PAL NTSC using Nero StartSmart

Hello- I am an avid film collector, being a big fan of Italian horror (see profile), and due to this little quirk, I have a boxful of PAL DVDs. Now, at my father's I have a region free DVD player, however I am at my mother's frequently. I would like to take these PAL DVDs and convert them to NTSC format (I know it's been answered before, but please listen). And also, just out of curiousity, know how to convert from NTSC to PAL.

What I was doing was burning the files to my HD using CloneDVD 2, saving them to a temporary folder. I was then using Nero StartSmart to burn them as my own DVD movie (someone told me to use Nero Express, someone else said StartSmart used the Express engine). When I had my VOB files all ready to burn, Nero detected that they were PAL, and asked me to convert, which I did. So, I have a burned DVD in NTSC format as I wanted. Or so I thought...

I have one DVD in particular I'd like to burn. It only has ONE audio stream, which I selected. However, after I burned it using the above procedure, Windows Media wouldn't play the audio, only the video. I erased and reburned the DVD twice, with the same result. Upon checking the drive in AnyDVD, I was surprised to see that, although my film WAS region-free, it was still in PAL-Video format.

And finally, the question: How do I fix that issue? If Nero says it's in NTSC, then why is it still in PAL?

Sorry for the ramble, wanted to be clear about my methods. Thanks for any and all help! Kegan