Understanding HDTV Resolution And What It Means For You
HDTV is a vastly improved method of broadcasting television
shows and watching entertainment media. It is a byproduct of the
digital age in electronics. By converting the picture and sound
in digital format, great improvements have been made in the
quality of the viewing experience in recent years. We are now
able to watch digitally produced movies and programs by DVD and
enjoy a much richer picture quality and sound that can even
begin to rival movie theaters, however on a much smaller scale.
There are actually several improvements to TV viewing that have
been made available in the HDTV standard and perhaps the most
obvious is the display itself. Older televisions could only
display a TV picture that consisted of 525 lines on the screen.
Each line had about 500 pixels of information to show, so that
basically adds up to 525 X 500 resolution. Just think on the
fact that the most basic of computer displays operate at 640 X
480 resolution and you can begin to see why such an antiquated
technology for television viewing needed to be changed.
But there have been even more improvements to the resolution
factor in HDTV. Consider that standard televisions may have had
525 lines of information to display on the screen but they
usually displayed that information on every other line at a
time. Every 1/60 of a second it would display first all of the
even numbered lines on the screen, and then change to display
the odd numbered lines. And this happens over and over again.
Because it happens so fast, your brain makes the adjustment for
the alternating information and assembles the picture as one
piece. This process is called interlacing in standard TV.
In HDTV the number of lines displayed on the screen is greatly
enhanced, up to 1080 instead of 525, and the number of pixels on
the sreen is up to 10X the number of those found in standard
television. In addition, there are many HDTV monitors that can
display every line on the screen every 1/60 of a second without
interlacing them at all, and this is called "progressive scan".
So adding it up, you can have up to 10 times the resolution
being displayed in a much smoother viewing format. It's very
easy then, to see why so many people are favorably impressed
when they see the real capabilities of a broadcast or show being
displayed on a high quality HDTV television set. As broadcasting
in HDTV format becomes widely adopted in the near future, you
will truly wonder how you ever watched television without it.