I am now reading about 1440p television screens. http://www.cmo.com.tw/cmo/english/about/shownews1.jsp?flag=20061016155822 Is this a new standard for future HDTV programming?

My CRT display can already display 2560 x 1440. No, it's not the future for HD. 1080i/720p broadcast, with 1080p for Disc Based (Blu-Ray/HD-DVD) will be the standard for a long time to come.

providers can't even supply us with decent 1080i, why do they keep coming out with more crap?

providers can't even supply us with decent 1080i, why do they keep coming out with more crap?


To create the 'sky is falling" so you have to buy it.


~ IMHO ... of course.


As a consumer, I think the whole HD/Digital situation is a gimmick because no one is on the ball whatsoever. Growing pains my a$$! They probably predicted all the shortcomings and as usual, this is capitalism, politics, and marketing at its finest.

I think I rather read a book and screw all the broadcasters, manufacturers.

Sorry for the vent. But it's a never-ending cycle of the same BS.

providers can't even supply us with decent 1080i, why do they keep coming out with more crap?

No doubt! Who gives a crap about the next generation TV at this point in the ballgame? Well, uhh, I guess those that just want the "best" and the companies that make it all "happen."

My 2 year old 21+" 1600x1200 resolution computer monitor must be better then, right? I am so GD sick and tired of all of this. No wonder consumers are brainwashed and left for dead.

I will give my 2nd generation 50" Samsung DLP TV, that is finely tuned, the Pepsi challenge against a bunch of this "bigger and more is better" that the media, the AV salesguy, and the Sunday advertisements fill us with. :mad:

Bigger may not be better...look where that got John Holmes. :D

I think I rather read a book and screw all the broadcasters, manufacturers.

.


:eek: Shhhh!! They are listening, dont say the B word here, they might come after us!

*Turns up volume of TV*

At the risk of sounding stupid (a risk I take on a daily basis!) I wonder if they should have just pushed one standard: 1280x720p at the very beginning.
1080i strikes me as a half step, not the next step, which would be 1080p--something broadcasters simply aren't ready for.

It might have been easier for the TV manufacturers to concentrate on, same with the broadasters. Even the HD dvd setup seem like it should have just improved on existing tech just enough to maybe double capacity to 18 GB or so for a dual layer DVD, plenty for a movie encoded in MPEG-II along with some extras. Skip MPEG-4 for now.

There is simply not going to be any 1440p programming broadcast, cablecast, satellitecast, or recorded on HD-DVD or BluRay. End of story.

Isn't that just an announcement about a new PANEL resolution, rather than a new broadcast format.

This is just another display resolution - jus as you have 1024x768, 1024x1024, 1280x720, 1366x768, 1920x1080 etc. TV display panels - plus things like 1280x800, 1680x1050 etc. for PC displays...

Presumably the advantage of this new resolution is that it allows reasonably simple scaling from 1280x720, but also has high enough vertical resolution to display a 1080p source as well, albeit scaled.

There ARE non-broadcast requirements - such as medical imaging, control room displays, even desktop editing in HD etc. that require resolutions greater than 1920x1080 - and such a display would be useful for this I guess.

(An area I work in has a projection system capable of approx 13000 x 900 - it takes 7 x 1080 line HD feeds and displays them all in a row - with a bit of cropping...)

I don't think anyone is suggesting that 1440p become a new production system - though of course NHK are continuing to develop their UHD system - which improves on 1080p as a production format.

(1080p IS used in the 24p/25p flavour as an origination and post production format, and with BluRay/HD-DVD it may also appear as a distribution format in native, rather than 3:2 or 2:2 pulldown flavours. However 1080/50p and 1080/60p are still very much in the experimental, rather than routine production format, camp)

At the risk of sounding stupid (a risk I take on a daily basis!) I wonder if they should have just pushed one standard: 1280x720p at the very beginning.
1080i strikes me as a half step, not the next step, which would be 1080p--something broadcasters simply aren't ready for.



1080i, properly deinterlaced and displayed on todays flat panel 1080p screens provides significantly more resolution than 720p. Your 'half step' comment would be valid to a crt which does display an interlaced picture (540 lines, another 540 lines etc). But todays flat panels are progressive and they display all 1080 lines at once. . . . first 540 lines are held in memory, weaved together with the next 540 lines and then all 1080 are displayed at once.

