DVD/BD importing

[Musashi]

I've read a few FAQs on circumventing Universal's distribution of certain films via importing from Europe or Japan. Before I get any of them, my first ? was if EU BDs work on a US HDTV. Are we past the NTSC/PAL split with the onset of hi-def?

Also: I was a fan of 3 Ninjas and have seen a slightly different cut of the film on HBO before. I've also read on IMDB that the cut shown in Sweden was a good 14 minutes longer than my US DVD version. So what I'm wondering is if would be practical for me to get a copy from Germany or Scandanavia to have the longer versionm knowing that a PAL movie probly won't work on my US HDTV.

Could I make it work by say, putting it on my PC, converting to AVI, and reburning to DVD with a US-NTSC encoding?