Hi All,

Something that has been baffling me is that despite all the efforts one can go to in de-interlacing to mitigate the loss of quality, why is it that some DVD players (i.e. my Toshiba one) play interlaced footage on a progressive screen very well without a hint of any interlacing artifacts thus making de-interlacing of the original material pointless! I'm baffled as to how it works and more importantly does anyone know when I can be sure it will as it seems variable between different players.

I think because some DVD players have a high-quality interlacer embedded in their hardware.

Like the above post, some dvd players have better deinterlaced than others, or some TV have better deinterlaced than other, you can turn off progressive output on your DVD player and see if you see the same result, if you do then your TV has good deineterlaced.
Use Google and search for DVD benchmark and it will give you some good read.

Thanks for the feedback Floris and Khoi - just printing off loads of bumfp now!

On a related topic I also notice that DVD players also sometimes cut off the side of the image - especially 4:3 ratio (again though, only with some players) - does anyone know what causes this and how to prevent it - is it to do with the 'safe area', something I've only heard of...