1080i, properly deinterlaced and displayed on todays flat panel 1080p screens provides significantly more resolution than 720p. Your 'half step' comment would be valid to a crt which does display an interlaced picture (540 lines, another 540 lines etc). But todays flat panels are progressive and they display all 1080 lines at once. . . . first 540 lines are held in memory, weaved together with the next 540 lines and then all 1080 are displayed at once.

Though not all displays do a proper 1080i de-interlace on 60i sourced material - as of course you can't weave fields into a frame if the source is 60i native rather than 30p or 24p in a 60i sequence, as you would get combing on motion between fields 1 and 2.

(De-interlacing 1080/60i sourced material to 1080/60p is not trivial - and doing it well isn't cheap. De-interlacing 1080/30p and 1080/24p sourced material in a 60i sequence to 1080/60p - or 1080/72p for that matter, is much easier as you don't have to play the "Is it moving, or is it detail?" game)

This is beginning to sound like digital cameras. Example, how many of us really need 9 mega pixels? I mean come on...I have a 4.0 mega pixel Canon and have it set for 2.1 MP. For 5X7 and even 8.5 X 11 prints it's adequate, plus easier to email....heck, monitors can't even display these resolutions. it's only good if you want to Zoom in 35X or print a 48" x 72" poster....which I have never done and probably won't.

This "more pixels" the better isn't always the case.

Same with these TV's. A 42" display at 1080P vs 720P may not make a huge enoughdifference to merit the difference in cost, let alone 2160P as mentioned in the article. At some point it's not going to make that much difference in 47" and smaller displays..IMHO.

This is beginning to sound like digital cameras. Example, how many of us really need 9 mega pixels?


Yep - and how many people realise that display pixel counts and TV pixel counts can't usually be directly compared with digital stills camera pixel counts?

Most digital stills cameras have a single sensor with a (usually Bayessian) array of coloured filters over their sensors (often 2 green for every single red and blue) - but they count each red, green and blue sensor as a separate pixel. Most displays and TV cameras would treat an RGB triplet as a single pixel... Therefore to compare "TV" and "Display" pixels with "Digital Stills" megapixels you really need to multiple the former by 3 in many cases...


I mean come on...I have a 4.0 mega pixel Canon and have it set for 2.1 MP. For 5X7 and even 8.5 X 11 prints it's adequate, plus easier to email....heck, monitors can't even display these resolutions. it's only good if you want to Zoom in 35X or print a 48" x 72" poster....which I have never done and probably won't.

This "more pixels" the better isn't always the case.


Indeed - and for a fixed sensor size, the more pixels, the smaller each "pixel" is, the less light it can collect, and thus the result is often noisier, or the sensitivity is reduced, requiring longer shutter speeds.


Same with these TV's. A 42" display at 1080P vs 720P may not make a huge enoughdifference to merit the difference in cost, let alone 2160P as mentioned in the article. At some point it's not going to make that much difference in 47" and smaller displays..IMHO.

Research suggests that at AVERAGE VIEWING DISTANCE - you don't see the benefit of 720p over 576i (not 480i) until you get to screen sizes over 28", and that you don't see the benefit of 1080p over 720p until you get to 50". Where 1080i fits, and what happens when you are sitting closer than the average viewing distance is different.

But todays flat panels are progressive and they display all 1080 lines at once. . . . first 540 lines are held in memory, weaved together with the next 540 lines and then all 1080 are displayed at once.
And every field is weaved with the previous alternate field and immediately displayed giving you 60 fps.

My cable box just does simple bob deinterlacing and it still looks better than 720p.

providers can't even supply us with decent 1080i, why do they keep coming out with more crap?
Let me propose a silly conspiricy theory (you can do that on the Internet, can't you?).

When 2009 comes around, TV stations won't want to give up their analog channel, so they'll come up with another long long long term plan to use it to broadcast... VHDTV. How about 1440p, 2048i, MPEG-4, lossless sound compression, and enough subchannels to make it look bad. Should be on the air by 2016. The future of American television depends on it... the Japanese are experimenting with stuff like that right now!

:D

Out of curiosity, since they weave the frames together after storing one field in memory--in effect giving us progressive frames? 30 per second?? why go through the trouble of interlacing in the first place? If nothing is lost/gained, why not just flat out go with 1920x1080p@30fps? I have a tough time wrapping my head around 1080i not being a compromise of some sort. I'm told they use approximately the same bandwidth, so more bandwidth+more resolution? Something has to give.

