Progressive Scan Vs. Interlace

[vic_vega]

Ok, so I have a video that is DivX, and I am converting it to mpeg2 for a dvd.

I know that interlace is what most tv's use for display, but when I preview it, in interlace vs progressive scan, it looks better in progressive scan.

Now, I know the reason why it looks better and that I won't be able to see the interlace on a TV, but would it be better to use interlace, or progressive scan?

[setarip]

(As far as I know, if you're in the NTSC/Region 1 "world", all commercial DVDs are interlaced)

The following was gleaned from

http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html

"The term 'interlacing' refers to the practice of drawing all of the odd numbered lines on the CRT, and then drawing all of the even numbered lines, which are drawn interspersed with the odd numbered lines. ... When interlacing is employed, there are always two fields per frame. 'Progressive scan' means that interlacing is not employed.

One advantage of interlacing is that, for a given bandwidth, it allows higher resolution (more pixels). Another advantage is that it reduces CRT flicker: A bright white area of the screen will flicker if that area is drawn only 30 times per second. Drawing 60 fields per second will prevent that. A disadvantage of interlacing is that, with only 30 frames per second, it doesn’t portray motion as smoothly. Another disadvantage is that data compression is not as efficient. Also, when the TV set grows old, the two fields often become misaligned."

[vic_vega]

Yeah I know that they usually are interlace.

But I'm wondering if it would look better to use progressive scan.

I'll probably end up using interlace, because that is what is normally used.

[setarip]

"I'll probably end up using interlace."

Sounds like a sensible choice...