So! You want to know the real difference in the top of the pile video formats? Well, that’s what this little slice of wisdom is hopefully going to do. When it comes to these kinds of things, we know what we’re talking about. No, really - we do. Without further ado, here’s how it all started:
Back in the good old days of the late 1960s, there started in Japan a newfangled theory that television broadcasts could look better than the crummy old sets we’d all been using since the early days of color television. Improvements had been made - color reproduction, contrast, sharpness were all greatly improved by the introduction of high quality digital components that were simply better than their old analog counterparts. But that hadn’t changed the fact that the CRT (cathode ray tube) hadn’t really changed all that much. At the same time, it was well established that a higher quality picture tube was quite feasible. Some bright scientist somewhere said “HEY! What if we made a television that could do the same thing as a computer monitor?” And so, the quest for high definition television was begun.
Experiments with HDTV had been tried before - England and France had both experimented with higher definition broadcasts in the 1940s, Japan had tried in the 1960s and 1970s, and all of them eventually abandoned the idea. The experiment was lackluster at best and an outright failure at worst. Because high definition uses more bandwidth than a normal broadcast, there’s a sacrifice - you can have either high quality visuals OR lots of channels in over the air broadcasts…but not both. There was, however, some good. By the early 1980s, standards such as the formats that would later become standard HDTV were agreed upon. With the advent of digital broadcasting in the form of satellite and cable services, the early fears of broadcast limitations were more or less dissolved. Digital signals have a much higher capacity allowing TV watchers to have their cake and eat it, too. In addition, public interest was becoming sparked by the prospects of a higher quality television.
Around 1997, the first 480p/720p televisions went on sale to the general public in the USA. Though extremely expensive at first, these first generation TVs made a great impression based on their high quality picture. During this period, there was also an influx of EDTV sets, which were able to display at 480p only. These sets have largely been phased out in favor of newer 720p/1080i capable screens, but they are still occasionally seen in second hand stores, yard sales, and online.
The main problem was the fact that at first, there was nothing to use with the new HDTV screens! High definition broadcasting was an entirely new concept in the USA, and although DVD players have higher quality images than VHS tapes, the max resolution of a DVD player is only 800 pixels by 600. You could get an up scaling DVD player, but they were pricey. As if that weren’t frustrating enough, there was also a vigorous debate over how to get the best quality of signal out of the attached devices - analog connections or digital. The benefits and disadvantages of these could fill their own article (hint, hint..) but the basic argument boils down to the fact that digital doesn’t lose signal quality and analog is much cheaper to use.
These days, with the introduction of the new (and pricey) 1080p screens and truly high definition formats such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, the high definition television has come into its own. It’s now possible to get a high quality high definition screen for around $800-$1000, or a similar quality projector that can output an extremely large image (typically, 100”+). The issues initially encountered are now far removed, and in many cases outright eliminated.