Deinterlacing, hardware vs Software?

[shafe88]

When capturing video from a TV tuner/capture card, is it better to deinterlace while capturing/editing the video, or record it as interlaced and let the player/TV do the deinterlacing? The captured programs will be from VHS and cable TV, and will be played back on a Sony Blu-ray player(which does an amazing job at making DVD's(store bought) look almost as good as HD) via USB and DVD.
Also any good capture software that's free? Currently using Windows Media Encoder 9 to capture Video from my computers TV tuner which doesn't seem to give the quality I'm looking for.

 

[americanaudiophile]

Can you actually record anything on a PC as interlaced? Can you set a capture card to save a video as interlaced?
I don't really know but I would guess that the output of the tuner and card are already progressive scan. If you had the option I think hardware would do a better job than software. Faster too.
I have ripped some old VHS tapes and there really isn't much you can do to increase the quality. Maybe a better tuner card would help?

 

[shafe88]

Can you actually record anything on a PC as interlaced? Can you set a capture card to save a video as interlaced?
I don't really know but I would guess that the output of the tuner and card are already progressive scan. If you had the option I think hardware would do a better job than software. Faster too.
I have ripped some old VHS tapes and there really isn't much you can do to increase the quality. Maybe a better tuner card would help?

I know I won't get much quality out of VHS, but I can do more to get better quality from cable. I've managed to improve quality a little by using movie maker instead of media encoder 9. Your probably right about hardware doing a better job than software, I've noticed DVD's look way better on my Blu-Ray player than they do on my computer.