Region 1 dvd's with 1:185 aspect ratios???

the ones I have seem to go distorted at the top of the picture!!!

Is this common???

Region 1 dvd's also flicker slightly as well. Am I being to picky??

what sort of TV have you got and what settings are the DVD player outputting? (RGB, SVHS or Composite?)

NTSC playback may not be so good on a UK TV.... some TV's will give a slightly smaller image (heightwise) compared to a PAL image... some TV's use a trick mode (called PAL60) to display a NTSC image... some DVD players can output in true 'NTSC' or 'PAL60 NTSC'... have you tried altering this setting if your DVD player has it?