720p vs 1080i HD Explained (HQ) 

This video really helped me understand the difference with 1080i and 720p is and I have set all of my tvs with satellite TV to 720p. I tried for a month to use 1080i but I kept on noticing odd blurring even my tv has native 4K. So the 720p option is better for my satellite tv.

for gaming you want 720P > 1080i for movies you want 1080i > 720p

AAAND 4K came

Even at the time of this upload, 1080i still had 1920 pixels across horizontal. 590x1920 is still a higher resolution then 720x1280. Plus TVs had a film mode that took 23.976fps broadcast (or 29.97fps) and turn 1080i into Progressive without losing any detail in the image. You are only going to lose resolution when something is moving at 60fps.

For television broadcasting 1080i is better then 720p. That's why major of broadcasting channel in the world use 1080i. Only in sport channels 720p may be better. In television is very difficult to see the difference of 1080i or 1080p because the image is slow.

Thanks for the info! but i have a few questions :) with 1080i you only get 540 progressive lines, and not 1080 right? which makes 720p better. But does the numbers also tell you the length of each line? I mean, I always thought those numbers were a measurement of the pixels - kind of like a resolution in the monitor or something. So it really is just the number of lines? so the 720p is always beats 1080i even with a really huge TV screen?

Thanks for this explanation. A lot of people erroneously use 1080p to refer to Full HD display resolution, while these are video rendering standards.

First I will say that I was an electronic service technician and understand the real reason for interlaced TVs. It goes back to the days of CRT (cathode ray tube) type TVs. With a CRT TV an electron beam scans from top to bottom on the screen, writing one line at a time. On the first pass, only the odd lines are scanned, then on the second the even lines are scanned. The reason for this was due to band width limitations in order to get a fast enough refresh rate so that the screen wouldn't appear to flicker. With the same bandwidth only 30 frames per second (on NTSC TVs), or 25 (on PAL) could be displayed if progressive scanning was used. This would produce noticeable flicker. So instead, interlacing the picture with odd and even fields meant that the refresh rate was 60 times per second on NTSC and 50 on PAL. When HD TV was first developed, CRT TVs were still being used, so 1080i was adopted for broadcast TV, as well as 720p which has about the same bandwidth. My first HDTV was a 36inch SONY CRT TV. It up-scaled standard definition to 960i or 480p. For HD it only displayed 1080i, but could take a 720p input. Most CRT computer monitors used progressive scan since they were not limited by broadcast bandwidth requirements. New flat panel TVs are LCD or plasma (although they are getting less). These TVs can take an interlaced input and display it progressive. One other thing to remember is that most movies are shot at only 24 frames per second, so even a 1080i signal will have all of the data to produce a 24 frame per second 1080 progressive scanned picture. Many TVs will up-convert the frame rate to 60, 120 or more frames per second, if that feature is turned on.

thank you... this video provided amazing clarity [1080i is a no go - only seldomly for photographs]

So here is a question. I have a Nikon D5200 DSLR. When I am filming slow motion, for a water splash or a model rocket launch, should I use the setting for 1080i, or 720p at 60fps? It also has an option for 1080p but at 30fps, and that is a little too slow.

Video completely ignores horizontal resolution. 540x1920 > 720x1280 If you're judging by full resolution (both vertical & horizontal, not just vertical) a single 1080i60 field has 12.5% greater resolution than a 720p60 frame.

The so-called "Technology Evangelist" speaker is confusing the **transmission format** of the video with its display, which is misleading. When a HD television receives a 1080p signal, it is **NOT** displaying it by flashing one 1920 pixel*540 line field, then a different 1920 pixel*540 field "with black in between", or "at any moment in time never having the full resolution available to you". The DISPLAYED frame is 1920*1080 pixels, PERIOD. *BUT ONLY HALF OF IT IS UPDATED EVERY FIELD".

I liked the part when he mentioned watching HD-DVD's.

Excellent information totally broke it down. Helped me actually see the full scale and explain Interlaced and progressive styles. Very well said!

btw, you seem to make quality posts but i can't see any recent updates at the technology evangelist website. did you guys move?

I kind of get what he's saying, but here's something I didn't get: He said 1080p cannot be broadcast. Does that mean television only, or does that include over the internet? Are RU-vid videos (the ones that have a 1080p option) true 1080p?

What type of wireless lav are you using and are you happy with it?

Enjooyed your video, sitll have a qustion want to connect my computer to a 28inch 1080P tv (not a monitor) however the tv is only 1368 by 768 and 120 clear motion rate. Will this work or will computer text be blurred? thanks.

Interlaced footage was originally used because of the bandwidth limitations of television broadcasts (you only need to transmit half a frame at a time). With the advent of digital TV, I don't think it's a necessity any more, but it might still be used where bandwidth is limited, or you want to ensure smoothness of playback over quality.

I have a question to the pic shown at 2:33. 1080 - 720 = 360 720/2=360 So the 720 should be 2/3 and the rest (1/3) should be colored in red, or?

so this is why my hd video games look crappy and the text can't be read on my 1080i TV... CRAP!!!! I tried to tell my mom that 1080p is far superior and less blurry than 1080i, but she doesn't wanna hear it.

