Posted by Jay G. on 03/10/06 13:00

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 03:54:03 GMT, AZ Nomad wrote:

> On Thu, 9 Mar 2006 20:49:27 -0600, Jay G. <"Jay "@tmbg.org> wrote:
>>HD discs will have up to 5 times the resolution of a standard definition
>>DVD. The degree to which this increase in resolution is noticable depends
>>on the size and quality of HDTV you have, as well as probably how good your
>>eyesight is.
>
> Two to three times the resolution actually. Resolution is the number of lines
> per inch, the number of dots along one dimension. A good improvement over
> NTSC, but nowhere the resolution of film.

Counting only the scan lines only works when you're comparing formats with
the same horizontal resolution, like NTSC vs PAL. However, HDTV formats
have a higher horizontal resolution in addition to higher vertical
resolution. The numbers are:

480 - 704x480 = 337920 pixels
720 - 1280x720 = 921600 pixels
1080 - 1920x1080 = 2073600 pixels

So 720 is about 2.7 times the resolution of 480, while 1080 is about 6
times the resolution of 480.

> In 10 years, HDTV will be as much a joke as ISDN. At least it's a step in the
> right direction.

Digital Television won't be foisted upon consumers until 2009. After that
point, there's still going to be a large transition period where a good
number of people are going to stick with their old analog sets and a
digital signal converter. The analog shutoff doesn't even affect cable
companies, which may continue to transmit analog signals for a while after
that. Not to mention that most LCD "HDTV" sets nowadays are only 720p. So
in 10 years time we're going to see HDTV *just* becoming the mainstream
standard. And it took over 40 years for color NTSC to be replaced by
anything else.

-Jay

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