1080P HD signal is for when?

One reason there is so much hype over 1080p is because of the gaming systems and HD/BluRay DVD players that output 1080p. I'm sure there will be more 1080p devices, but who knows when. So, let's look at this: If you have a 1080p TV and you use a native 1080p device, the signal stays 1080p. If you watch HDTV broadcast, then your 1080p TV will scale the 720p/1080i signal up to the native 1080p. So, many people worry that if they have a 720p/1080i TV, their TV will show a degraded image when using a 1080p device because the 1080p signal is scaled down. Well, any scaling in theory, will alter the image some, so why aren't more people worried that using a 1080p native TV to watch HD broadcast will degrade the picture too? The argument should work both ways but it doesn't.

what do you mean by "using a native 1080P device"??? Do you talk about the A/C? I know digital receivers from Dish Network or cable compagnies are all 1080i for the HD signals so you arent talking about those devices right? Do you mean the A/C or dvd player from wich the TV is plug? sorry but i'm dumb i guess...

Dan you brought up an interesting subject. The argument really should work both ways. When 1080p was first coming out I thought that it was a complete waste of money. Especially because many people were online saying that hd 1080i dvd players looked just as good or better than bluray 1080p players. Add to that, your tv would now have to upscale 1080i from your cable box. Then I started really looking at the new tvs and its obvious how nice and sharp their picture is. Theguywhowannaknow, I think Dan means a device that will output 1080p to your tv. Like a 1080p HD DVD player or gaming system.

It is not true that a 1080p tv will automatically upscale any hd signal broadcast in less than 1080p to 1080p. A 1080p capable tv can only display the signal sent to it. A 480i signal sent to a 1080p tv will display in 480i resolution. A 1080i signal sent to a 1080p tv will display in 1080i. A 720p signal(currently the highest broadcast resolution available) sent to a 1080p tv will only display in 720p resolution. I own a 1080p mitsubishi big screen tv and hd dvr. The only true 1080p resolution it can display is from my blu-ray player and some internet sources. 1080p tv can only display 1080p from 1080p signal source. Currently, there are no 1080p broadcast sources.

While for the most part the different posters are correct, that broadcasts today are in 1080i or 720p, DirecTV does have 1080p, and I think Dish also has 1080p on certain pay per view movie channels. As for the regular channels, I agree that 1080p is a ways off.

Dont you think there will be a new technology by then? Anyway, as you wrote, 1080P is a fit for HD dvd or Blue Ray but i still hope we will ever see a 1080P HD signal in a near future...

with a good system 1080I will give you an eyepopping picture as good aor better than any movie theater in yown. what are you looking for something that is better than perfect Yes my 1080P blue ray player looks mabey 2% better than 1080I from my hi-def satellite system The only one that may use deep color, 1080P and 1.3. would be someone building a million dollor home theater system. these folks can afford the money to have 2% better picture and sound stewee

...be a new broadcasting standard with enough bandwidth for a compressed 1080p signal. It confuses me why it takes more bandwidth though! 1080i is 60 fields per second, so deinterlaced it is 1080p at 24 or 30 frames per second--half the lines... twice the refresh rate... should equal same bandwidth! It would be one thing if we were talking about 1080p at 60fps but we're not--even HD-DVD and BD are only 24fps. Eventually 1080p60 will be the standard for everything, but right now I don't see why 1080p is so hard to accomplish at 24 or 30 fps. Does anyone have this figured out?

There is a war going on!!!! The war is over broadcast bandwidth!!!!!
Keep in mind that it took 20 years to get the 720p and 1080i HDTV broadcasts that we have now. Don't hold your breath waiting for 1080p!!!
Sadly MPG2 was chosen for OTA broadcasts. DirectTV and Dish have started changing over to MP4 encoding to give them more bandwidth, all of the receiver must be replaced. Not to give you better quality but for more channels!
There ARE broadcast standards!!!! The standards dictate how video will be transmitted! In the US it's NTSC for analog video and ATSC for Digital, the FCC has only given broadcasters 18mega bits/sec!!!! John

I know there are standards--that's why I said "NEW" standards; eventually they will change it to more than 18mbps and/or switch to a better compression technology such as mp4. I'm obviously not holding my breath because I said "EVENTUALLY." Please limit your responses to helpful and relevant information.

Interlacing and deinterlacing? The whole point of "p" is none of that is necessary! 1080i content sourced from film can theoretically be deinterlaced to form full 1080p at 24fps, and I think they DO broadcast films with this method. The question is why don't they, or when will they, broadcast directly in 1080p?

If you're talking about 1080/24p, as someone mentioned, that's actually possible today. And in fact, it'll look marginally better than 1080/60i made via 3:2 pulldown, since each frame can be slightly less compressed at the same bitrate.

For 1080/60p, though, you're going to have issues. Current US broadcast is limited to 19.4Mb/s... if you want 1080/60p, you're going to in short need twice the bandwidth, or accept half the quality, or change something. But in fact, 1080/60p isn't a legal ATSC format, so anything here is really post-ATSC, far as terrestrial broadcast goes.

For cable/satellite, it's possible essentially "whenever they feel like it", which also probably means not anytime soon. Satellite has already moved most HD content to H.264 rather than MPEG-2, and they're using modulation schemes that deliver 30-60Mb/s per analog channel, rather than 19.4MB/s. But satellite "real estate" is expensive, and even with the far greater coding efficiency of H.264, most HD content is likely downsampled, more likely 1440x1080 or 1280x1080 than the full 1920x1080, all at 60i. Don't expect any dramatic changes here.

Cable systems have more bandwidth, and FIOS TV more still, but they're also a competition where something just barely HD is often considered acceptable, and quantity wins over quality, after a point. As well, unless there's a big 1080/60p infrastructure, there's little point in paying for the ability to deliver it. If TV is primarily 1080/60i, and film primarily 1080/24p, where are you going to find enough 1080/60p content to push the demand onto any service provider?

I know 1080p24 (and 30) is POSSIBLE today, and it would look better than 1080i60->24, but do they do it? Everywhere you see anyone talking about HDTV they say "only 720p and 1080i" are available, and 1080p must be saved for the optical disc formats because of bandwidth (even though these are no more than 1080p24).

Do some reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_Standards

http://www.leitch.com/resources/tutorials/atscDTVstandard.pdf

The ATSC broadcast standard took many years to be developed and implemented and 1080p is not part of the broadcast standard.
Just getting the digital transition done has been a mess.
The FCC would have to approve the new standard, another mess.

A terrestrial (over-the-air) transmission carries 19.39 megabits of data per second, compared to a maximum possible bitrate of 10.08 Mbit/s allowed in the DVD standard and 48 Mbit/s allowed in the Blue-ray disc standard.
Please note the 48Mbits/s that is needed for 1080p on Blue Ray Disc and the lowly 19.39 Mbit/s that the FCC allows for OTA.
ATSC is based on 30FPS and ONLY 30FPS!
Only Blue Ray Disc can supply the 1080p/24 format.
Please note that this only applies to OTA broadcast HDTV.

Dish and direct TV are or have switched to MPEG4 which allows for higher compression, thus they can provide 1080p.
To broadcast in 1080p would require rewriting the standards, FCC approval, designing new broadcast equipment and new OTA HDTV receivers. All of the ATSC tuners that are out now would no longer work and all of use would have to buy a set top box to receive the new format. Back to an earlier post: it took over twenty years to get to where we are now!

in the near future.

via dish VOD, it looks good like Discovery HD quality, but It still isnt BD quality yet.