I agree that DVD's and digital tv transmissions mean the material will only have to go down to component and not actually the NTSC or PAL colour systems, but they still have to fit the existing display rates for backwards compatibility.
I hate the judder on NTSC films (DVD's or Laserdiscs), I now know it's because of the 2-3 pulldown duplicating fields to make the 23.976fps match the 59.94 fields per second NTSC.
However with progressive scan players or any TV that can do NTSC 2-3 pulldown removal this becomes irrelevant.
PAL discs don't need this, but do need a speed-up which can make audio annoying, especially if you know the proper pitch for the film too (Star Wars theme!).
I don't think the benefits of PAL progressive scan are as great as for NTSC because there were no juddering duplicated fields to remove. Don't get me wrong, the benefits of both are huge on a large projection screen.
With video scalers/htpc's the vertical resultion differences of 480 v.s. 576 becomes surprisingly close for 16:9 anamorphic wide material.
i.e.
Have NTSC progressive scan+scaler+hd display(plasma/projector, etc) = Usually get NTSC version.
Have NTSC progressive scan capability=Usually get NTSC version
NTSC/PAL standard definition=Get the PAL version, unless cuts offend you or it's a particularly bad transfer video or audio.
Since this is the TV forum, has anyone compared an NTSC progressive scan v.s. the equivalent PAL interlaced disc on a telly?
Rob.