Not in its native format. Yes the receiver on the other end or TV will up sample the missing information on the horizontal pole but the actual resolution of 1440 X 1080 is not a native 16:9 format. While it is using interpolation, to fill in the missing info, expanding into a 16:9 format, that info still can be wrong as it's only guessing at what was there and it has to fill in the info to make it appear what it natively isn't. This is why its call HD lite is because it's not a direct 1:1 pixel representation. When presented with a full resolution full hd 1920 X 1080 all of the data points are there 1:1 pixel ratio and you are missing none of the info. This is why DirecTV's picture is much sharper than Dish's, because DirecTV provides a 1:1 sample and there is no guess work through interpolation.
This is actually a really good discussion.