When you say that you know that you cannot use NTSC tapes, is that because you've asked the institute where you are giving the talk or because you assume that British machines are incompatible with the NTSC format??? A lot of British VCRs actually play NTSC tapes even if they don't look as if they are meant to (it's usually the older machines that don't). There can be loss of quality, the degree of which depends on the machine. But I've got what is possibly the cheapest VCR on the UK market and it plays NTSC tapes more or less perfectly. Expensive machines may even have a PAL/NTSC switch on them. I hope that helps Andrew James Horton Editor-in-Chief, Kinoeye, http://www.kinoeye.org Culture Editor, Central Europe Review, http://www.ce-review.org ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html