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Answerman - Why Is Old Anime Still Released In Interlaced Format?

Anime is definitely guilty of that and it drives me up the wall. The BBC stuff, however, is produced in 25 fps, which is not compatible with North American televisions. And while that converts to 29.97i and looks fairly good (on an interlaced-capable monitor), converting that to 24p is just a cluster-f---. You either end up with ghosting, stuttering, or a 4% (audible) slowdown. And in Europe, all TV shows pretty much have to be 25 fps.

I've made some private dub archival Blu-rays of stuff like the Manga UK releases of Patlabor 2 and Space Adventure Cobra. Those were both dubbed at 25 fps, so speeding up the remastered video to 25 fps and then converting to 29.97i was basically the only way I could get an acceptable result.

I would have thought that an HD TV would be more flexible with framerates than was the case with CRT displays and that therefore Blu-ray would be more flexible with what it allowed (progressive displays don't have that whole problem with rate of the electron gun being derived from the voltage and thus forcing the framerate to a particular value). When dealing with progressive displays, it really shouldn't be necessary to force the video into either 24 fps or 29.97 fps when the show is really 25 fps . A computer certainly wouldn't care, so I would have thought that an American HD TV could handle the same 25 fps progressive video that a British one could, in which case it would make the most sense to just put the video at 1080p and 25 fps on the Blu-ray. But maybe they've done something specialized in the TVs that makes them less flexible.

DmonHiro wrote:

OK... wait a second. I know all about interlaced anime and how big of a pain in the butt it is to IVTC sometimes, but what's so hard about viewing it. If you're talking about putting a DVD in your computer and watching the VOB files, then most players do the IVTC-in automatically. I've never seen an anime DVD that didn't look de-interlaced on my computer.

I think the asker was either using VLC, or didn't like how software/automatic GPU deinterlacing looks. And honestly, most graphics cards (ATI in particular) do a pretty crap job of it.

That being said, I've had some personal experience messing with various options to get older video to look good on modern TVs. I have several friends into retro video gaming and this is a major issue for that hobby: many older consoles look great when hooked up to a CRT TV but look awful on a modern TV. I still own a lot of anime on laserdisc and the same problem exists there: the only video output from the player is analog and the signal is interlaced. Some TVs do a better job handling the old-school signal than others. One thing that has worked well for me (and some of my gaming friends) is to use one of the video conversion units made by DVDO in between the old analog device and a modern HDTV with HMDI. The DVDO unit does the signal processing much better than most TVs do, and they are reasonably priced on the used market. Alas that wouldn't help those who want to view older programming on their PC.

Are there shows that have been released on disc that aren't streaming because they're interlaced? I'd be interested to see a list of them - and I'd be more likely to buy the discs if I knew that's all we're likely to get!

Kalessin wrote:

This is the first that I've ever heard of HD TVs being anything other than purely progressive. What do they do, have some mode where they refresh only every other line on the screen to emulate a CRT display?

HDTVs (at least those with a tuner) have to be able to process an interlaced signal, as the 1080 broadcast format is interlaced (only 720 is progressive for OTA signals). How that interlaced input is actually displayed is up to the manufacturer (or at least the manufacturer of the chipset the TV manufacturer uses).

What are the most common problems that happen when you hook up an old system to a modern television? I always had the impression that even modern TVs were equipped to handle interlaced signals and that there shouldn't be a problem, light guns notwithstanding.

Now.... if you're trying to encode an old anime DVD to a mkv or mp4, and the DVD is interlaced... have fun in hell.

I can understand leaving the interlacing in when producing a DVD, because it's SD, and your typical SD TV is a CRT and deals with interlaced video. But I don't see how it makes any sense on Blu-ray, regardless of the original content. HD displays aren't CRTs, and so they're progressive, not interlaced

Yeaaaah noooooo. That won't work at all guys. TVs are VERY strict with their supported frame rates. Nearly all TVs sold outside of PAL countries will outright refuse a 25 Fps signal.

I'd expect the majority of SD TVs are flat panels these days, and there definitely have been HD CRTs - they showed them off on BBC Tomorrow's World in the 80s!

Were they ever released into the general consumer markets? I never saw any HD CRTs for sale, only at those conventions.

Shiroi Hane wrote:

I'd expect the majority of SD TVs are flat panels these days, and there definitely have been HD CRTs - they showed them off on BBC Tomorrow's World in the 80s!

I remember seeing those things in the 90's too. My father liked to stay on top of technological releases, so he'd watch shows, read magazines, and go to conventions about not-quite-consumer-yet machines. The consensus on HD CRTs was "too expensive."

Were they ever released into the general consumer markets? I never saw any HD CRTs for sale, only at those conventions.

Regarding comb filters, are they physical devices placed into a TV or a program for the computer inside the TV to do? If it's the latter, couldn't they reuse existing comb filters? If it's the former, is it simply just not worth the money to manufacture good quality ones anymore?