New Technology TV

There are some new trends in the TV technology industry that could have some pretty far reaching consequences to how we watch TV. One of the more recent ones is a trend for companies market 1080p HDTV more aggressively. The major defining characteristic of HDTV is its resolution, and HDTV can have any one of three different resolutions: 720p, 1080i, or 1080p. In each of these resolutions the number indicates the number of horizontal lines of resolution that makes up the picture. The more lines of resolution, the more detailed the picture. The letter indicates the pattern in which those lines are scanned onto the screen. The 'p' indicates progressive scanning in which the lines are scanned onto the screen sequentially from top to bottom. The 'i' indicates interlaced scanning in which every other lined is scanned onto the screen in one sweep, followed by the remaining lines a small fraction of a second later. In both cases, the human eye and brain are slow enough at processing the images so they look like a complete image forms on the screen all at once, but interlaced scanning produces some visual defects under certain circumstances that progressively scanned pictures aren't subject to. Therefore a 1080p picture is considered to be superior to a 1080i picture.

One of the interesting things about these resolutions is that not all HDTV sets support all of them. For example, there are a number of HDTV sets on the market that will only display programming with resolutions of 720p. These are generally lower priced models that cater to people who want to have an HDTV set, but who want to get the cheapest one possible. Most HDTV sets go up to 1080i in the quality of picture that they display.

Now though, the big marketing push in the TV industry is to sell 1080p HDTV sets. There are a number of reasons for this, but what it really comes down to is that with the recent low prices of flat panel HDTV sets, a lot of the consumers who want HDTV sets have been able to get them. Since most consumers who want HDTV sets and who can afford them already have them, the market has become somewhat saturated. Therefore a number of manufacturers, including Westinghouse and LG, are trying to convince people who already have HDTV sets that it's time to go to the next level with 1080p HDTV sets.

There are several reasons why this is a tough sell though. First of all, even with the recent drop in prices of HDTV sets, they're still relatively expensive and 1080p sets are even more so. The other major obstacle is that existing HDTV channels only display resolutions of up to 1080i which makes the added capabilities built into 1080p sets pretty much useless. (Some 1080p sets upconvert 1080i programming to 1080p, but certainly not all. Plus, that's a feature that makes sets even more cost prohibitive.)

Of course, there are some good selling points for 1080p sets as well. For example, there are various applications that will display video in 1080p. For example, High Def DVD's can achieve resolutions of 1080p and some video game systems do the same with their graphics. Also 1080p sets are definitely future compatible, as HDTV channels will probably be in 1080p at some point.

For now though, manufacturers are betting that people will want to take the next step in HDTV technology.