Please help if you can.

Friend just moved back to the U.S. from Singapore. The problem us that he has this Samsung M108 DVD player that is region free, but outputs only in PAL format.
When played on a U.S. NTSC TV everything plays in black and white.

It appears that converter boxes are expensive, higher than getting a new DVD player like a Cyber Home or Sampo which can output in both NTSC and PAL formats.

Do any of you who have had this issue with a relocation , etc have another solution ? Are there converter boxes that are inexpensive ?

The least expensive way that I would think about was to get a Cyber Home CD-500 DVD player which outputs in NTSC or PAL formats, costs about $79, progressive scanning, and has video and audio features than the Samsung M108 as well.

Can someone come up with a better solution, or maybe there is a hack or a inexpensive converter or something that I am missing.

Thanks so much,

Jon