It's a Samsung DVD-V6800 VCR-DVD combi, and it seemed like a bargain at 69ukp.
But its DVD player seems incapable of producing a normal interlaced output at 50fps - instead it deinterlaces everything to 25fps progressive, and then sends a "film effect" signal to its SCART outputs, with no movement between the pairs of interlaced fields.

Has anyone had this issue with DVD players before?
and is it actually possible to enable normal interlaced 50fps output?

Thanks,
jamie

User manual - page 33


DVD-V6800 > setup menus > DVD > Video Output - select SCART-RGB . Make sure you press the Yes button to confirm the selection.

That's the first thing I did - I'm not stupid

Anyway I took the player back and swapped it for a Philips, but since then somebody suggested that pressing the 'SPEED' button on the remote would enable interlaced (apparently this works on the older 6700) - can anyone with a 6800 try this?

It turns that the Philips' VCR section is made by LG (crappy picture quality) and it doesn't even have index search, although it does record an index marking on the tape(!).

A lot of the Philips with the LG mechanics and circuitry have got a form of index search, when you press fast forward (Not in viewing mode) they wind and stop at each index mark. But, and I suspect for cheapnes, the menu to allow wind to a particular index has been "masked out" so the micro can't use it.