Conan is broadcast in high definition in the USA, but in Europe the picture quality is terrible. I literally mean worse than almost anything in television.

Before reaching European homes, Conan goes through chain: HDTV -> NTSC letterbox (re-compression) -> over atlantic via satellite -> PAL (heavy re-compression)

We don't really have HD in Europe yet, but we do have highly popular anamorphic widescreen PAL, and almost all American shows are nowadays converted directly from HD tape or film to anamorphic widescreen PAL. Of course this cannot be done with Conan due to time restrictions, and the satellite stream is in NTSC.

A question comes to mind: why doesn't NBC set up a simple FTP server on the Internet for distributing original broadcast streams to European television companies? It's slower than satellite, but not much.

Well, Dumpsey, people here in Amerika don't really care all that much about what goes on in Euroland. Here in Amerika Conan is a highly popular ectomorphic widescreen pale or as Pres. Bush calls him, 'Wonder if he's a Woman?'

Im pretty sure in English thats a suggestion of how to make Conan better in Europe but I just couldnt understand it! Wheres the Rosetta stone when you need it!?
As to your question. Ive no clue what any of that meant so I cant really answer.
And Im pretty sure you were just making dome of that up to make us feel bad!

Nice that somebody else has taken notice of this problem as well.
It is odd that in Finland the NTSC/HDTV->PAL(mpeg2) conversion is being used. The end result is that the picture quality truly is awful!
And (now I might be wrong) but isn't NTSC HDTV picture ratio 16:9?? It is stupid that many US shows after conversion look more like 1:2.35 than 16:9..

and why not send the whole NBC channel over the internet so europeans can see more and more uptodate tv.