You’ve probably heard about progressive scan DVD players, but you may not know what exactly they are or why they seem to be the hot item that people want these days. To understand why this is the case, first you need to learn about the different technology that progressive scan DVD players provide. And then you’ll need to realize that at the moment, only those who have invested in HDTV or other high performance display screens or projectors will be able to take advantage of the difference.
To start with, let’s review the way that traditional motion pictures are created. In fact, the term ‘motion picture’ is rather misleading because no pictures actually move. Instead, still pictures, also called frames, are played in rapid succession so that the resulting display is changing so quickly and in such small amounts at a time that we perceive it as moving. You may have recreated this illusion in school or on your own by drawing stick figures or other pictures on a stack of paper, then flipped through the paper quickly. The figures looked like they were moving rather jerkily. But if you took the time to draw enough frames and move them quickly...