Something that has always puzzled me is 1080p. I am puzzled because I do not know how this format fits in. I believe that the standards of HDTV include broadcasts of at best 720P or 1080i, but that there will not be broadcasts of 1080P. In addition, HD DVD and Blue Ray will be 720P formatted.

So, I guess my question is what is the purpose of 1080P or am I missing something?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

HD DVD and Blue Ray will have capabilities of 1080P, but will only be transferred by HDMI. Component cables will only allow you to watch at 480P. Just more Hollywood BS.

I thought that HD DVD and Blue Ray were using 720P?

Pretty sure that HD-DVD will NOT do 1080p, just 1080i (and of course 720p). I hear Blu-Ray *could* do 1080p, but the movie studios aren't thrilled at outputting such a high quality signal. Possibly the PS3 will do 1080p for games.

Of course it also depends what sort of 1080p you're talking about... 1080p/24, 1080p/30 or 1080p/60.

So let me get this straight 1080p needs HDMI, 1080i can be transferred on both Component and HDMI cables?

Does this mean that the current HD monitors will not support 1080p?

Also some of the new XBOX 360 games are in 1080i…. which look rather awesome

Most "1080P" TVs out there now are NOT true 1080P. They use a method called "wobulation", where they use one mirror to create two pixels, and none of these sets will accept 1080P. Only TVs with with true 1080 chips (i.e.-1920x1080 resolution) will accept a 1080P source.

As far as HD DVD and Blue Ray, they will have the capability of 1080P (The Perfect Vision, Winter 2006, page 20), but the players will only pass 480i and 480P out of component video outs. To get 720P, 1080i, or 1080P, you will have to use HDMI.

The number of televisions that can actually accept 1080p is very limited. There are only a few out there. But buying something with native 1920x1080 resolution is NOT a guarantee that it can actually accept 1080p: many can still only take 1080i since 1080p is not an actual official HDTV format yet (the ones that do take it basically deal with it like a PC resolution).

The "wobulation" thing is a DLP specific cheat to use a 960x1080 chip to discretely reproduce full 1920x1080 images. Just like they also use a color wheel so that a single chip can reproduce all thee colors. Both of these compromises were made to keep costs down, since even one lower resolution chip is quite expensive. However I thought there were some wobulated DLP sets that did accept 1080p input.

To avoid that sort of thing you'd have to look to direct-view LCD or plasma, or LCOS/DILA/SXRD rear projection.

why bother with 1080p at this point......no real sources and no real software so why bother...... not even a real format..... 1080p will be around some day but dont wait get the best you can afford today....

1080p is majic and mirrors at this point

ed

Since I started this thread a few days ago, I do appreciate the responses. I am most interested in 1080p because I am unclear as to its importance today or even tomorrow.

Daniel's comment to me makes the most sense "since 1080p is not an actual official HDTV format yet". What that tells me is there is no source material in 1080p and that there may never be any. Hence, if we want a 1080p signal, we would have to process the signal and create one. Personally, I would want the best 480p signal I could get vs the best interpretation of one I can get, but that is a generalization and will not always be true.

I was also curious about this 1080p for the idea of what will be produced by studios for blue ray, and HD DVD, my guess is 720p or 1080i at best and that truly 1080p will be off in the far future.

since 1080p is not an actual official HDTV format yet

Both BR and HD-DVD are 1080p (I think 24sf, but not 100% sure) on the disk. On the other hand, like most have said there are very few that accept 1080p and most likely for both camps it will be outputting to the display 1080i over HDMI.

NOTE 1: for HD-DVD the only stand alone player so far announced at all is the Toshiba, and that one will not output 1080p, from what Toshiba said at the time - then again at that time they also said it will come out this year early fall. So that might be where the idea that there is a difference between BR and HD-DVD comes from

NOTE 2: for BR and HD-DVD and anything that uses AACS or is AACS compatible, there is a "feature" called ICT (image constrain token) this is set by every studio on content basis. If set to off then the player will treat all outputs the same, if set to on then if the output is encrypted (like DVI+HDCP or HDMI) then you get full resolution (1080i or p depending on the player) but if the output is none-encrypted (DVI, analog) then it will down rez the video at some point* before leaving the player

* some point because there is noting in the spec that a player manufacturer cannot scale the picture after it down rezed it

I agree! Imagine my surprise actually buying an HD set that supports 1080p (Toshiba 56MX195) because I wanted the highest resolution possible for the PC attached to it...

Guess what! The PC input is limited to XGA resolution (1024 x 768), so what's the point!? Anyone know if I can use the HDMI input for the PC rather then the PC input and get higher resolution?

Jack

Well, HDMI is basically DVI and DVI is a PC output, but it depends on how picky the HDMI input on your TV is on strict complance with HDTV signals. Which is to say... theoretically yes, but in practice it may take a bit of experimentation with a program like PowerStrip.

You can also get HDTV component adaptors for some video cards (ie. ATI) so that you can run 720p or 1080i pretty easily (looks pretty good too).

Do you think it might harm the TV to try various resolutions via the HDMI input? I tried uping the resolution from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 (via the PC input) but it just rolled the picture (like the old horizontal control) so you were seeing half on bottom and half on top. A computer monitor would just fail to display the picture, not sure what the TV will do...

Thanks,

Jack

I am going to have some angry customers when they realize they can't take advantage of anything above 480P on an HD-DVD because of either no HDMI on their TV or no way to get one to their TV.

Maybe I should change my #

Homeboy

Just make friends with some good drywallers:)