Once upon a time I loaded a DV tape recorded on a pal camera into my ntsc Sony DCR-TRV900 (intending only to re-use it) and was astounded to find that it played! I was even able to capture into Final Cut. I have since read that 'several sony models' have (or have had) this odd ability.

Has anyone tried this on an A1U or HC3?

Well it had never occurred to me to try...until now!

The situation with my US-bought Sony HC1 is that it will play back my old PAL DV tapes fine on the LCD screen and through the analogue ports, however I was NOT able to capture any PAL footage over firewire into Premiere.

I didnt experiment for long, so if anybody does succeed in getting this last part to work please do let us know!

i remember in old days of dv there were some dongles on sale in the UK that allowed you to switch a sony PAL DV camcorder to NTSC and back. that's because sony made itentical models for both markets and just changed the software - on infact just a flag in the software. i very much assume it's the same with the hc1 / a1