Reminder: this is only to inform people about 1080i/1080p. Please don't turn this into HD DVD vs. Blu Ray or Samsung vs. Toshiba.
For 1080i/1080p I HIGHLY recommend people read this article:
http://www.projectorcentral.com/blu-ray_2.htm
"At this point we should address what can only be characterized as a hoax—the notion that Blu-ray must be technically superior to HD-DVD because the Samsung player outputs 1080p, whereas the Toshiba player is "only 1080i." One high-end home theater retailer told me last weekend that the reason you pay $1000 for the Blu-ray player is for the "higher resolution 1080p output." This is absolute baloney. If you encounter any retail sales rep feeding you this line, keep your wallet in your pocket and leave the store.
The truth is this: The Toshiba HD-DVD player outputs 1080i, and the Samsung Blu-ray player outputs both 1080i and 1080p. What they fail to mention is that it makes absolutely no difference which transmission format you use—feeding 1080i or 1080p into your projector or HDTV will give you the exact same picture. Why? Both disc formats encode film material in progressive scan 1080p at 24 frames per second. It does not matter whether you output this data in 1080i or 1080p since all 1080 lines of information on the disc are fed into your video display either way. The only difference is the order in which they are transmitted. If they are fed in progressive order (1080p), the video display will process them in that order. If they are fed in interlaced format (1080i), the video display simply reassembles them into their original progressive scan order. Either way all 1080 lines per frame that are on the disc make it into the projector or TV. The fact is, if you happen to have the Samsung Blu-ray player and a video display that takes both 1080i and 1080p, you can switch the player back and forth between 1080i and 1080p output and see absolutely no difference in the picture. So this notion that the Blu-ray player is worth more money due to 1080p output is nonsense.
(As a side note, 1080p could offer a subtle improvement in motion smoothness if (a) the player was able to output at 24 frames per second, and (b) you happened to have a video display that could take 1080p/24, which is a rarity these days. In the future it is probable that both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players will output 1080p/24. But neither one does it today, so it is not relevant to the present competition between the formats.)
So why all the confusion? If live video is originally captured with an HD video camera in 1080p, that is a much higher resolution than capturing in 1080i. The reason is that when an HD camera captures in 1080i, it is scanning 540 odd lines at one moment in time, and the 540 even lines at a subsequent moment in time. So in motion sequences, vertical resolution drops to 540 lines rather than 1080. Furthermore, interlaced capture produces motion offsets in the reassembled frame, resulting in the interlacing artifacts that people don't like. That does not occur with either HD-DVD or Blu-ray 1080p film-sourced material since it is all progressively scanned from film frames that represent single moments in time. So this material can be transmitted from the player to the display via 1080i without introducing interlacing artifacts."
). There's no point arguing about player price drops or consumer awareness or whatnot, because that's got nothing to do with consoles and isn't the topic!
