[mythtv-users] when to deinterlace?

[John Biundo]

matt wrote:
> http://www.100fps.com/
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinterlacing
> 
> Google is your friend..... :-)
> 
Yes, google is our friend.  But indulge me about a little pet peeve.

As is often the case, google is not necessarily our *best* friend. 
Remember that while we all love tinkering with MythTV, and learning 
about the underlying technology, at the end of the day it's important to 
generate a quality picture in a reasonable period of time.

De-interlacing, in the context of watching MythTV's LiveTV, is a great 
example.  I can certainly find a bunch of gossamer threads on the topic, 
which while valuable, suffer all the problems of reading such a medium 
(accuracy, age, completeness, readability issues, etc.).  I can also 
find articles like the ones you referenced, which are a great read, 
especially if I'm interested in learning about video theory, but still 
often leave unanswered some basic and practical questions about 
deinterlacing *in this application context*.

What's missing, IMHO (and this is true of a whole variety of 
MythTV-related functionality -- it is, after all, "convergence") is 
something in the middle -- something that deals with the concepts well 
enough to help one become self-sufficient, but that also puts the 
concepts to practical use in the MythTV context.

I appreciate Brian Wood's comments.  They fill in a bit of the picture. 
   What I'd really like would be something that addresses:

- What is deinterlacing (in a paragraph or two, and I'm happily referred 
to one of these tomes for more detail)
--- What's a good way to recognize interlacing artifacts?
--- Is there any objective way to measure them?
- Here's when and where you need it w.r.t. MythTV
--- What kinds of content benefit from it?
--- Do you need it if you're running a SD CRT technology TV?
--- How about HD?
--- How about SD with LCD?
- Where/how do you turn on and/or tune de-interlacing?
--- In MythTV?
--- In your TV out graphics card?
--- How do these settings interact, if at all?
--- Does it interact with other settings, like XvMC?

I'm sure there's more.  I've pieced together an understanding of some of 
these things, and I'm gradually learning more, but I'm not convinced 
I've got it right yet, and there remain gaps in my understanding.  And 
it's a ton of work to continue to piece it all together.

It sure would be *wonderful* if someone who really understands this 
stuff could write it up -- or perhaps at least generate some beginnings 
of such a document on the wiki page.  I'm not really moaning about this, 
and it's not really a surprise to me.  But if someone who happens to 
know this subject happens to read this and have a little time to put 
into it, I think it would benefit a large percentage of new MythTV 
adopters immensely.

Sorry for the long post.

John