Just read a pretty good overview of some of the nits of de-interlacing: The basics of de-interlacing from good to great. This is a sort of fascinating topic to me.
I guess the first thing I think of, when I think of interlacing on either an aesthetic or technical level, is ugh. Aesthetically, I’d be quite happy to never see another interlaced video or monitor again. Technically, I’m thinking that the resources, both of engineers and of computers, that have been used to de-interlace could really have gone to something much cooler.
And it’s so persistent, too. Interlaced videos are still being produced, I’m sure interlaced monitors are, and at the same time, de-interlacers are still being developed, and all that will continue for years from today.
But this is all just one of those things that happen so often in technology, where something that was a great idea at the time becomes a self-reproducing monster. I wonder if the people who started us down the road to the interlaced world we’re in today (and I don’t mean to deride them; I can only snipe at them with the advantage of hindsight and from the vantage point of _today’s_ technology) are all like “I am become tearing” or if they’re all “I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me”?
In any case, at least we can say that interlacing stimulates the economy.