Quote:

You've got 1080i confused with 1080P and it will be a long time before anyone will have the bandwidth to tranmit in 1080P.


No, I was talking mainly about 720p vs 1080i:

720p is 1280 x 720 for 921k pixels per b&w image. At 60 images per second, that's a "dot" rate of 55.3 megapixels per second. Assuming 24-bit-per-pixel color, that's 55.3E06 * 24 or 1.327 gigapixels/sec.

HD providers are currently only transmitting 1080i frames using 1440 x 1080 resolution for 1.55 megapixels per b&w image. At 30 images per second (two interlaced fields @ 60/sec), that's a "dot" rate of 46.6 megapixels/sec. Using 24-bit color, that's 1.1 gigapixels/sec.

The full 1080i implementation is 1920 x 1080, for 2.07 megapixels per image. At 30 images per second, that's a "dot" rate of , 62.2 megapixels per second. Using 24-bit color, that's 1.49 gigapixels/sec.

So 720p actually delivers more content per second to your screen with the current over-the-air and satellite implementations. However for still or slow changing scenes, 1080i will show more spatial resolution.

There actually is no 1080p transmission standard -- the two highest ATSC modes are 720p and 1080i. However modern displays can buffer the two interlaced fields of the 1080i format, rendering them as a single frame. But the display capability doesn't change the transmission data rate unique to each format, which ultimately determines the visual quality of what you see.