The patches sometime work - never worked for me the other way round. US widescreen TVs should have a multi-system AV port (yellow/white/red) or S-Video. Fingers crossed you can use a TV like that.

Otherwise you're stuck. TVs in Europe either have a Scart socket that resolves the synchronisation and colour problems or the widescreen TVs behave as I've described.

It's the old US feet/inches/pounds/ounces/pints/gallons thing again. Good job you're not trying to land on Mars!