What about it? One of them is 3840x2160p or 2160p, which is like 4 1080p screens. I find all this above 1080p stuff to be essentially superfluous, but that's me. Don't forget the screen size and your distance from the screen.

I have smart 4k tv and i watch yt and rest in 4k but when comes about tv i have cable provider who offers 1080i and 720p,so what should i set for watching tv channels even if tv itself is 4k.Set to 720p or 1080i?

Why the hell couldn't all my professors in school have been as good at explaining this stuff as you? I would have learned so much more if half my classes weren't being taught by some semi retired key grip who mumbles everything in a dry monotone that could put ambient out of business.

As for 4K, the HEVC standard is due to be ratified this month, which should allow for broadcasters to transmit both 4K and 8K UHD content more cost efficiently. However be aware most film content is recorded/produced in 2K or 4K resolution as far as I'm aware. Although my knowledge of current production is a few years out of date now.

What would be easier for a 2007 iMac 2.2, 4g to run? 1080/30 or 720/60? Is 60 fps more difficult to edit? Thanks!

Then why do 1080i video look better than 720p?

sorry for the probably stupid question but Why do people still even film interlaced / record interlaced footage?

in progressive scan not all the lines are visible. they are displayed progressively one after the other

I do mostly video web production ( Digital Objects) Motion 5 - Final Cut Pro - After Effects which one must i use ? 1080p or 1080i or 720p ??? the target is to have the video display ONLINE.

I'm looking at buying a CCTV system that I can view on my smart phone, is 1080 the better option please?

where was this video taken? it looked like that football kid had timberwolves pants on and that looks like minnesota to me. because lakes ...

That is not what "broadcast" means. He did not broadcast this video. He uploaded this video.

Why don't they have a 1440i 240fps atleast then upscaling from 1440i 240fps to 4k p 120fps would be better quality downscaling or upscaling...

Hi I was wondering if anyone could answer this question Will a ps4 (60fps) not run smoothly on a 1080i tv?

But still is 4K better or not? or is something coming between 1080p and 4K?

A right. So in that respect there's quite a difference between the two? In Holland where I am they use 1080i or 720p but on the 50" screen we have i can't see the difference. (But as explained in the video 1080i comes below 720p.) The 720p looks razorsharp though.

What about 720i vs 480p? Would 720i be the same as 360p?

There are many high def monitors higher than 1080p though. The first 4k tvs will be released later this year. The issue is: no current format supports 4k resolutions, game consoles only output 1080p and broadcasting is still normally 720p.

so which is better 720p or 1080i for a 37 inch tv "gaming"??

if i record my video at 720p and play my game at Fullscreen 1080p is that okay for my recording

What people don't get is that 1080i it's INTERLACED. It means that, as he said, half the image is "real" and the other half isn't. So it's like the image it's rendered at two differente low resolutions fields, 540i + 540i, thus creating an image that almost looks like ED, not HD.

but to his point. It won't matter if they're combined is the source is 1080i. For instance the ball demo when you pause an 'i' video you have the ghosting. Not so with the 'p' video. Once the video has been interlaced you can't magically fill in those black lines. Best you can do is just freeze the lines form before and make it a smooth transition. Unless there's something I'm missing here..

Correct, it uses deinterlacers for that. And the deinterlacer chip's are so good, you mostly wouldn't see the difference between 1080i en 1080p. Another thing to consider is that 720p at 30fps roughly take's up the same "space" as 1080i at 60fps. And for things like sports you want the extra fps.

sorry i mean whats the best resolution for gaming 1080p, 1080i or 1366x768? ?

LCDs don't "lose" the info in interlaced mode. That is, every second line is NOT black, it's just not updated.

I’m here from the future. This man should see the 8k tvs we have now or the 500fps screen that’s coming out lols

RU-vid videos are not broadcasted, they are buffered to your computer, it means they are saved on the cache of your browser, somewhere on your hard drive. And for livestream I'm not sure how that works

That's because you only noticed the interlaced errors when things are moving fast on screen.

i learned so much on this video, nice work .

4:40 "1080i 60 is really only 1080p 30". The standard is 24fps for films anyway and 30fps at most on Blurays. If it's interlaced footage it does be double the number of fields anyway. 1080i Blurays do be released as 50i or 60i. 1080p do be released at 24p to 30p.

whats the best resolution for a hdtv with 1366x768

My Rulebook: 240p = Low Quality 320p = Standard Definition 480p = High Quality 720p & 1080p = High Definition HQ and HD are not the same!

