(I'm putting this in the dvd section instead of hardware, because I think it has more to do with dvds than hardware)

This is not the case with most "big-name" dvds like Lord of the Rings or anything from Criterion. But on a lot of discs (especially tv show stuff), when the prog-scan is on, there are some horribly distracting strobbing/pulsing effects going on whenever there's camera movement.

Does this have to do with how the dvd is "flagged" (whatever that means)? Or is this a compression problem?

I don't get this problem when I turn off the prog-scan, but then the image just looks a lot worse, overall.

BTW - I have a 4:3 36" tube HDTV w/ anamorphic squeeze. Basically, top tier dvds look great (almost HD quality) but most other discs (a majority of what I watch) look worse than they do on a regular tv without prog-scan.

Why is this? Am I doing something wrong? Can this be fixed?

I thought Progessive Scan only worked if you had it on a actually Widescren TV connected via Component cable to like a Widescren HD TV. I didnt think it would work with a TV with Squeeze and for that you just had to change the DVD player to widescreen mode... I could be wrong

doesn't squeeze mode make everbody look thin? enjoy those black bars man!!!

Progressive scan is only going to work with material that isn't interlaced. Go figure, tv shows are most often produced for television, which is an historically interlaced format. As well, older releases often were telecined for the disc, unlike the common on-the-fly telecine expected with recent releases (instead of 24 frame drop encoding with progressive flag, they were encoded at 60 field drop).

Why does it look "a lot worse"? It will not appear as sharp because there's only half the vertical resolution with the field-based format. When the progressive scan is on, both fields will be combined, resulting in twice the vertical resolution.

You are wrong... sort of. I'm hooked into my (4:3) tv w/ components and the anamorphic squeeze essentially turns my 4:3 tv into a widescreen tv (the bars on the top and bottom have no information going to them at all). I have to set BOTH the tv & dvd player to 16:9 mode.

But still, why do I sometimes get this "pulsing" effect w/ the prog-scan? And am I the only one?

The answer was already given, most TV shows aren't 24fps, rather they are 30fps, and progressive mode probably performs a 3:2 pulldown when it's not necessary.

You're thinking of a 16:9 squeeze mode - I'm talking about 4:3 squeeze mode - I have black bars on the top and bottom and nothing gets distorted.

(I went for a 4:3 set because I hate stretching a 4:3 image to fill a 16:9 screen - and I hate those gray bars on the side.)

So is there anyway around this without having to turn off the progressive mode?

(BTW, this problem is not confined to just tv shows - and some tv shows also do NOT have this problem)

your problem has nothing do with progressive scanning. it's with flagging and deinterlacing.

your dvd player simply does what the dvd tells it to do, which should be ok theoretically, but since many tv shows on dvd have incorrect flags they tell your player it's film (movies) based instead of video (tv) based.

so the only fix it to buy a dvd player with a better deinterlacing chip that can "ignore" what it's told and instead detect what is the correct mode. dvd players with the faroudja chip are good at doing this.

i don't know why you only see it with progressive scan though. a 3:2 pulldown problem maybe?

dvd shootout

Yeah, but I only see the pulsing effect when the prog-scan is on. The player is set on auto detection for film/video based - and it usually does a good job at it - it's just that a lot of the times the video based stuff looks worse with prog-scan on than it does with it off.

From the dvd shootout linked above:

"Material that had incorrect progressive flags almost always made the player comb badly, or made it drop into video mode, and since it has no way of analyzing the cadence, it was unable to recognize any film material that was transferred using any other method but the standard one.

But by far the strangest quirk of this player is that the interlaced output is derived from the progressive output, which is exactly the opposite of the way all the other players work. This means that changing the progressive mode will change the interlaced output. And since there is no one progressive mode that will always produce correct output, there is no way to get correct interlaced output in all situations. Video-based material will still be soft out the interlaced output, for example. Probably if you want to use this player’s interlaced output, you will want to put it in Film mode for everything, but even then we can’t be sure it will always work."

This seems to be my problem since they're talking about a JVC player and I have a similar one.

Damn - except for this, my player kicks ass and I really don't want to get another one, because it's all-region and does a great PAT/NTSC conversion.

I guess the reason I notice this now and not before is tha my previous player (unbeknowsts to me) flagged everything properly and never revealed any "combing" - but my new player (while it produces a better image over-all) doesn't do flagging as well.

