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"As a side note, the converter performs a trick that senses if the original NTSC video came from a progressive source like a telecined movie, in which case it reconstructs the original 24fps progressive movie, which exactly matches the CBS frame rate, so no color fringing appears at all."
Not quite right - The fringing disappearas with a live 144 field camera. There is still color fringing if the object motion (or stillness) and your eye motion (or stillness) don't match. So, even in the 24 frame film case, you see fringing.
What happens on a moving object with 24 frame source: Your eye tracks the average motion, so on the R.B,G,R,B,G...etc fields, your eye is at equally spaced positions 1,2,3,4,5,6, for a first film frame and 7,8,9,10,11,12 for the following film frame. but the object is reproduced 6 times at position #1 for the first film frame, and then 6 times at position #7 for the following film frame, and so on - never at the other positions where your eye is centered at those times. Since the images are stationary for 6 fields while your eye is moving, the R,G,B fields fall on different locations of the retina, and voila! you have fringing. The high field rate helps reduce it, but cannot eliminate it.
Now, if you have a live camera, the object will be reproduced at all those positions at the right times, so if your eye is tracking the average speed, you see no fringing on the moving object. (However, the stationary background objects will show fringing -- oh well.)
The conversion from a different frame/field rate can create different (and maybe worse) fringing since the source images show the object in different positions compared to the 144 field or 24 frame cases.
Micromirror TVs break up the pulse of light for each frame into subframes in order to make a gray scale from a basically on/off procedure. Current sets with color wheels use carefully crafted algorithms so that the color fringing is reduced by the particular sequence of light pulses giving the gray scale, as well as by the high frame rate. Color fringing, which could be quite visible on early units, is mostly invisible these days, although you can still see some color breakup if you stand far away and move your eyes rapidly.
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