT says it can play NTSC & PAL

I put in a PAL DV tape and it stops immediately.
It won't even try playing it.

After looking in the manual, I get the impression
that the deck is only meant to play PAL HDV
and not DV. That seems kind of Rude.

So here's how you make it work, attach
an external RS-422 controller and spin
the jog wheel slowly until it plays in realtime
with audio, then "Capture Now" in your editing app.

The same thing works for capturing LP mode DV tapes.
A poster here recommended this as a workaround.

You simply need to put the deck into PAL mode (50Hz).

Go into the menu, go to SYSTEM, and then select "50" instead of 60 on the second page.

The deck will then reboot itself into 50Hz mode and 50 will be lit up on the front instead of 60.

Keep in mind that you will need a monitor capable of PAL to view the analog outputs. Any HDMI capable monitor "should" be able to sync into 50Hz.

Hi Tim, I did do that first and it simply refused to play the tapes.
It would immediately stop the deck.

using the rs-422 controller is the only way to make it work.
(same for lp mode dv tapes)

I find it annoying that the implementation of PAL
on this deck is not fully done. I had another PAL DV
tape it would play, but got no video signal from.
I had the deck set for pal mode on that one too, yet it played
in a sony ntsc/pal switchable deck.

I have a sony pvm series multi-format monitor so monitoring is great.

It's an odd behavior and isn't happening on my deck, but I only have one PAL tape from an XL2 to test. Do you have the latest firmware installed?

no, not the latest (for fcp 24p hdv)

I've been holding off on it, since some folks have
had their decks not quite working like they did
before the update.