What Is High Definition Television?

Video Transcript

TONY RAMIREZ: Hi, my name is Tony Ramirez and this is the high-definition movies and players. All right, before we go any farther, let me explain again the definitive answer on TVs. If you're going to be watching the HD content on your TV, you're going to have to have an HD TV of course. So, let me go through a recap on all these things if you're confused by these I's and P's and 480 and 720 and 1080, here's a recap on how things work, how thing used to work and how things will work right now. So, on your standard television, whether it is a wide screen standard-definition TV or one of the square TVs that we've all had in the past, this is the basics. We have 480i, all right, now what this is 480 lines of resolution. Now the "i" stands for interlaced and what it is--if you can see these blue lines that I have here, it's every other line, so interlaced is like this. You have your one, three and five. And then the color bars would be your two, four and six. Now, how the signal is, is there's 30 frames a second but they're split up in 60 cycles. So, it's actually flickering, just like this flicker, flicker, flicker. So that's what the "i" stands for, the interlaced will be flickering. So that's why if you put a camera up to a TV, you'll start getting all those weird lines like that. So this is a good depiction of what the "i" stands for in 480i or any of the other I's which we'll get to. Now "p". Now this is your standard DVD. If you have a DVD player that used to have progressive all over the place, the "p" is progressive or picture or photo however you want to call it. So the "p" is actually just like you're seeing it here. This is an actual size of 480. This is showing you the entire picture. So how this would be is almost like you see it in the movie theater. It's actually picture, picture, picture, picture, picture. So that's your 480p on a standard-definition TV. Now we going to HD resolution. There is no more 720i, there's just 720p. Again, this is the exact size of the 720p on a 1080 TV which we'll get to you in a second. So we have 720 lines of resolution, progressive and the actual resolution is 1280 x 720. So, on a 720 TV, you'll get the resolution of 720 lines progressive, progressive, progressive, progressive. This will give you a better picture quality. Now, all the way up to 1080, this is the big one. HD resolution of course is 1920 x 1080. Now here of course is 1080i. Just as I described with the 480i, is it's interlaced. You can see the lines a little bit better now, but of course, it's one, three, five and so on and then the black lines here are two, four, six, eight and so on. So this is your standard TV if you're getting a signal from the satellite or cable, whatever it is. Your interlaced is actually doing this. You can do "p" as well, but they're really not broadcasting it, not yet. Now, for HD DVD and Blu-ray, everything is being broadcast or sent out signal wise at 1080p and of course, like I mentioned before it's progressive, progressive, progressive. So for the best quality, you want the "p" on there, the progressive, and you want the highest number. So here it is at 1080p.

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