It's worth noting that if you use LDView to do the export to POV, and have curve smoothing turned on for the POV export, then the result will look a lot better. It will still be polygonal, but the sides of the cylindrical section will be smooth shaded at least.
Like so (please view the original, since the JPEG quality setting on the preview is really low):
Like so (please view the original, since the JPEG quality setting on the preview is really low):