Crazy.

Slop you said that the player is set to auto detection mode. Since the JVC auto mode is not seeing the correct cadence very well, maybe if you forced it to the correct mode by selecting Film mode or in the case for TV shows on DVD you should select video mode.

This does belong in the Hardware forum, not the DVD Talk forum. It's a problem with the poor video deinterlacing that your DVD player is doing. A better DVD player will solve the problem.

Here is a lengthy explanation of how progressive scan works:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...e-10-2000.html

I'll second chipmac's suggestion, try forcing the 3:2 pulldown on you DVD player to video for your TV programs on DVD and see if that helps. I had a JVC player and while I generally kept it set to auto detect from time-to-time I would have to force it to film or video. And most commonly I had to set it to video when watch TV programs on DVD...

Other than that, progressive always looked as good or better than an interlaced player on my HDTV.

Ok, I can barely grasp basic physics so there's no way I can follow that.
The quarks and gluons interact with the dark matter to make Buffy jaggy at the edges when she moves? Now it all makes sense.

Since I bought my cheap Toshiba progressive player, I noticed a great deal of artifacts during camera movements. After doing a fair amount of research online, I concluded that IF you have a set with good 3:2 pulldown, you're probably better off using interlaced mode than progressive...IF you have a cheap progressive player. I finally went back to interlaced mode since my 16:9 set has good pulldown and have been much happier with the results.

BTW, I tried forcing the player into various video/film modes, but most of the time it didn't seem to help.

FWIW, dvds with good transfers (LOTR, Matrix, Nemo, etc.) look FANTASTIC in progressive-film mode.

No mode will help if the player is crap. I used to have a Toshiba SD4700. Horrible at progressive scan. Had serious chroma-bug issues too. I'll never buy Toshiba again.

I've a Denon DVD-2900 that looks KILLER w/progressive. But for video- Family Guy, Sex and the City, etc- I turn the output to interlaced.

Long story short:

Cheap progressive scan DVD player = bad.
There is a reason why some players cost more than $99.

If you have a good progressive scan player with 3:2 pulldown that ignores the bad flagging on the disc, all movies look fantastic in progressive mode.

Couldn't agree more.

I have a progressive Pioneer DV-434, but since I don't have a progressive capable monitor, I don't know how it would perform. The player cost around $149 back in late 2001.

This because of two things. First these discs are flagged properly and second they're not taken from video. Look in your manual and find out how to use the different settings for 3:2 pulldown. Leave progressive turned on and try the different settings on the bad discs and ones taken from video until the problem is solved. Or you can buy a better player that handles poorly flagged and video sources better.

But that site reviews many nice, expensive players that also have problems with flagging. One of the best reviewed players is my old $199 Panny that I didn't have a problem with - it wasn't until I "upgraded" to my new JVC that these "interlacing" issues started showing up. So I'm guessing it has more to do with a player's chip set that determines how to read a disc than the player itself (since, otherwise, my new JVC kills my old Panasonic) - but as I've experienced, it's pretty much a crap-shoot as to what chip set you end up with.

A player's chip set really is what makes the player when you come down to it. Which deinterlacing chip set and MPEG decoder chip is used will determine how well your picture looks. You don't say which Panny player you had but if it has the Faroudja chip in it that's why you never had the problem before. In what ways does the JVC kill the Panny? It's been a while since I've studied the shootout but JVCs were never good for video sources if I remember correctly.

The guys on Screensavers (TechTV) said to allow the TV to do the 3:2 pull down. I have a Pioneer 563a progressive scan player and a Sony 34XBR800 HDTV with component cables. I tried Nemo in both Progressive scan using the player and without. It looked better WITHOUT the progressive scan. Images were much sharper and more clearly defined than the progressive scan image. With the progressive on the picture looked "soft" and colors slightly muffled. I am still confused about this. I understand the basics of what progressive scan does (twice the horizontal lines, etc), but the proof is in the pudding. Nemo looked better without the progressive turned on. I also tried Spider-Man. The menu looked better in interlace mode. The little spider on the menu I could see all the legs, but with progressive scan on, the legs blurred into each other and I couldn't count them as well. It was close between the two while the movie was playing. I gave interlace mode a slight edge there too, but not as drastically as Nemo. Maybe since Nemo is a digital transfer. If anyone else has heard that "let the TV" do the 3:2 pull down let me know.