I see the cable your looking for on Ebay all the time.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2304723786&category=3759
$5 - not bad.
PAL - As I understand it the TV TUNER is specific to the country - everything else is generic (ie: ships same to all countries). There is a setting for PAL/NTSC but I imagine this only works for the SVideo or component input. The resulting compressed video will be in that standard.
I've been meaning to try this myself. Please report back to this thread so we can all learn.