You can walk into any high end electronic store and instantly tell the difference between 720p and 1080i, the 720p is better. But since many of the source broadcast do not go to a full 720p, and the cost to go from a 1080i to a 720p display was at least $1000-2000 when I was looking I bought a 1080i set from a high quality brand and have been totally happy with it, no complaints.

If money were no object I would have gone 720p, but am more than happy with my set. Football games are awsome!!!!!!

 

no one broadcasts in 720p so it is a non-issue. All the HD broadcasts are 1080i. Yes, 720p is better but it is not used by anyone.

I have never seen a 720p broadcast in a store. they are either 480p or 1080i, and the 1080i is uncommon.

 

Wrong. ABC and ESPN are 720p and Fox will be when they come online this fall.

Also, 1080i is NOT equal to 540p. The horizontal scan rate is the same because 1080 updates every other line with each pass however, it's static resolution is ~4x that of 540p.

 

Let me chime in here on a couple of things...

In my area Chicago, networks use both 1080i and 720p. My TV Sony 34XBR960 is simply stunning in 1080i (If you live in the area, check out WTTW-HD and WGN, also WBBM has been showing Tennis and the quality is amazing). Obviously, the downside to buying a tube TV like mine is the size, but the picture simply kicks ass. A friend of mine has the Samsung DLP and although it is a good set, it is not near as good as this.

The HD formats are a little confusing. I believe that 1080i is (1920 x 1080 pixels), interlaced though. There are *no* plasma TV's that can display this resolution. The best do 1024x1024 and must scale the 1920 down to 1024. I am not sure about the LCD sets, you may want to check this before purchasing.

The stuff I see in 720p does not look as good as the 1080i stuff.

Some additional obeservations I have made since buying this set (about a month).

Since these sets are digital, you can see the compression when watching satellite TV (I don't have a HD receiver yet). Also, Tivo suffers the same problem. On an analog set, most of the compression is smeared away due to the NTSC signal.

Because of this, I went old school and setup an antenna on the roof. This took quite some fine tuning, but now I get all the local channels. In Chicago there are a lot of HDTV channels. Kind of sad, but if you want the highest res (lowest compressed) picture, you need an on the air antenna. I've seen HD cable, and I can see the compression on this. What sucks is that the pay services (satellite and cable) can format channels in HD, but can limit the bandwidth and compress it.

Football simply rocks in HDTV, also, amazing, but PBS here really has the best overall content (free concerts, documentaries, etc.). I haven't watched PBS in years.

I get kind of angry when I rent a DVD that says widescreen only to find out its not 16:9.. WTF?

Local CBS-HD (wbbm) will fill the letterbox area if its not used with the color grey.. This is really shitty of them.

My next purchase will be the new HD DirecTV combo box. This will allow recording local over the air tv and direct TV. I saw one at best buy. It was playing on a Samsung DLP set, which imo looked washed out compared to my set, so maybe it was hiding the compression. But the HD Tivo really looked good. It is currently $999. Anyone here buy one yet?

 

Widescreen does not mean it will be 16:9. It means it will be the same aspect ratio in which it was originally shown (as long as it wasn't 4:3). 4:3 (1.33) is called fullscreen. Anything wider than that is widescreen (usually 1.66 - 2.35).


I agree with the above post recommending www.avsforum.com. That is where I researched before my purchase of a Samsung HLN617W. I advise that you read about all the technologies before you decide which one is best for you.

 

I have a Sony LCD 60" Grand Wega and with Cox Cable. All there HD broadcast are at 720p. Discovery HD looks amazing, after you watch HD then go to regular channels it just sucks. Also, the HD receiver automatically puts black bars on the sides of non-widescreen broadcast so it wont look stretched. Heck, even XboX is 720p with the HD cables.

 

I think what he meant was it isn't anamorphic.

You can have 4:3, 4:3 letterbox, or anamorphic widescreen. 4:3 letterbox shows a widescreen image, but the black bars are part of the picture. This means that you are only seeing about 60% of the 480 lines in DVD...watch one of these on a widescreen set and you are in VHS quality! Anamorphic titles are 480 lines in the picture area; the black bars are not part of the 480 lines. These on a widescreen set are amazing.

Many of the early fox and disney/miramax/touchstone DVDs were not anamorphic. Paramount started with it and then stopped for a while. Top Gun isn't anamorphic and it is sad

 

Let me ask you a newbie question... I just bought an HD upgradeable RPTV. Do I still need a $300 hd tuner if I use an antenna? Or do I just hook it up to my tv? I currently have Dish TV and they will charge 300 for the reciever and 10/month for the locals.

If I can get away with buying a $150 terk antenna, I'd rather go that route.

 

you need a tuner even for over the air broadcasts. If it is "hd upgradable" it has no tuner. The tuners you see at best buy are specifically for over the air tuning.

my cable company (bright house) gave me a HD capable cable box at no extra cost. Many now do that.

 

My TV has a built in HDTV tuner.. I think it is a fairly recent feature for tv's to have this built in. You would need the external tuner. However, if you were to buy the new HD DirecTV Tivo combo box, it comes with 2 ATSC (HDTV over the air tuners) and 2 DirectTV tuners. This I think is really the way to go.. However, after just purchasing my TV, its gonna take a little while before I can justify coughing up the $999 for the HD Tivo box.

Anyone using VOOM? A person from work had mentioned this as the "shit". I've never seen this in any of the stores I've gone into. Do they have any PVR's that can hook up to it?