Chicagoaubear, PRD74 and I have been doing this since 2003, so you are telling us what we already know. Chicagoaubear has made certain choices but I can tell you they were the right ones.

First and foremost, Chicago’s priority is to record our games for re-viewing on DVDs (on SD TVs). Sure, Chicago would love to capture from a progressive source but are you going to pay for his HD bill? When capturing from a 480i SD source you get about 30fps, but each frame has half the information interlaced… so there are only 15 or so full progressive frames per second… sure he can deinterlace them at the time of capture but he would get the ‘flicker’ effect where during high motion (sports especially) you get choppy video. Trust me, all three of us have already experimented with both… and chose to interlace. Interlacing technology is a good thing when it comes to watching something on TV. Trust me, high motion footage at 30fps interlaced looks better than 15fps progressive on any TV.

PRD74’s responsibility is to stream our games over the internet… and frankly he’s got the best 480i SD stream I’ve ever seen… no he doesn’t de-interlace either … but by choice… watching sports and 15 full progressive frames per second looks horrible. He too has tried both…. and are YOU going to pay for his HD upgrade?

Then there’s me. I get all my source video from these guys. And let me tell you for our community, making highlights is the lowest of all these priorities… However, I know my highlights will be seen on computer screens of at least 60hertz… so I can afford to deinterlace (I know there’s only 1/2 the information). All my video is progressive… and if you download the files I create (bottom right hand corner of every video page)… you’ll see that I actually can maintain a large amount of pixel information through the editing process:
http://www.vimeo.com/3095296

I would say these look pretty damn good… it’s only after they go up to youtube and vimeo that they get dumbed down.

Bottom line: The true reason behind my low quality highlights (which still are better than anyone else out there btw) is the Sorenson, 1pass codec used by Vimeo. Take a look at this clip… captured in full, uncompressed HD progressive as you suggested… edited and re-encoded in H.264 progressive (this is as good as it gets)… and uploaded to Vimeo… notice all the anti-aliasing and edge smudging problems.
http://www.vimeo.com/3116993

This clip looks ok, but getting 30 progressive frames at capture still isn’t worth it unless Vimeo switches over to H.264 2 pass conversion. Plus Chicago and PRD74 would have to upgrade to progressive sources… and pay for them on their own. Are you going to pay for our HD bills?

Look, all three of us volunteer tons of our spare time, resources and bandwidth so our fans can enjoy video… we do this all for free and all three of us are risking copyright lawsuits to boot. Plus we’ve been doing this for a while, so I can assure you we’re doing our best. Now if you are an expert and know more than we do, then pls send us some constructive suggestions… but just telling us to upgrade to HD and not send us the $$ is poor form. Plus to suggest that Chicago, PRD74 and I haven’t considered all the alternative frame capturing technologies is insulting… after more than 4 full seasons of this, we’re all putting out the best quality that we can afford.