I followed jr_tech's suggestion and maxhifi found a unit at London Drugs (Canada):
Viewing PAL DVD
Canada is not that far from here but it seemed the unit was out-of-stock everywhere. I figured British expats were the guys who would know so I did a lot of googling and found this (no affiliation):
Bombay Electronics: Region Free DVD Player w/ HDMI Output
And I bought this:
Pioneer DV-3022KV 1080p HDMI Upconverting Region Free DVD Player
The DVD arrived a few days ago:
It's region 2+4 colour PAL UK (region 4 = Australia):
Four disks, 13 episodes:
Most complaints about these conversion jobs is that although they play region 2 PAL fine they have trouble with region 1 (North America) so I put in a region 1 DVD for reference:
So far so good, now the Life On Earth region 2 PAL:
Attenborough talking about fossils in Lake Superior rocks:
The quality of the Menu slide (with the frog) was perfect but I did notice some small grains and VHS-like artifacts in the actual program. I don't think this is PAL-related, there have been similar observations from UK viewers. Here are some interesting comments about the less than optimal manner in which the DVD set was "mastered":
at least 8 generations of tape transfer
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