you have to bring it to a store where they can convert it yes, pal has more lines then ntsc so when you play pal on a ntsc vidcam it looks like its scrambled and stretched, most of the time b/w with green lines. There are ways to set a DV cam to pal or ntsc, but its risky, try to lookup if the cams ntsc or pal at the company site eg
www.sony.com
also : some pal cams and vcr's have ntsc playback dont know if thats vice versa as well, maybe it is...