Ok, I'll admit that when it comes to movies/VCD/SVCD I am a relaitve newbie, but I am quite familiar with regional coding, burning, ripping etc. I have read up extensively on the topic of format conversion, and it seems quite complicated.

Background - I am trying to get PAL format SVCD to play in North America. I have a wide screen HDTV RCA scenium TV, with built in DVD player, and just bought a Phillips DVD Recorder (stand alone).

The built in DVD player will NOT play VCD or SVCD, but the Phillips will.

Whenever I try to play a PAL format SVCD, I get sound but no picture.

Now I tried to convert the SVCD to DVD, using SVCD2DVDMPG and then Ulead DVD movie factory. Now this produces a DVD image which plays fine on the stand alone DVD player, but there is no sound!

If I understand correctly, SVCD2DVDMPG produces an mpv and mpa file after processing, but Ulead only seems to convert the mpv (video) file. How do I add the mpa file to create a working dvd? Or is there a better way to convert to a viewable image, either SVCD or DVD?

Finally, since most movies seem to be released in only one format, how do most people view them? On the computer?

I have heard that many DVD players can automatically convert PAL format so that there is no re-encoding needed. Does this mean that I simply made a poor selection when buying the DVD recorder, or is my TV the problem? If it is simply the DVD recorder, I might pick up a different stand alone DVD player if it will automatically convert.

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but it deals with several different topics so I wasn't sure where to put it.

Thanks