PAL Progressive paranoia

Does anyone have any real world experience of of PAL prog DVD player on a plasma screen vs. PAL interlaced? Having read the articles on http://www.progressivescan.co.uk/articles.shtml I am convinced of the need for NTSC prog, but if I have a Toshiba 520 player with hardware antialiasing and a plasma screen with built-in deinterlacer, what advantage would a PAL progressive player have?
"Normal" R2 discs on the Tosh looked pretty darned good to me on a Panasonic 50" plasma.
If anyone can convince me then I will cancel my order for the Tosh and order a Philips 963SA.
Thanks

 

I think the PAL prog issue is more relevant for members who are using projectors. The large image size on pjs means that even slight improvements in quality are much more noticable. In that situation, it comes down to the quality of the de-interlacer in the pj versus the one in the DVD player. For what it's worth, in most of the reports I've seen so far from pj owners, the picture quality from PAL prog is better than that from PAL interlaced fed into the pj's de-interlacer.

Whether PAL prog would be noticably better on a plasma, with a smaller image size, is more difficult.

Have a look at the following thread
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=54632

Hawkeye asked Sevenoaks to demo the Arcam DV88+ on a plasma, including direct comparison of PAL-I vs PAL-P.

He seemed to think that the difference was very subtle, but noticable. Bear in mind that this is a high-end player anyway, so the PAL-I performance will be pretty good to start with.

 

Thanks for the answer.
I'm just a bit peeved that I bought a Toshiba 520 from a dealer who told me there waren't any PAL prog machines only to find he's had 10 Philips mahchines on order for two weeks. I think I'll have it out with him.

 

I have a Panasonic TH-50PHW5B plasma and a (new revision) Arcam FMJ DV27 which is an "official" PAL progressive player.

Difference between PAL interlaced and progressive on plasma? Amazing, it's like having a new high resolution format.

BTW, I demoed a few PAL progressive players on my screen; on loan from my local dealer. All of the them looked superb, but the DV27 had the edge for me.

Also, if PAL source DVDs are a good transfer, i.e. native PAL and not a transfer of NTSC, then PAL progressive looks even better than NTSC progressive because of the greater resolution.

StooMonster