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We recently bought an HDTV and went through some mental gymnastics trying to decide if we should get 1080p or a 1080i HDTV

But before I get to that lets get a few things about HDVT cleared and defined

HDTV Defined

HDTV has made the older analog television sets obsolete. For one thing, HD (hi-def) images are several times sharper and clearer than older TVs. WHY? Older televisions receive analog wave signals in the air and the picture quality can be lost through conversion from the analog signal to the screen.

Newer LCD HDTV or plasma HDTV sets receive digital signals from digital broadcast and so the picture quality is preserved.

HDTV: Function and Benefits

It doesn’t matter what the size of the screen is. HDTV will have better picture quality showing details even on larger screens.

• HDTV is multicasting. It can send several signals at the same time and all on the same channel.
• The audience can interact with certain programming broadcasted through HDTV.
• HDTV maximizes the use of all the pixels on its screen, whereas analog TVs use a small portion of the pixels available to it.
• Images and their brilliant colors are visible in HDTV broadcast.

HDTV Minuses

You might guess an HDTV set is expensive and some are. However, consider the benefits and the advantages over traditional analog sets we have previously discussed. New televisions should come with HDTV tuners anyway so you can start view programming in HD when you hook up with a provider. For sets without built-in HDTV tuners, separate HDTV antennas and HDTV tuners are available. SO yes you need an HDTV box, to convert the signal. IF you dont and just use a regular Cable box your image will look stretched and kind of fuzzy

Shopping For An HDTV?

Want to know which HDTV is right for you?, It really makes no difference. What you’re going to run into in the stores is 1080p or 1080I you won’t be able see any difference, because there is essentially none. HDTV reviews and advice will help you select the system that’s right for you, and you’ll start to wonder why you didn’t purchased an HDTV sooner.

1080p or 1080I

let’s talk basics and specifics.

1080p means progressive scan

1080I means interlaced.

Interlaced or Progressive Scanning. The television picture can be “drawn” in one of two ways.  Traditionally, the picture is drawn with two passes, one for the odd-numbered horizontal lines (first frame update), and another for the even-numbered horizontal lines (second frame update).  So it takes two passes (or two frame updates) to refresh the entire picture.  This is called interlaced scanning.  An analog TV picture is completely refreshed about 30 times a second (or 30 Hz).  To put it another way, the entire picture is redrawn 30 times every second, with the odd- and even-numbered lines redraw cycle repeated 30 times per second.  Some of the new DTV formats call for progressive scanning, where the entire picture (both odd-numbered and even-numbered horizontal lines) is updated in a single pass or scan.  Progressive scanning results in a brighter image with no visible TV scan lines and fewer motion artifacts (the stair-step edges that you see on moving objects).  Progressive scan correlates better with the film medium, where the entire film cell is protected onto the screen one cell at a time.

Let me make this crystal clear there are basically no 1080i TVs anymore. Unless you bought a CRT based TV, every modern TV is progressive scan (as in LCD, Plasma, LCOS, DLP). They are incapable of displaying a 1080i signal as 1080i. So what we’re talking about here mostly applies to people with 1080p native displays. Movies and almost all TV shows are shot at 24 frames-per-second (either on film or on 24fps HD cameras). All TVs have a refresh rate of 60Hz. What this means is that the screen refreshes 60 times a second. In order to display something that is 24fps on something that is essentially 60fps, you need to make up, or create new frames. This is done using a method called 3:2 pulldown (or more accurately 2:3 pulldown).

HDTV Refresh Rates

Hdtv uses a data rate of 25 - 27 Mbps for the best possible picture.  All HDTV formats are in 16:9 aspect ratio.  The 720 vertical resolution only uses progressive scanning, but at various refresh rates.  The highest resolution is commonly used in interlaced scanning mode (1080i), due to limitations of current broadcast and consumer equipment.  But the format includes 1080p, to accommodate future growth as imaging and display technologies catches up.  HDTV is used for premium programming when picture quality is of utmost priority, and bandwidth is less of a concern.  This includes select prime time shows, major sporting events, and premium movies.

At its highest resolution, HDTV offers 2,116,800 pixels (picture elements).  This is over a six-fold improvement in picture detail of standard definition television which only has 307,200 pixels.  Color resolution is also improved by a factor of two.  All of the DTV formats use MPEG-2 as the video compression standard, just like DVD-Video.  MPEG-2 is a flexible video encoding algorithm and scales up nicely for the higher resolutions of DTV.  With digital transmission, there are no analog transmission artifacts and degradations such as snow due to weak signal, double images or ghosting due to multi-path interference of large buildings and structures, and sparkles due to noise from a vacuum cleaner.

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