Then again I haven't figured out the drive for 60 fps. I figured 48 would be a better goal, 48 fps for sports, and just frame doubling for 24fps movies. I'm sure there's a good reason, it's just one of the many things to learn about all this still.
:eek:

providers can't even supply us with decent 1080i, why do they keep coming out with more crap?

It's tough to see the incentive for a broadcaster to invest in HD right now, this year. If it made them more money within a year or two, they would probably be jumping through hoops to get to HD. Push comes to shove, they know content is still king, that we'd still watch a great show in SD before watching a horrible show in HD.

providers can't even supply us with decent 1080i, why do they keep coming out with more crap?

They do it just to agitate the conspiracy theorists on the AVS forum.

And every field is weaved with the previous alternate field and immediately displayed giving you 60 fps.


If weave-only is used then you aren't really de-interlacing. Sure this will work with material that starts life as 24p (if you 3:2 remove) or 30p, however 60i originated material (sports etc.) where there is motion between the two fields in each frame, will need a more sophisticated algorithm, or at least a switch to bob on a dynamic basis...

Out of curiosity, since they weave the frames together after storing one field in memory--in effect giving us progressive frames?


Weaving is only an effectively de-interlacing algorithm for material that started off as 24p or 30p (and is just being carried within a 60i signal), where the information in two (or some cases three) fields is from the same point in time. This is true of much HD drama.

It isn't true of 60i native video origination - like sport. In this case 60 images are captured each second, and each field is derived from a separate point in time. You therefore can't merge the two 60i fields to create a 60p frame, as there will be motion between the two fields, and you will get combing.


30 per second?? why go through the trouble of interlacing in the first place?


1. Because 60i video delivers 60 separate images (fields) taken at 60 different points in time, giving fluid motion. What it doesn't do is delivery full vertical resolution on moving objects, because the two fields are offset by a frame-line vertically.

2. Because HD video standards, even HD, pre-date LCD and Plasma, and are designed for display on monitors without framestores, so have to have a refresh rate a lot higher than 30Hz. The 60i interlacing solves this refresh rate problem, but by interlacing 1080/60i, rather than running 540/60p, you get significant spatial resolution improvements in the analogue domain.


If nothing is lost/gained, why not just flat out go with 1920x1080p@30fps?


Because not everything is shot 1080/30p (in fact not much is)

1080/60i is used for sports and entertainment shows - with the fluid motion that 60i native capture delivers - you have to remember that 60i can carry 60 different images per second, not the 30 images that some people assume. You have to remember that the two fields in an interlaced frame don't have to come from the same picture taken at the same point in time.

(One crude way of thinking about 60i origination is to imagine a 1080/60p camera shooting the image, but only outputting alternate lines for one frame, and then the outputting the other lines for the next frame. In reality some more processing is done than this to avoid flicker)

Similarly if you only broadcast 30p - you'd have problems showing 24p source material - like almost all drama and movies. 24p converts neatly to 60i by showing one 24p frame for 3 60i fields, but the next for only 2. If you tried this trick at the frame rate you'd have far more juddery repetition.

You have to remember that the 1080/60i standard is over 30 years old in heritage...


I have a tough time wrapping my head around 1080i not being a compromise of some sort. I'm told they use approximately the same bandwidth, so more bandwidth+more resolution? Something has to give.


Interlacing is a compromise - but one we've been working with since 1936 at least (when the BBC launched their 405/50i interlaced system - which ran until 1985 over here!)

You have to stop thinking of 60i interlaced systems just in terms of 30 frames per second, and think more of 60 fields per second.

What interlacing does is trade-off resolution for motion.

1080/60i signals can deliver high vertical resolution (not 1080 lines but more than 540 lines ) on static and slow moving images, (where the full vertical detail can be built up across two fields, with little movement between them), but not on fast moving images (where there is a lot of movement between fields), where it drops to closer to a 540/60p system.

However 1080/60i delivers twice as many images per second as 1080/30p, so delivers more fluid motion when using a 1080/60i source.

Effectively interlacing allows you to have some of the benefits of 1080/30p (vertical resolution) and some of the benefits of 540/60p (fluid motion) in the same system, however it does so at the expense of complexity of decoding.

1080/60i, 1080/30p and 540/60p are all effectively systems with the same line rate and thus the same bandwith.

In an ideal world, of course, we'd use 1080/60p - but this requires twice the bandwith of the above three formats.

