Transferring a VHS.

That was once so. but modern telecine machines can run at any speed.

Are you saying that the film is run at 24 fps and scanned at 25 fps, without there being any beating?

I thought films were still run at 25 fps, 4% fast. But nowadays the (slightly speeded-up) sound is pitch-shifted downwards by about a semitone to correct for this, so people with perfect pitch no longer complain about it.

They probably don't do it for such a slight difference, but modern technology is surely capable of scanning a 24 fps film, comparing the frames and interpolating to give a true 25 fps where only the first and last frames are identical to the originals?

Think it all started when they fitted telecines with a frame store. And dispensed with a mechanical shutter. Such a beast could be run from a still frame and give a decent picture as it ran up to speed. But it's a bit outside my field. ;-)

This all begs the question - why don't the TV stations transmit films at

Modern TVs aren't going to melt down, are they?

PA

It would seem very sensible to do this - providing all the equipment along the way (including monitoring equipment) and all consumer TVs, PVR etc can handle 24 fps as an alternative to 25 fps. A change from 25 to 24 would be very small, but it might be enough for something to go "computer says NO".