[MPlayer-users] Interlaced video replay as interlaced video with mplayer

[widgital at pop3.demon.co.uk]

Hi there - first post on this mailing list - so apologies for incorrect
netiquette, or posting in the wrong place.

I was referred here by the developers of the Xbox Media Center - which I
believe incorporates mplayer for video replay?  

I was hoping to use XBMC as the front-end of a DVB-T/DVB-S MPEG2 (but also
Divx and MPEG4) PVR and video server system.  The XBox looked like a nice,
low cost, flexible platform, with high-quality RGB output to a European
SCART TV.

However on further analysis it seems that the XBMC currently only replays
interlaced video (such as MPEG2 DVB recordings, and video sourced DVDs) by
de-interlacing to progressive and then re-interlacing for display on a TV. 
This works OK - but there is a quality loss involved in de-interlacing and
re-interlacing - which seems a little sad.  Some people have reported
partial success with interlaced replay using Xbox Media Player (older
builds) using no post-processing, but the AV sync process seems to lock to
the incorrect field order 50% of the time (producing movement judder)

The XBMC guys said they thought mplayer can't replay interlaced material as
interlaced - it has to convert to progressive internally.  Is this the
case? Is it possible to "fudge" things - so interlaced material is
converted to progressive with no processing (so the frame appears to be
full of combing artefacts on motion) - but with fields guaranteed to be in
the right order within the frame, so that when the frame is read out as
interlaced (if it can be) the fields automagically re-appear?

I have been reading quite a few posts on various mailing lists - and some
people detail success with some video cards (Matrox?) using fieldparity
options and no pre-/post-processing to ensure clean replay of interlaced
fields, with no scaling or de-interlacing. (So the recorded fields are
output in the right order?)

Is this the case - if not is anyone aware of a solution that will provide
clean interlaced replay that might be applicable to mplayer - either with
an Xbox, or using a cheap video card in a small form factor PC. The key
thing is to support RGB output at 15.625/50 - not composite or S-video via
a TV out line/field-scan converter?

All help/advice gratefully received.  Again apologies if this is the wrong
place.

I realise that most of the end-users of mplayer are more interested in
replay of non-interlaced Divx and MPEG4 stuff, or de-interlacing MPEG2
interlaced material for replay on progressive (i.e. VGA PC) screens.
However if someone can point me towards to a solution I would be a very
happy bunny!

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