720/60p is, of course, in use, but it manages to operate a 60p system only by reducing the horizontal and vertical resolution to reduce the bandwith.



Then again I haven't figured out the drive for 60 fps. I figured 48 would be a better goal, 48 fps for sports, and just frame doubling for 24fps movies. I'm sure there's a good reason, it's just one of the many things to learn about all this still.
:eek:

Well in Europe we have 1080/50i (most) and 720/50p (not much) and shoot drama and film at 25p. We show 24p material as 25p and live with the speed change.

However 50Hz and even-more-so 48Hz refresh rates are much more noticably flickery than 60Hz displays, particularly in peripheral vision (i.e. the corner of your eye) In the 50Hz world many TVs double the refresh rate to 100Hz to combat this, but the processing required to do this is not good for picture quality.

Some have suggested running at 72Hz or 75Hz (allowing you to frame triple film, and capture fluid motion at even higher frame rates) - however the bandwith required for such an increase in production frame/field rates probably precludes it. (It would also not be a great format for display of existing 50i and 60i material)

Convergence, its all about convergence. The higher the capability of the screen, the more things you can connect to it. Not just HDTV, but XBox 360 that does HD, Media Server Computers, the list is ever growing. The stuff that broadcasters put up will only diminish if they continue to forcefeed a substandard product (HDLite and Multicasting of OTA). As other media keeps improving (Computer Media Servers, HD Games) there will be a market for the higher quality displays in ever larger formats.

Convergence, its all about convergence. The higher the capability of the screen, the more things you can connect to it. Not just HDTV, but XBox 360 that does HD, Media Server Computers, the list is ever growing. The stuff that broadcasters put up will only diminish if they continue to forcefeed a substandard product (HDLite and Multicasting of OTA). As other media keeps improving (Computer Media Servers, HD Games) there will be a market for the higher quality displays in ever larger formats.

Yep - the providers of HD content also have to find a way of delivering this material in a format that can be easily displayed. They need to find a way of opening up their closed systems (Cablecard is the nearest so far I guess) to allow material to be recorded and displayed, whilst ensuring their DRM requirements are still met...

If weave-only is used then you aren't really de-interlacing. Sure this will work with material that starts life as 24p (if you 3:2 remove) or 30p, however 60i originated material (sports etc.) where there is motion between the two fields in each frame, will need a more sophisticated algorithm, or at least a switch to bob on a dynamic basis...
I'm using a deinterlacing plugin somebody named "weave" that selectively "weaves" fields together where it finds motion to display them at 60 fps. It sounds like this isn't using the industry-standard weave algorithm.

Convergence, its all about convergence. The higher the capability of the screen, the more things you can connect to it. Not just HDTV, but XBox 360 that does HD, Media Server Computers, the list is ever growing. The stuff that broadcasters put up will only diminish if they continue to forcefeed a substandard product (HDLite and Multicasting of OTA). As other media keeps improving (Computer Media Servers, HD Games) there will be a market for the higher quality displays in ever larger formats.


tiny market

I'm using a deinterlacing plugin somebody named "weave" that selectively "weaves" fields together where it finds motion to display them at 60 fps. It sounds like this isn't using the industry-standard weave algorithm.

I guess it selectively weaves when it DOESN'T find motion (i.e. where the two fields will merge without combing and give a higher resolution result), and when it DOES find motion it uses some other method, like bob (where the fields are effectively replicated across both frame lines in the resulting progressive frame - giving motion from only one field, but also reduced vertical resolution)

The best de-interlacers work on a block by block, or pixel by pixel basis, and use motion tracking algorithms to try and retain as much resolution as possible on moving objects. However they are highly processor intensive.

tiny market
Yes, But it is a fast growing market as these teens+ grow up and begin buying for themselves. I already see it today with 20 year olds buying for their gaming habits. These are the ones standing in line for the next XBox or PS3 and they have the money.

Sneals2000, thanks for the reply, I just got around to reading it. Whew, that is a lot of info, I'll have to try and piece it all together. It's amazing how much technology is involved in things most of us take for granted in everyday usuage!

I have been searching for a comparison between 1080/60i and 1080/30p for several hours now and can't find a definitive source.

1. Is one better than the other in terms of picture quality (e.g., 1080/60i better for motion)?
2. Are they identical aside from how the information is stored/delivered (interlaced vs. progressive)?
3. For recording, (e.g., with a Panasonic HVX200) are the file sizes identical? ...or is one more compact?
4. Aside from the questions above, is there any reason for shooting in one format vs. the other?

