720P or 1080I - What's the best resolution?

[evilkat]

From a purely theoretical standpoint, 1080i will always be BETTER than 720p, simply because you will have FAR more resolution available in a 1080i signal than in 720p, and this is a FACT.

The complications arise because

1. You MUST have a TV capable of displaying a 1080 image (i or p). If the TV can't show 1080i, you'll never know what it looks like.

2. If your TV is capable of displaying a 1080 image, then it better have a good deinterlacer, the magical black box that gets the interlaced signal and makes it progressive (at least on modern displays it will be progressive).

On most mainstream TVs, the included deinterlacer is rather average will not do the fancy deinterlacing found in the higher end (e.g. the Pioneer Elite series) TVs. This was especially true of the earlier HDTVs. This led a lot of people to believe that the 720p singal was better than the 1080i signal because the deinterlacer mucked things up.

The truth of the matter is though, that a 1080i signal, when passed through a good deinterlacer should give you the SAME result as a 1080p signal. Since we can all agree that a 1080 singal has more resolution than 720, it should be the case that a 1080 signal is BETTER than a 720 one, given the previous two points I just made.

 

[EddieG]

How about tube tv's? I have a Sony 34" CRT HDTV. How much of a real-world difference is there in 1080i vs 720p for CRT's?

 

[evilkat]

At 34", I seriously doubt you would be able to tell the difference between 1080 or 720 regardless of format (unless the deinterlacing done by the TV is particularly horrible).

 

[annunaki]

No de-interlacing is necessary on a CRT set. It can display both formats with interlaced being native. Set your resolution to 1080i on the 34" Sony. I have on my 34" XBR and it looks fantastic. However, you do have to be sitting close to it to notice.

At a distace of about 10ft. I can tell a difference between HD and upconverted movies, but it is nothing largely substantial. At closer proximity it makes a pretty significant difference.

 

[no. 5]

Please explain this. I read the link but not convinced. I am not aware of any new TVs with native res with 540 lines. If that TV will process 1080i but its native is 720p, the TV will process it to 720p, otherwise it would have to blank 180 lines?

I wasn't referring to that link.

I was referring to a native 1080p fixed pixel display that was using the cheep way to de-interlace 1080i.
Also, I wrote "since" when I meant to wright "sense"... oops.