For 1200s, I agree an NTSC unit is just as good as PAL if you don't mind picking PAL in the early startup, however it's nice to not have to worry about it. The only issue I've had with NTSC machines doing "PAL" mode (which is really a 50hz video signal but still outputting NTSC color signal) is one of my LCDs in particular (using composite and s-video) saw the 50hz and automatically thought "PAL mode" and switched over, causing the picture to be in black and white. A real PAL machine worked just fine on the LCD. Probably not a common issue, but it did happen to me.
