I know all about interlacing and progressive scan but there's something that's bugging me about PAL film DVD's.

PAL film DVD's are interlaced. But both the 'fields' that make up each interlaced frame on a DVD movie originate from the same frame of the film if you know what I mean and not like TV shows where the 2 fields that make up each frame are taken at a slightly different interval.

So what I want to know is even if a PAL film DVD is interlaced but like my explanation above says about the 2 interlaced fields being from the same frame and belonging together (you don't see any interlacing when you are converting them to DivX or whatever), could you tell a progressive scan DVD player to output as progressive regardless of the 'flag' at the start of the DVD saying it's interlaced? The way I see it all the horizontal lines from the film DVD could be sent to the TV to be displayed at the same time just as a progressive scan DVD does.

Thanks for any replies.