720p & 1080i/p

[richardmb]

Maybe it's because I've been paying more attention but I see allot of HD TV's that Best Buy, Circuit city and other retailer's sell that are 720p I allways thought 1080i or 1080p was true HD. Is this something new or has it been going on for a while? Ive been dong some research into them for a possible purchase in the near future.

 

[BFG]

720p HD sets have been around for a while and have pretty much been the standard in Plasma, LCD, DLP.

CRTs have used a 1080i scan rate but none have actually been designed to fully resolve all the info in a 1080i signal.

1080p was designed in LCD and DLPs to be able to fully resolve 1080p and everything below. But right now there is no 1080p sources and there might never be

 

[richardmb]

OK thank's, So is Cable, Dish* & OTA 1080i And Direct* Something less?

 

[Ilya]

720p, 1080i and 1080p are all official HD resolutions. In the past, most HDTV sets were CRT-based RPTVs, 1080i was the dominant native resolution. This is because not too many CRT-based TV sets were capable of doing 720p (720p requires higher scan rate, than 1080i). The LCD, DLP and plasma-based displays, which are so comon today are all progressive-scan in nature, so 720p is a common native resolution for them. And the most recent displays are now capable of 1080p - which is the altimate HD - the best you can expect at present time.

 

[Ilya]

BFG was quicker with his reply!

 

[Ilya]

OK thank's, So is Cable, Dish* & OTA 1080i And Direct* Something less?

I guess you are asking about HD-Lite now. Ok, here we go:
Standard 1080i resolution is 1920x1080 Interlaced. What D* (and E* on some channels) do is that they take the original 1920x1080i signal, downconvert it to 1280x1080i (lose 1/3 of resolution in the process) and then upconvert it back to 1920x1080i inside the receiver. The resulting output signal is still 1080i (1920x1080i), but it doesn't look as sharp as standard HD 1080i, due to two extra conversions and the loss of horizontal resolution.

 

[griz_fan]

Also, different networks use different resolutions for their HD material. If I remember correctly, NBC, CBS and PBS use 1080i, while Fox, ABC and ESPN use 720p. All HD televisions will internally scale to match their native resolution. As of now, no programming is available in 1080p, though I'm not sure if either HD DVD or BR DVD will allow for 1080p. Given the investment in equipment, I'd seriously doubt we'll see any television programming in 1080p for years.

 

[Ilya]

Current HD DVD players can only output 1080i (even though HD DVD discs are 1080p internally). Blu-ray players coming out this summer are expected to deliver 1080p.

 

[richardmb]

I understand interlaced & progressive, is 720p as good as 1080i because 720p refreshes every line instead of every other line ?

 

[JohnL]

I understand interlaced & progressive, is 720p as good as 1080i because 720p refreshes every line instead of every other line ?

Richard,

720p is much better at displaying HIGH action content than 1080i.

1080i is much better for the highest resolution slow moving action, like cinematic panoramas and low action scenes in Dramas, and Documentary's like PBS's Nature.

John

 

[Shawn95GT]

Isn't it true that most of these 1080p sets will not accept a 1080p input?

The 1080p upconversion is the same as what my 720p set does. No matter what you feed it, it converts to 720p. In the case of a 1080p set it'll translate everything to 1080p.

That being said, my next set will be a 1080p set .

 

[vurbano]

There are some WMVHD 1080p sources are there not? T2 is 1080p?

 

[Shawn95GT]

There are some WMVHD 1080p sources are there not? T2 is 1080p?

I've downloaded some demos in 1080p and they are promising movies in the same resolution.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

This is well and good for PC playback... but will the TVs actually accept a 1080p input?

Shawn