Hi,
this is my first stab at checking out the advanced video patterns on AVIA II and DVE, so please bear with me if I ask a stupid question.

The TV is a standard CRT 4:3 (Sony KV-27FV310) non-progressive. DVD player is set to 'interlace' output. I ran the Vertical Multiburst pattern of DVE and the Vertical Sweep pattern of AVIA II. There was one thing in common that I noticed - there is a very obvious flicker in the higher resolution areas only i.e. as it approaches 300-400 lines. Those regions of the pattern that are in the 300-400 lines exhibit a lot of flicker.

Is this normal ? or a problem ?
Is this something to do with interlaced/progressive ?
Whatever it may be why does it affect only the higher resolution areas ?

It's normal with interlaced displays. Properly done progressive images won't show this flicker. You see it at the higher line counts because as the line count gets closer to the vertical pixel count (480), the lines get narrower, approaching 1 pixel width. Interlaced displays scan all the odd pixels (lines) on one pass and all the even horizontal pixels on the next. This creates a flickering effect most noticeable on narrow (close to 1 pixel width) horizontal transitions between high-contrast areas, such as when a character in a movie is looking out through slightly-opened window blinds.

I'm not sure that I explained it all that well, but someone else will probably chime in here with a better way of putting it!:D