1080p HDTV is at the top of the hill when you start talking about the best type of digital television that you can buy. If you want the picture that you are viewing on your home television to be similar to what you would see in a modern movie theater then you will need a 16:9 aspect ratio. And that is exactly what HDTV offers you.
We forget what it was like watching the old style televisions. They didn’t have wide screens and to be quite honest their resolution was horrible. You don’t have to be an electronics engineer to realize that the new wide screens are not just easier to look at but they also project the images on the screen in a more pleasant format.
The old analog televisions actually made our eyes tired and gave us a "better than nothing" type picture. Those old square picture tubes forced us to look at the picture from top to bottom. That is not a natural way for us to view an image. The new rectangular wide screen lets us look at the images from left to right….much more natural for us.
One of the biggest advantages of having a wide screen is that you get to see more of the picture. It used to be that you would only see about 3/4 of the picture. The square picture tube wasn’t wide enough to fit the whole picture on the screen.
But let’s get back to the reason that a 1080p HDTV is the standard that all other televisions are judged against.
With HDTV’s it all comes down to resolution. Your choices will be 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. If this seems like a foreign language to you don’t worry. It is pretty easy to understand once it is explained.
The numbers are letting you know the number of lines that are contained in any given image. The letters are simply telling you which kind of scan is being employed by the TV in order to display the picture.
In the end this is all you have to know about resolution: The more lines an image has the better the picture will be.
Now that you know about resolution, which television do you think will have a better picture: A 720p or a 1080p HDTV? Pretty simple choice…
Back in the days when you actually had to get up and walk across the room to change channels, most televisions had 480 lines of resolution. That was all you could get with an analog TV.
Today with HDTV, even with the lowest resolution available, the picture is far superior to what analog offered.
Ok. You must be thinking, "The numbers and resolution are easy enough to understand, what about the letters"? Good question!
All HDTV’s have a certain type of scan. Some have a "p" next to the number which indicates a progressive scan. Others will have an "i" next to the number which will indicate an interlaced scan. Remember at the beginning of this article when I said that "1080p HDTV is at the top of the hill"? I said that for a reason. A HDTV that offers progressive scanning instead of interlaced scanning will process images twice as fast.
What this means to you is that progressive scanning will deliver a clearer picture with better color where it counts….on the wide screen!
There is no question that a 1080p HDTV will deliver the best resolution of any TV that you can buy. So if you are going to be replacing your old TV or just want to add a new one to your media room, you won’t go wrong with a 1080p HDTV.