HDTV: The 1080p factor

I thought I knew a lot about high-definition TV, but pride goeth before a fall: Here in Los Angeles at the HDTV Forum 2004, which seems to have drawn almost everybody who is anybody in HD-land, I learned that the HDTVs we've been testing so far don't really display the highest-resolution HDTV standards. Those are 1080i and 1080p, where 1080 represents the number of lines in a frame and i and p stand for interlaced and progressive, the way the frames are drawn (see the HDTV Answer Guide for details).

Today's sets, I'm told, can only display 720p (another of the high-def formats) in its native resolution. These sets merely take the 1080i signal and downconvert it to 720 lines. The first true 1080p sets are just starting to appear, and more vendors say they will be jumping into the market in the months to come. Of course, right now no actual 1080p content is available; (1080i is the closest actually in use by U.S. broadcasters), and don't hold your breath to see it.

Roadblocks to the full realization of HD's potential seemed much on the mind of HDTV entrepreneur Mark Cuban (he of HDNet and Mavericks fame). Cuban spent much of his allotted keynote speech time moaning about how compression is killing off the beauty of true HD broadcasts (which, uncompressed as shot by the Sony equipment his network uses, would require 1.5GB per second rather than the 19.4mbps capacity of the bandwidth the feds have given over-the-air broadcasters for their digital signal).

But someday--Hollywood and the Motion Picture Association of America willing--studios might make their movies available in 1080p, so if you want to be ready, it might pay to wait for a set that can actually display the format without down-coverting it. Then again, it might not pay to wait. Hollywood seems in no rush to make its content available in any high-def format, let alone the most high-def of the lot.