1080p HDTV

With all the new digital formats out there, it is of little surprise that there exists considerable confusion about EDTV and HDTV. First of all, EDTV stands for Enhanced Definition Television, while HDTV stands for High Definition Television. TVs equipped with either of these formats are capable of receiving and potraying images in a digital fashion - both of which are superior in visual quality to the standard TV (SDTV).

Which is better, EDTV, or HDTV?

This is a question that comes up quite often, and it really has a simple answer: HDTV is better. However, EDTV wasn’t really made to be a competitor for HDTV, but rather a transition technology that was better than standard, but not all

the way High Definition, as HDTV is. And although Enhanced Definition Television (EDTV) doesn’t quite offer the oustanding life-like quality attributed to High Definition Television (HDTV), its picture is actually closer to HDTV than regular television. HDTV has an impressive 720 progressive scanning (1280×720 pixels) or 1080 interlaced (1920×1090 pixels) lines. Thus, it easily meets the requirement of high definition broadcasts. EDTV, on the other hand, displays pictures at 480 progressive scan (640×480 pixels), which is the the highest resolution available on DVD. In fact, EDTV is considered optimized for the DVD format. However, this puts a severe limit on EDTV, which is simply not able to display higher resolution HD content.

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A plasma screen is made up of thousands of pixels containing gas that s converted into plasma by an electrical charge. The plasma causes phosphors to glow red, green, or blue, as dictated by a video signal. The result: a colorful display with high brightness and a wider viewing angle than most rear-projection sets and LCD (liquid-crystal display) TVs. Thanks to steady improvements in plasma technology, the best of these sets have excellent or very good picture quality. Some picture-tube TVs still do slightly better with fine detail, color accuracy, and subtle gradations of black and gray, but plasma TVs are coming closer.

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There are some new developments in the war between Toshiba’s HD-DVD format and Sony’s Blu-ray. Toshiba recently announced the release of a HD-DVD player capable of playing High Definition video in 1080p resolution, and Sony says that it will release a Blu-ray recorder in Japan by the end of the year. Both of these moves are meant to give each company an advantage in the competition to have their High Definition video disc format come out on top.

For anyone not familiar with this issue, Blu-ray and HD-DVD are both High Definition Television Digital Video Discs (DVD’s) and are competing in the marketplace to become the dominant format. Both use blue laser technology to pack more

data onto a disc than standard DVD technology- which uses a red laser- is capable of. The fact that they can deal with more data makes both formats up to the task of storing High Definition Video content, but there are some pretty major differences between them. For example each side of an HD-DVD can hold fifteen gigabytes of data or thirty gigabytes total, while a Blu-ray disc can hold twenty five gigabytes per side or fifty gigabytes total.

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