It's amazing how poorly this topic is documented -- even in the camera manuals. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

I have been searching for a comparison between 1080/60i and 1080/30p for several hours now and can't find a definitive source.

1. Is one better than the other in terms of picture quality (e.g., 1080/60i better for motion)?
1080/30p, used to capture (not deliver) some ad material, is slightly better than standard 24p because it provides somewhat more fluid motion. Since 30p is a full frame it avoids all the long-cited artifacts of interlaced capture (480/60i or 1080/60i for the U.S.). Went into some aspects of interlace vs. progressive capture in an earlier post (http://archive.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=1668538#post1668538) and greater detail here (http://archive.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=3085589#post3085589).
2. Are they identical aside from how the information is stored/delivered (interlaced vs. progressive)? No, interlace capture 'snaps' the second of two TV fields 1/60-sec later in time, as discussed above. My 64" CRT RPTV displays everything upscaled to 1080/60i, while fixed-pixel displays (full progressive) must deinterlace the two fields into one frame. One of the key advantages of interlace is saving (halving) bandwidth requirements. 720/60p requires about the same bandwidth as 1080/60i (30i) because it's delivering full frames, not 540-line half-frames) each 1/60-sec, although 720p can undergo higher compression because the 1/60-sec-spaced full frames are more similar to each other and the spatial resolution of 720p is half that of 1080i. -- John

Great explanations by sneals above. Should be required reading for all members in the display forums. ;)

I have been searching for a comparison between 1080/60i and 1080/30p for several hours now and can't find a definitive source.I think the references to 1080p30 are mostly academic. I am not aware of any high-definition content on broadcast or cable acquired in 1080p30. Everything I have seen is either 1080p24 or 1080i60 sourced.

Virtually all high-definition movies and episodic programming shown on on CBS, NBC, TNT, and HBO is 1080p24 sourced. Specific examples include CSI on CBS and Heroes on NBC.

Note you won't get the original 1080p image on your screen unless your display correctly performs inverse telecine (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9896981&&#post9896981). Most older (and many newer) displays do not.

The 1080/30p issue came up because a friend recently bought the Panasonic HVX200 which supports the formats below. He is about to shoot a bunch of footage in Hawaii for a project that will be output to HD DVD, Blu-ray and Digital (not film) -- so we were trying to figure out which format makes the most sense...especially because he lives in PA and won't have the opportunity to re-shoot everything once it's done.

Panasonic HVX200
HD Recording Formats: 1080/60i, 1080/24p, 1080/24pA, 1080/30p, 720p (variable frame rates)
SD Recording Formats: 480/60i, 480/24p, 480pA, 480/30p
CineSwitch technology for variable frame rates in 720p mode: 12, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 30, 32, 36, 48, 60fps

Thanks for the info...will look into the interlace vs. progressive capture thread.

The 1080/30p issue came up because a friend recently bought the Panasonic HVX200 which supports the formats below. He is about to shoot a bunch of footage in Hawaii for a project that will be output to HD DVD, Blu-ray and Digital (not film) -- so we were trying to figure out which format makes the most sense...especially because he lives in PA and won't have the opportunity to re-shoot everything once it's done.

Panasonic HVX200
HD Recording Formats: 1080/60i, 1080/24p, 1080/24pA, 1080/30p, 720p (variable frame rates)
SD Recording Formats: 480/60i, 480/24p, 480pA, 480/30p
CineSwitch technology for variable frame rates in 720p mode: 12, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 30, 32, 36, 48, 60fps

Reads like an interesting project. The HVX200 (http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/HVX200/) is a so-called prosumer camera (see review). A few commercial movies have been shot with them, then transferred to 35mm film. You might find useful tips at cinematography.com, a site tailored to pro applications and with forums (see HD forum) tailored to pro and prosumer hardware. When similar queries are raised there, a typical response is the suggestion to test cameras, taping scenes similar to the those expected, then checking which format looks best with that equipment.

