Darth Editous said:

Most people don't know this but the 1080i signal is actually a 1920x540 resolution signal where every other frame (actually called a field) is interlaced with the frame after it, giving you a perceived total resolution of 1920x1080

No, it gives you a perceived resolution of about 1920x756, if you're talking about truly interlaced material. For progressive material you get a perceived and actual resolution of 1920x1080 (barring some minor differences in how colour is processed).

Hi Darth,

For truly interlaced material you are correct that it is impossible to get full-resolution progressive scan content, since each field (even or odd lines) represents an advancement in time of 1/50 sec (for PAL). Motion is the killer here - a fast-moving ball for example will appear in one position for the odd lines and another for the even lines, making a full frame (both fields displayed at once) look wrong. I'll take your word about the 756 lines, I assume that's something to do with a best-case deinterlacer?

Anyway this is not relevant to the 1080i Star Wars broadcast, as it was never truly interlaced - the film was of course captured at 24fps and sped up for PAL regions to 25fps. The fact that is has been broken up into odd and even fields for broadcast has no effect on the ability to get a 1080p rip since the even and odd fields for any given frame will both be in exactly the same time domain (all motion is restricted to 1/25sec chunks).

Venturing further OT, but I actually prefer watching content at higher frame rates but unfortunately it has become associated with low-budget soap operas with 50/60fps cameras and shaky operators so most folks seem to prefer the other-worldliness qualities of 24fps.