HDTV - Digital Television Formats
The "p" and "i" designations below stand for "progressive" and "interlaced." For the progressive format, the full picture updates every 1/60 th of a second. For the interlaced format, only half of the picture is updated every 1/60 th of a second.
Standard Definition Formats
(roughly the equivalent of analog broadcast):
- 480i - The Resolution is 704x480 pixels, sent at 60 interlaced frames per second or 30 complete frames per second.
- 480p - The Resolution is 704x480 pixels, sent at 60 complete frames per second.
High Definition Formats (I.E. HDTV):
- 720p - The Resolution is 1280x720 pixels, sent at 60 complete frames per second.
- 1080i - The Resolution is 1920x1080 pixels, sent at 60 interlaced frames per second or 30 complete frames per second.
- 1080p - The Resolution is 1920x1080 pixels, sent at 60 complete frames per second.
When you multiply the horizontal pixel resolution by vertical pixel resolution you get the total image resolution
- 480i - Total image resolution 337,920 pixels
- 480p - Total image resolution 337,920 pixels
- 720p - Total image resolution 921,600 pixels (roughly equivalent to a 1 mega pixel camera)
- 1080i - Total image resolution 2,073,600 pixels (equivalent to a 2 mega pixel camera)
- 1080p - Total image resolution 2,073,600 pixels (equivalent to a 2 mega pixel camera)
The 720p image format has almost three times as many pixels than either 480i or 480p formats.
The 1080i and 1080p formats have over twice as many pixels (2.25 to be exact) as the 720p format.
The 1080i and 1080p formats have over six times as many pixels as the 480i/480p format.
As you may have realized by now, most digital cameras today have a higher resolution than the highest HDTV picture resolution (1080i or 1080p). If you display a 10 mega pixel picture from your digital camera on your HDTV you will be discarding almost 4/5ths of the information (I.E. pixels).
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