Hello,

I saw an interesting discussion in another group so I thought I'd try and get the facts straight in my own head.

Current DVD's can be played back on progressive DVD players at 480p if selected - is the actual DVD 480p or 480i but reformatted to 480p?

What is the actual resolution of the HD-DVD and or Blue Laser?

Thanks

DVD is stored as 480i, it is reconstructed by the progressive players as 480P. The propossed HD-DVD and Blu Ray are supposed to be 1080P. They may use 720P for some stuff, but I am not sure what content that may be. With 6 times the resolution of standard DVD assuming both are unfiltered, which is typically not the case for DVD, HD-DVD and Blu Ray should be substantially better for those with displays capable of resolving the difference. Additionally, HD has an expanded colorspace which does look better than DVD.

1080P, aren't most TV's 1080i?

I do know my HDTV cable signals always look nice. INHD channel is great.

I'm not 100% sure about the final specs, but I know the PowerPoint they showed at CES about HD-DVD said 1080i... at least for the machines coming out at the end of 2005.

could you elaborate a bit on this topic please? do you mean more storage space for colors as in more colors possible? I thought that was codec dependand and since there's no major change (mpeg2,vm9) there won't be much difference this way.
I'd very surprised if 1080p would be the standard , 1080i or 720p more likely IMHO

Dont' quote me on this but I believe HD has 4:2:2 encoding of its color whereas DVD used 4:2:0, meaning less color information.

While 1080i is possible for HD-DVD, I don't think they would do that and try to remain competitive with Blu Ray as it will be 1080P, or at least 1080sf24, pretty much the same thing.

DJ,

All HD RPTV that are CRT are 1080i, but the proposal is for the HD player to outpu an interlaced signal.

So what does the I & P stand for?

Is it Interlaced and Progressive?

If not, then what?


At least this abreviated tech talk is not as confusing as many other forum abrviations I see in standard discussions.

Like when someones says "For AFIIAK" or however it is abreviated. I don't know what the hell they mean

I wouldn't put much stock into anything until we see the actual production hardware. The studios weren't thrilled back in the VHS days about giving consumers the quality of 480i digital discs. They probably have the same fears about 1080p as well. Hopefully it gets done though.

I don't know the exact color encoding codes of standard dvd and HD but you bring up a good point. One of the problems I keep reading about is the use of upconverting dvd players and how they react with different displays. A lot of displays seem to take what should be standard defintion color space and incorrectly flag it as being HD color space, due to the upconverted signal, producing an incorrect color scheme. Should be interesting to see if this kind of problem plauges the new HD machines coming within the year, assuming they decide to downscale any type of signal like standard dvd to 480i.

I believe the intention is that the video will be stored on the disc as 1080p, and then the player will scale that to either 1080i or 720p for output.

What about those new SHARP Aquas TVs that can do 1080p?

And to Julie Walker, yes, the i stands for Interlaced, which means that the video signal is displayed by alternating the odd and even lines for each frame. The p stands for Progressive, which means that both even and odd lines are displayed at the same time giving an obviously sharper picture.

Standard TV is Interlaced at 480i. EDTV is progressive at 480p. HDTV is progressive at 720p or interlaced at 1080i. Or as I previously mentioned, the new SHARP Aquas TVs can do 1080p.