What is HDTV?

High Definition Television (HDTV) is a digital television exhibiting the highest quality in terms of video. It contains wider image aspect ratio than standard televisions. The aspect ratio of HDTV is similar to that of a movie theatre screen. It is featured with a wide screen and a resolution that makes viewing better than the old analog television format.

Featured with wide screen format, viewers can see better images with HDTV’s compared to that of the old square format of regular televisions. Study shows that human eyes see better from left and right rather then up and down. The advantage of a wide screen is that more scenes can be viewed. Wide screen is great for watching sports and HD quality movies.

Moreover, when you talk about resolution, HDTV has the highest. Actually, resolution is the greatest feature of HDTV. Moreover, it is the key selling point ‘“ high quality image resolution. The HDTV can bring crisp quality images since it uses digital and not the old analog signals, which regular television sets use. Four known formats are viewable on a High Definition TV. The four formats are 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080p. You get more resolution as the number gets higher. For many experts on image quality, most prefer the 720p and 1080p formats.

HDTV requires 5 times the bandwidth of standard televisions. This means HDTV’s signal is 19.39Mbps and this means that it eats up a lot of bandwidth. If not for the MPEG-2 compression, HDTV’s would require more bandwidth. Compression helps conserve as much bandwidth as possible.

Technically, the numbers and letters in the resolution formats have meaning. The number represents the number of lines creating the image. The letter tells the type of scan used by the television set to display the images. As mentioned earlier, the higher the number the better resolution. The letter ‘p’ and ‘i ‘, which come after the resolution number mean progressive and interlaced, respectively.

Progressive scan refreshes each line in every frame update. Progressive scanning is also known as sequential scanning, which is the technically a more correct term. Experts say that progressive scanning is better than interlaced. This is for the reason that the former processes images twice as fast as the latter. The best clarity and color in the on-screen image is produced by a faster scan rate.

If progressive scan is better that interlaced, then which format is better between the 720p and 1080i? The truth is that there is only a nominal amount of difference between the two formats. However, most television industries prefer the 720p to the 1080i format. So, if you are planning to purchase a new HDTV and cannot decide on which one to buy, choose the 720p as recommended by television experts.

However, the best resolution that you can get in the market is the one that has the 1080p format. If you are choosing between 1080p and 720p, you might as well pick the 720p. Experts say that you will see almost no difference between the two formats but in the 32’ and below screen size. If you are not planning to buy a screen size of more than 32’, then 720p will still be the best choice for HDTV format.