For HD discs, obviously the suggestions of the production houses used is important. Despite my preference for the 1080/60i video 'look', with its smooth motion and crisper images (as my earlier links point out), a lot of productions are 1080/24p, in part because interlaced capture is harder to market internationally. There are courses, texts, and standard procedures for 24p filming/taping, important to minimize camera judder (as these two AVS posts emphasize):
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9101307&&#post9101307
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9100952&&#post9100952
--John

Come on.. lets make sure everyone's on the same page here, what do you think got us to 1080p.. none of this is a gimmick, we just (except for computer monitors) could not attain anything higher than 1920x1080. If we can do 1440p, 2160p etc. then we should. We didn't hit the brakes on resolution with digital cameras and look at the fruits we have gotten from some of the highest rez cameras (ie: canon 1ds mk2).

Honestly, anyone who wants a large screen TV bigger than 50" (and thats not a big deal cause most content played on it usually has bars either at top & bottom (for 20x8) or left & right (for 4x3) so we really don't even get the true 50") will usually see 1920x1080p start to look more like DVD quality.

We crave resolution and deep color, for movies, for games, for viewing our family vacations.. heck, for anything viewable so everyone's message to these manufacturers should be, bring on the new technology, higher rez & richer color !!!

I use a 50" dlp with 1920x1080, in my living room on an HDTV setup, PC is hooked up simply with a VGA cable and looks amazing and sharp. i tried HDMI and it didnt fit correctly, the resolutions were using less than the entire surface of the screen. same problem on the xbox 360 by the way using hdmi, but with component it works in 1080p just fine, or at least the 720p upscaling that microsoft calls 1080p ;)

When I use my PC itself from the couch with wireless keyboard and mouse, im about 8-10 feet away from the screen and it still looks HUGE. But when I use 1080P i cant read ****, and I have good vision. its just too tiny, you have to use ctrl+mouse wheel to increase the text size on web pages in firefox, you have to set to large fonts in windows, etc, etc. and then still some things like certain programs the text size remains default normal size which is too small to read. its a worthless effort to use 1080p on a HTPC setup unless you are crazy enough to have a 70"+ display or possibly a projector setup in your room.

I can see in games and hd video its worth using that resolution, it looks amazing in those cases, but for normal PC use i switch all the way down to 1360x768. I also have a CRT monitor, samsung, which supports some insanely high resolution of 2536x something, its 4:3 ratio but a really really high res like that, which if you think about it, its using even more pixels than a widescreen resolution. So I tried playing some games at that resolution and it was so sharp and so fine that anti aliasing simply is irrelevant at that point because you can no longer see where pixels or lines begin or end. also the game text and menus were so small that i could not read them, or had to lean in within a few inches of the screen to be able to.
i tried playing games at 1920x1080 on my TV and, similarly, i could not tell individual pixels or aliasing of any kind at that resolution unless i walked up close to the screen. i think it is rediculous to even need any higher than 1920x1080. for games and video it is more than enough. with that resolution they have reached the limit of the human eye, kind of like going over 60fps is not perceivable by the human eye also. in my opinion no higher resolution standard is needed.

1440p displays would probably be good if you had some very detailed highdef discs and wanted to upscale them and sit very immersively close to a large screen without being distracted by seeing the pixel grid.

Likewise I'll bet large 1440p displays would make absolutely killer PC displays. If they become common I'd wager hi res games would arrive for them.

But I don't think current film movies with current telecine practices will soon get enough detail to greatly exceed 1080p, no matter how much resolution film is often claimed to contain.

- Tom

1440 (and higher) resolution displays would full rez POP (picture outside picture). You could imagine the Sunday NFL display with a full rez 1920x1080 or 1280x720 in the upper left and numerous other images at half resolution wrapped around it on the bottom and right.

Also, I wouldn't count out HD-DVD and Blu-Ray like some of have. There is nothing to prevent them (especially Blu-Ray, with its higher capacity) from going 1440. When DVD came out, it could claim to be better than broadcast television. That is not currently the case with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. (I don't count 60p as a differentiator over 60i, since they are both derived from a 24p source and will look identical, if done properly). 1440 resolution would be the differentiator that would let them say that their product was better than broadcast TV.

Ernie

Suspect any higher resolution production or distribution format won't be based on 1440, but on one of the following :

2k D-Cinema format 2048x1080 (which is effectively 1080p widened a bit)
4k D-Cinema format 4096x2160 (which effectively doubles 2k horizontally and vertically)

These are the two formats being standardised for digital cinema distribution and projection - and also used in digital cinema post production.

