In reply to:
He said this is because modern HD tvs lack the proper "interlacer."
As Bridgey (
) pointed out, if I understand what the tech is saying correctly, that would be a deinterlacer.
And if your TV is showing an interlaced signal on a progressive scanned screen, believe me, it wouldn't be a bit fuzzy/blocky/soft, any horizontal motion would show interlacing artifacts.
See these images (rendered 'em out quick for illustration)
In each case, the gear is moving right to left, the stopwatch bottom to top of frame.
Image #1 - this is what a SD NTSC signal would look like on a progressive scan monitor without any sort of deinterlacing before scaling (to 720P give or take).
Image #2 - same image, but deinterlaced (top field bicubic) prior to scaling. Note jaggies on the edges. Top field is the "earlier" field, so the positions have moved.
Image #3 - here's the same image (again, top field shown) rendered out in native 720p, no sclaing, no interlacing.
Hope that help illustrate.
Bren R.
