What is the difference between 720p, 1080i and 1080p when viewed on a 1080p capable display?

Question

Since all "panel"-based displays (LCD, Plasma, LCoS, DLP etc.) are technically "progressive" - they display all veritcal lines of resolution at once, why do so many sources claim that 720p and 1080i are effectively the same? Either a set can display 1080 lines of vert. resolution or it can't - right? If someone knows of a reference that really explains the differences between formats and what they look like on the various display technologies, that would be awesome!

Answer 1

Any format that is non-native to the display must be converted. 720p must be converted to 1080p, but that will not add any resolution (and if the conversion isn't good, you will lose picture quality). 1080i input must be "de-interlaced"; the quality of the picture will depend on the method used; if you just double-up the lines of each frame ("bob"), you are dealing with 540p effective resolution and it is not as good as 720. However if information from successive frames is combined ("weave") you can approach a full 1080p resolution (it depends on how much movement there is from frame-to-frame). Go to the AVS forum under display devices and search for "deinterlace". There is a lot of discussion about this issue.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/

Other good sources of info on this are the high-end magazines Widescreen Review and The Perfect Vision

Also try Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinterlace

Answer 2

you are able to not even purchase a 1080i television actual now. all the hot instruments are 720p or 1080p. while fed a 1080i source, the two tvs will convert to the interior of sight decision and test fee. so which you would be able to not even see 1080i on a clean set. So, this is not well worth questioning approximately in any respect. some years in the past possibly, yet not anymore.

Answer 3

http://www.lcdtvbuyingguide.com/hdtv/hdtv-resolutions.shtml