Moving on from that we have the NHK Ultra HD proposition of 7680 x 4320 (4 x 1080p resolution horizontally and vertically)

I don't think I've seen 1440 suggested or proposed as a production format - I think it is just a convenient improvement in resolution that displays can deliver.

By the way i read somewhere once that when films are recorded on negatives all the way to like the 70s, there are roughly 5000 horizontal crystals on each negative frame meaning the absolute highest resolution they could release older movies in would be around that 5000xWhatever resolution. of course newer movies filmed in digital are recorded at god knows what resolution now so they can be made into new highres formats a decade from now.
I had a 3D rendering class once and a guy came in and gave a presentation in an auditorium, he worked on films like van helsing, star wars 3, and many more doing the special effects and 3d modelling. like for example he was talking about the hair rendering and animation on the werevolves in van helsing, how difficult and challenging it was at the time the movie came out. but also he said how they render all their effects at around 4000 some res, on large render farms of hundreds of integrated computers to reduce rendering time, because at that detail and production quality it would take years to render such scenes on one machine. but it seems like they already master movies at resolutions much higher than anything we see on retail products. maybe its the requirement for the theater projection itself, since it needs to look sharp on a IMAX screen if need be, but also it could be for future HD formats.

Likewise I'll bet large 1440p displays would make absolutely killer PC displays. If they become common I'd wager hi res games would arrive for them.
- Tom
I think this right here is the greatest potential for higher rez TV displays, along with the ability for people to view higher quality digital photos on their TVs. With more higher end TVs including memory card slots, it seems logical that higher total screen resolutions might be welcome additions for those uses.

Too bad WebTV is pretty well dead at this point - these new displays would make such a thing much more practical - especially with the potential of more interactive content with digital TV technologies.

My understanding of 1440x1080 is that it simply uses a different pixel aspect ratio (PAR) as compared to 1920x1080. Many HD cameras store the captured HD image as 1440x1080 with a PAR of 1.33 and then a 1920x1080 PAR 1.2 image is extracted later in post.

1440x900 is a common resollion used on widesdsreen 17" laptops which use 16:10 aspect ratio like many other PC monitors.
It is not a ATSC TV resolution.

1440x900 is a common resollion used on widesdsreen 17" laptops which use 16:10 aspect ratio like many other PC monitors.
It is not a ATSC TV resolution.
You're right, 1440p isn't an ATSC resolution. Still, the subject of this thread is a 1440p television display. I just looked at the link (which I should have done in the first place), and I see the television in question is a "Quad HD" 2560x1440 display, not 1440x1080 as I had assumed.

And ATSC spec or not, 1440x1080 is still a standard storage resolution used by a number of HD cameras. That's why I assumed the 1440p TV in question was 1440x1080. Being a sort of HD standard, it wouldn't be far-fetched that a TV manufacturer might create a 1440x1080 HD TV. Unnecessary, certainly, but not far-fetched.

I still say TV manufacturers aren't going to stick with 1080p sets forever. People are upgrading their televisions for the first time in years (in some cases decades!) thanks to HDTV. Once you get them on the upgrade path, you gotta keep them there to keep the sales flowing.

120Hz isn't in the ATSC spec, but don't tell the people who were thrilled with 120Hz sets when they arrived. As soon as they start selling 1440p sets, we'll have people telling us how these sets use fantastic upconverters to make HD look even better with the same resolution.

Remember how impressed you were with that upconverting DVD player you upgraded to and you never touched your old DVD player again? Well, don't throw away the box that your soon-to-be-obsolete 1080p set came in because more pixels are on the way!

Tell the salesman at Best Buy or Circuit City that I said so. ;)

120Hz sets have an advantage today because they're the least common denominator of 60Hz and 24Hz, so film-sourced material can be shown without flicker or judder. With no content available at greater than 1080p, you won't be seeing sets which support them anytime soon. Probably eventually you will see large-format sets in larger formats, but it won't be real soon.

120Hz sets have an advantage today because they're the least common denominator of 60Hz and 24Hz, so film-sourced material can be shown without flicker or judder.
Because displays aren't capable of displaying 24 fps?

With no content available at greater than 1080p, you won't be seeing sets which support them anytime soon. Probably eventually you will see large-format sets in larger formats, but it won't be real soon.
Ever seen a DVD on an HD display with a good upscaling player? Don't make a judgment until you've seen 1080p upscaled on an even higher resolution display.

As soon as the profit on 1080p displays starts to drop, they'll start building them with more pixels and marketing them like crazy.