Sony was ahead of the game with HiFi audio on Betamax - JVC followed more than a year later, copying the same technique - depth multiplexing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax suggests that Betamax offered many "firsts" ahead of JVC.

Just a question for your observations: What was the cam that shot the dual 1080i and 720p footage. And being that there was loads of movement and you were more impressed with an interlaced image, I am guessing the 720p wasn't shot a 60p?

I think you will find that providers such as Verizon with FIOS will begin to put pressure on other providers for enhanced quality. If FIOS can do it, it can be done. Yes, the started with a brand new infrastructure, but the others will have to catch up as the marketing becomes more intense. Already FIOS is saying they provide the best picture....and they do. Wherever FIOS has shown up, there has been mass defection from Directv HD subs. I don't believe we should cater to the lowest common denominator. I don't believe in 'good enough'. Why not go for the best. I CAN see the difference between the additional detail of 1080i and 1080p will only be better. I CAN see the difference in the gorgeous transfers on many HD DVD movies. So yes, many out there in Joe Six Pack land could care less, but that doesn't mean the industry should cater to this lowest common denominator.

If we did, we'd still be driving Model Ts.

Couldn't agree more Marco and this is the common refrain from true videophiles. AVS forum is filled with people who agree that 1080i just provides more of the window effect that we all strive for. 720p is nice, but it just doesn't give quite that same degree of detail that HD is all about. And I agree that the difference going from 720p to 1080i is probably greater than going from 1080i to 1080p.

An interesting article - it does say that there were differences between NTSC and PAL variants, most notably I also never remember the one hour limit with Beta. Maybe there was a significant quality VHS/Beta difference in NTSC machines (at the expense of a time limitation for Beta), which never applied with PAL? I first remember VHS machines appearing in the UK late 1978/early 1979, so a couple of years after the NTSC machines came out, and the comparison we did must have been approximately a year later.

I do remember a service engineer telling me that a big problem with a particular range of Beta machines was a stock fault with the power supply. They weren't any more or less reliable overall, I believe, but they tended to fail at the time of max current - in FF or Rewind. Since the tape wound laced up (unlike VHS), and access to the power supply was via the tape deck, repair inevitably meant destruction of the tape - a big problem at the time as rental tapes were vastly more expensive in real terms than now. In the end his shop just stopped stocking Betamax machines.

Z1U for the 1080 and I forget what he said the other tape was shot on but he did say it was progressive 60. I want to say Panny, but I seriously forget.

Well that was my point essentially. Two cams will look different, and being 60p as you say, the Panny is a good guess. It also happens to be the softest HD cam. Observations are good, but un-referenced comments of apples to oranges comparisons don't give credibility to the "i" vs. "p" argument.

Here's my 2 cents:

1080p will win. 1080i is interim, and 720p already lost. Why?

First off, if you go into big box store, any screen that has a 1080p resolution has it in a big fancy pants sticker. "Full HD 1080" or any other such gimmick. If it doesn't have it, you ask why. Eventually, all the screens are going to be 1080p. Why bother with a 720p screen?

Next up, 1080p24 is better than 720p24 hands down. I have a 17" 1920x1200 computer monitor on which I watch HD content. I can tell the difference on a screen this small between 1280x720 and 1920x1080. I can see the softness in 720p, the downsampling errors, etc. In 1080p resolution I can see the grain of the film, how well it was focussed - pretty much all the imperfections of the flick. I like that. All HD-DVD and Blu-Ray content produced by major studios is going to come out as 1080p24, and most consumers will want TVs that can play it properly. (Bring on 120 Hz displays!)

The only application where 720p reigns supreme is in 720p60 content. And here it's got to fight 1080i. Well, 1080i can be adaptively deinterlaced to have comparable vertical resolution to 720p. What makes this worse is that the primary source of 60i/p content are sports broadcasters... but there aren't any real quality controls in the broadcast industry. There are different encoders, different scalers, different source cameras... Not to mention the broadcaster can bit-starve each HD channel in order to have more channels. Invariably the image broadcast is lower quality than it could be.

I wouldn't buy a TV or choose a format based upon how well it can handle badly handled data... I'd base it on how it can excel. If bandwidth goes up, it may pave the way for 1080p60... at which point 720p will be a distant memory.

-Steve

Ken makes great points as always yet I've never heard anyone say it better than Steve just did, that you buy it for what the format can be at its best, not to avoid what it is at its worst.

But... 17" computer monitors can't display 1920x1200. It's unheard of for a 22" monitor to get that high, unless you're speaking in terms of laptops.

Anyways, televisions with 2160p are on the way. Quad Full High Definition. Be very afraid ;)

Yeah my 21" widescreen monitor only goes 1600X1050, it will do some HD resolutions, but not 1920X1200 though. I can get it to do 1440X720, I think, or is it 1280X720...I'll have to check tonight.

So since 2160p us on the way, this thread is moot? LOL jk

I have 23 inch 1680 x 1050 monitor. It's just not the same thing. Even my 4 year old Samsung 50 inch 720p DLP monitor is much better at handling 1080i than my PC monitor. The PC monitor even with built-in Faroudja DCDi just does not display 1080i as gracefully. I feel the DCDi is probably only effective for 480i. At 1080i, it bobs fields losing vertical resolution and adds stairstepping artifacts. The Samsung by comparison is totally absent those artifacts in spite of the lower native resolution. To be fair, that old Samsung I think was screwed together tighter figuratively than the newer oversharpened DNIe equipped models. Even so, the convergence between PC monitors and HDTV's has a long way to improve upon, and it's more than just PC monitor resolutions to make smooth artifact free motion happen. The reverse is true also, an HDTV monitor is not suited as well for PC applications.

Note: I am not inviting the "I"m a PC...I'm a Mac" jokes, not deliberately at least...

But as far as quad full high defintion on PC monitors, "Be not very afraid" They have not yet covered even the basics of proper HDTV display fundamentals.

It is an UXGA on a Dell Inpsiron 9400 (a laptop). I got it specifically to watch 1080p content in native resolution. Gorgeous screen. I have to bump the fonts up to 120 dpi for them to be legible, but then even they look nicer.

As for 2160p - my eyes just aren't that good. With my glasses on I can't really resolve pixels in a properly sized 1080p image (I do much better at resolving film grain). I'm sure compositors and archives will like the higher resolution format... but this brings an interesting dilemma...

How long are any of these formats going to be around? Is there really going to be a push to 2160p? It seems that level of detail is excessive for delivery (not acquisition). I'm sure it's a marketable technology, but pretty soon people won't be able to see the difference.

-Steve