[noggin]

If you use 'deinterlace (half)' you will only get smooth playback on material originally shot 25p (if you are in a 50Hz territory) - like high-end drama and documentary. News, Sport, Entertainment and soaps like EastEnders are shot at 50i natively (i.e. 50Hz refresh not 25Hz) and if you 'deinterlace (half)' you don't get the original smooth motion, you get juddery 'film effect' motion. At the least 'Bob' will retain the 50Hz motion present in the original 50i origination.

Yeah, I've definitely noticed that.

I've started to use Bob on some 1080i channels, especially for sport because Deinterlace (half) is a bit too juddery.

Thankfully Deinterlace works on SD content because Bob is painful to watch on SD content.

Yep - 1080i is a lot more of a challenge than 1080p ;-)

That's one of the benefits of the Haswell Celeron 2955U in the Chromebox and Gigabyte Brix (and if you don't watch 24p stuff, the Ivy Bridge Celeron 1007U and 1037U in other boxes). They have the CPU power to do YADIF 2x de-interlace of 1080/50i, which is significantly better than Bob. It's a pity that Intel's Linux drivers are so poor in de-interlacing terms (aka VPP)