And remember HD-DVD, it at least supported 1080P30, but not 1080P60.

Jeff,

I'm not sure that there would be such a HDTV standard with 60 progressive frames per second.

Andrew

So what happens when one inputs a true 1080p60 signal into a modern "1080P" plasma or LCD (which is cheap enough to do for $100, with something like a TViX or an EGreat Mediatank)?

Jeff, no doubt the consumers got burned with the adoption of BluRay over HD-DVD. I was mildly bummed about that myself, but the studios where offered better copy protection of their movies on BluRay than HD-DVD... so that's the one that was finally adopted. But yes, I am keeping my eyes opened for when BluRay players drop below $50 in a year or two, just because my old DVD player will be dying by then, and downloading HD movies from iTunes is a trying experience in the country with their sooo calllled broadband. (2 gig download is more like 200k download and 50k upload on a good day)

I was trying to be funny on too much coffee last night. I was meaning by bringing up Kmart and or Walmart that any hardware that could be capable would have to be readily available at a big box chain anyway in the US or Europe for under $40. The truth is BluRay doesn't support the 30p or 60p anyway, nor does iTunes or DVD standard either. So again there is no viable physical format for distrubution of any 30p or 60p material to paying customers. Broadcasters can use 60p and 60i files, HDD and tape.. and if cornered they can use 30p as well without much of a fuss. 24p also easily falls within NTSC and PAL as well as HDTV standards for broadcast. 30p will remain the choice for youtube and other web videos since cheap cameras are often only capable of 30p which is fine for NTSC land due to our 60 hz cycle rate, just don't expect it to look too good on a DVD, BluRay or iTunes without tons of retiming work (to 24p or 60i). I would rather buy better equipment than spend 10x to 20x as long on every project to finally render. 720p 24fps to DVD 480p (480i with flags) is about 2:1. 720p 30fps to DVD 480p (480i with flags) is closer to 20:1 to retime to 24p. If you just render out to 30p you get 48 frames of flagged interlaced images flagged for recombining to 24p.... AND 12 interlaced frames that are field doubled and interspaced within the data stream giving wierd artifacts when viewed on any DVD player or computer.

So no, I don't see 24p being superceeded by 30p or even 60p for delivery in 10-20 years. The only hope of that happening would be some sort of digital download, which by the way I think will take over and grow over BluRay or what ever Disc comes after BluRay. But that issue has more to do with nationwide quality broadband above 4 gig download speeds without internet companies being allowed to throttle down heavy broadband abusers (people like us who would legally upload or download movies/TV/HDTV shows from iTunes or other legal websites.) iTunes for instance supports HD in ONLY 720p at 24fps. 60i and 30p content comes out 480p or at most 540p. Not bad, don't get me wrong, but 720p (30p or 60p) or 1080p/i to be sold and viewed at 540p at highest res 30fps, vs 720p at 24fps to be delivered at 720p 24fps... not much of a choice. 24p is the clear winner due to bandwidth issues as well. Same reason that DirecTV and Dish are starting their 1080p channels.. which are 24p only by the way.

So while 30p may look good on your HDTV with the footage you shot, short of making a copy of the tape or file and shipping it to someone who has a similar NLE, you are in for a world of hurt if you plan on delivery to the masses if not shot in 24p/25p or 60p/60i, unless you like you-tube.

I don't think 24p will go extinct anytime soon. Just because something is ultra smooth doesn't mean its good. People don't always want something that looks REAL, they want something that looks good. Sometimes motion just looks better with fewer frames. Hell... in Benny and Joon they came really close to shooting parts of that in 18fps because it just looked more surreal.