These things can be quite heavy but if you are shipping most of your stuff, then this will not make a big difference as the size is quite small.

I did have a fairly chunky one kicking around that was going to be disposed of in the office. Not sure of the ratings, it was quite heavy duty, not like the one I use for my US DVD player.

FYI: Almost (if not all) ALL TV's you buy here in Europe now will be able to display NTSC. The reason why this is NOT often the case in the US (for PAL compatible TV's) is because extra circuitry is needed to display PAL plus extra lines of resolution. So a standard PAL TV has to downgrade itself to display the NTSC signal .

Inferior US technology

No, they rushed the format out to the market. Then afterwards discovered it does not transmit very well.

I used to work for a company (based in the US) making/selling imaging boards which we sold in the UK. What my colleage could NEVER understand is why they designed the NTSC version first, then created a PAL version. When according to him (if I recall correctly) to convert the PAL version to NTSC means removing a couple of capacitors and resistors).

He used to call NTSC: Never twice the same colour.

The Americans did the same trick with HD. The brought out an Analogue version first, where in Europe they waited till the digital version was ready then released the technology.

A lot of Americans might have problems in future due to DHCP etc.. where if they don't have a Digital input, the picture will be displayed in SD only.