Maximum PC

Back in Dec 16, 2009, there was a MaximumPC Ultimate Guide to Playing and Transcoding Downloaded Videos. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/video_faq

I'm trying to work my way through it and do all the stuff in it. I downloaded FFDShow and VLC Media Player. When I got to the part about FFDShow filtering, it's like they skipped the step on how to open a file. "Not only that, but you can apply various filters and other effects to just the right half of the video, giving you instant feedback and a point of comparison." Well, they don't say what player to use to open the file. I opened a sample video file that came with Win7 using VLC, checked the Picture Properties box, and messed around with the sliders. There was no difference in the right half or the whole thing. Am I missing something here, or is this guide less than ultimate?

VLC uses its own plugins and are independent of FFDShow. FFDShow is for players that check codecs to play files. An example is Windows Media Player.

Is there a way to convert videos originally coded in interlace into progressive scan? I'm watching videos on Netflix, and I'm thinking about buying the DVD version so that I can get a clean progressive scan version; I've got a ton of DVDs, all of them in interlace format, some in MPEG-4. The image quality isn't great, and when using WMP or VLC, they do not have the anti-aliasing feature (aka up-converting) present on some Blu-Ray players.

I know for sure that if your Media Player has hardware acceleration, nVidia will de-interlace them by default. I'm sure AMD does the same for their line of products too.

Back to your question, you can transcode everything with Handbrake. Then tweak some settings to de-interlace your video.

I am thinking about buying a PAL DVD set from Australia, because Shout! Factory hasn't licensed some of the episodes, but Madman has. I changed the firmware on my DVD drive to region-free, so that isn't a problem. I don't think there will be a drop in quality in the transcoding from NTSC to PAL done by Madman, since the series started and ended in Japan in the days before DVDs roamed the earth--so it was probably PAL throughout its life. I live in a region 1 country, and all of my electronics are based on US electrical standards (NEMA 5-15 outlets). I use an LCD monitor that can go up to 60Hz. I use VLC to play back DVDs, but I do wonder if there is software that does a better job than VLC or WMP. Will there be any problems or drops in quality playing the DVDs with my setup?

No.

I watch DVDs from all over the world on my PC and have never noticed a difference in quality because of the regional formats / encoding.

Since these videos are based on pre-digital media, the level of quality will be limited by the fact that they are tape scans. In other words, the original is of considerably lower quality than anything used by DVDs.