Kim Olav Svines

I'm not an expert when it comes to this, but I have noticed sometimes that some titles doesn't seem to be flagged right, it's never commented in any online-reviews.

I watched Wrong Turn 2 yesterday, and it was incorrectly flagged. Every review I read today have no mention of this. I remember the same applied to the Alien Apocalypse from Anchor Bay which was horrendous. Only one reviewer seemed to agree with me. (BTW, I have a Reon chip which upconvert and deinterlace the signal before it's sent to my BenQ 1080p projector).

Is this issue un-noticeable on smaller screens since few seems to comment this? Kudos to DVDTalk reviewer Ian Jane though, who comments this in his reviews, both here and on DVDManiacs (now AVManiacs).

Some may look good, but other disc can look terrible when flagged incorrectly.

Five Cent Deposit

Non-progressive DVDs for film-based 24fps material are an abomination and I wish that the people who make them would do their homework. I am still on interlaced TVs, but do plan on getting a nice HD set soon and really don't want to run into any more of these than I have to. I know some early Criterions are interlaced, and early titles from other studios sometimes are, but the only recent one I ran into that I can think of off the top of my head was Faye Grim. That was on a single-layer disc, too, and had awful PQ. Really screwed up all around, and should be an embarrassment for all involved. Oh, and all of Frederick Wiseman's shitty home-brew DVDs (that I've seen) are interlaced. Sad that he doesn't seem to have competent people working for him.

The only times I notice are when I use Handbrake to rip a disc for iPod use, and Handbrake defaults to 29.97 because it can't detect the 23.976 (this happened with Faye Grim. I can't think of any other times it has happened, out of 60 or more DVDs I've ripped for personal use.) And when I watch on my iMac, which de-interlaces 29.97 DVDs but doesn't always do a great job. I'm sure there are tons of 29.97 discs out there, but I haven't found them because on my non-progressive TVs they look solid.

I am astonished that dvdbeaver lists all NTSC DVDs as 29.97 in their reviews. It would really be helpful if they told us which DVDs are progressive and which are not. Can you find any indication, in this vast pool of data, of whether these discs are progressive or not: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCom...vensamurai.htm

abintra

Not many places mention the info but a search on DVDBeaver (repeat on desired site) yields some hits for interlaced and non-progressive if that helps at all.

Five Cent Deposit

I know that some contributors at dvdbeaver occasionally mention it in the body of their review... but it isn't at all the standard.

dullboy

I've run into a few. Midnight Cowboy (the 2-disc collector's edition) was one that really had me pulling my hair. Also seen a few from Lionsgate. A reviewer at dvdactive claims that nearly all Lionsgate titles are not progressively flagged. Some concert dvds I have are a problem as well.

Mabuse

How can I tell if it's not flagged. If it's not flagged progresive does it have a strange "PAL like" look?

I have a 720p display and use an upscaling DVD player. I was watching Alligator last night (a Lionsgate release) and it had a strange look to it that I normally equate with being from a PAL source.

dullboy

What's most noticeable in a non-progressive transfer is combing. You see sawtooth-like horizontal delineation, especially in red colors (at least in my experience). The "PAL-like" look you are referring to sounds like it may exhibit jaggies or ghosting, in which case it might be an improper PAL to NTSC transfer. I have the Alligator disc, but I watched it on my projector, which tends to suppress these problems moreso than my DLP television, so I can't say for certain what the case is.

crs

You'll get combing artifacts if you got a progressive display (usually not seen on CRTs).

There's an example at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlaced.

thursdaynighter

I think I've noticed this on the two animated "Avengers" movies from Marvel. It is so annoying and I can't understand why companies can't take care basic dvd issues like this when putting out a product.