This video is still around and it's extremely misinformative. The owner of this video has a moral obligation of taking it off as soon as possible. "1080i actually has full 1080 lines of information presented in it". (the video correctly points this) "It only isn't show at the same time" (This is, however, FALSE, this is why it is 60 frames per second, not 30). it further makes it even more wrong, by claiming that "since it is not shown at the same time, then it matches to 540p". THAT IS COMPLETELY FALSE, first because even if it was true, that only half of the VERTICAL resolution is presented at a time(which is not the case) that is still 1920x540, which ARE MORE PIXELS THAN 1280x720, yet, there would still be the effect of eye and pixel persistence, (go google it) to complete the image. But that is not even an issue here, because VIRTUALLY ALL MODERN TELEVISION HAVE NATIVE DEINTERLACING ALGORITHMS! This is what makes it completely different to old interlaced CRT television. Deinterlacing algorithms COMBINE the two halves of the 1080 frames together (540+540) forming FULL 1080 lines of resolution picture at half the frame rate (30). This IS more resolution than even 720p. Only true problem for 1080i material is if the source is not 30fps (or 25fps for pal), then it can create motion artifacts since 60 i'ts not entirely divisible by 24. (There is is also some issues of slightly less efficient encoding than progressive, but that is getting too technical), but overall for video and television, 1080i is a better choice if your television don't have any problem processing the picture (it usually doesn't).

Excellent Video! you really need to make a newer one to explain 4K in the mix to help people understand. This video was most helpful with me trying to explain this to a friend. GOOD JOB!

720 and 1080 stand for the rows, not the total number of pixels for a start. And you're right, there are more PIXELS, but it will not be more sharper, as 2 images are being shown one after the other, leading to smearing and latency. As for the framerate, take 60Hz for instance, a 720p video shows the whole image 60 times in one second, while the 1080i cycles 30 times a second between the 2 images (60 times), you end up seeing 30 "whole" images in the same amount of time as you see 60 on 720p.

My TV has two 1080 settings. 1080p/50 and 1080i/60. Which is better?

This was awesome. I've been trying to explain why 720p is better than 1080i to people for a while.

Excellent video. Very informative in a simple, concise format. Good job!

just a side note, cinemas use 2k and 4k resolutions. look them up if you want to find out more.

Another Question: Let's do some math before: 180i / 2 = 520 times the width wich is 1920 520 * 1920 = 1036800 720 * 1280 (width) = 921600 which actually are less pixels... So... why is 720p better than 1080i?

technically there is a resolution higher than 1080p, but is only used in huge events like theme parks at times. It's called 4k and is pretty much 1080pX4 so 7680x4320. A common way of displaying this is using 4 1080p projectors, and cutting the video into four corners and having each projector display each corner and lining them up properly. Most movies are shot in 4k and scaled down into 1080p so they have a very high quality.

Doesn't this mean 1080i will work on 540 monitors?

De-interlacing a 1080i video will give you 1080p but at only half the frame rate so it will not look as good as if you shoot it in 1080p. The real issues with the interlaced options are dealing with motion.

Was the glitch in the video 6:16 intentional?

Hi, it's not so well known, but you missed the main argument. in production, 720P60 and 1080i50 (Yes I agree it should be 1080i25) give near saturation to a HD-SDI interface. (nearly 1.5 Gbps.) As such, 720p is becoming a more usual broadcast standard for American content, and 1080i for Asian/European. I do disagree with your arguments against interlacing, as with the exception of trick-modes, it should not be visible to the naked eye. However it may require more bitrate for MPEG compression.

I don't get it in summary what is he saying

A pesar de la antigüedad del video, me ayudó bastante para entender las diferencias en una tv que compré de segunda mano. Muchas gracias

Well done. I was surprised to find info to begin with, but never expected to follow what was being said. "I got it". Thanks.

It depends on the source material. A movie is 24 fps which means that 1080i can potentially output all 1080p24 since 1080i has 60 540p fields (30 fps). It just needs to put 2 fields together with no motion and you get the whole 1080p frame back at 30 fps, which is enough for all the movie data. With 720p you could potentially have more temporal data at 720p60, but that doesn't help since a movie is only 24 fps anyway. You only get 720p24. 720p60 is better for broadcast sports with fast motion.

But he said Interlaced is only used used on CRT's, who uses those now?

Why is 1080i the highest resolution we can broadcast?

Thanks for this information. I have a TV that I play my console games on and it only supported up to 1080i (which I have been using). I should try 720p and see if it looks better to me.

This video is deceptive. 1080i is not 540p. 1080i is 1920 X 1080 pixels X 30 frames per second. Half the fields are time-shifted to 60 interlaced fields. HALF the resolution, but TWICE the frame rate. The resolution chart in the video is BOGUS. 1920X1080 is 2 megapixels. 1280X720 is less than 1 megapixel. I can't post a link here, but look it up and you'll see their comparison is deceptive. Better comparison: 1080i60 vs. 720p60. About the same data rate, use depends on what you're shooting.

Where?

What's with the background lake?

I've seen that effect on my friend's screen when he watches basketball. I try to tell him why it's like that but he doesn't wanna hear my "HD wizardry"

Camera A records in 1080p and camera B also records in 1080p. But why does the quality look better from camera A than B if they both shoot in 1080p at 60fps? I guessed on this question and came up with this: you have banana # 1 and banana # 2. # 2 came from somewhere else and is not fully ripe and will taste different but # 1 and # 2 are still bananas, am I right or wrong? Let me hear somebody else give an opinion or fact....

I love this video!.. Standing in frond of the Ocean explaining in such a clear and entertaining way.

I'm very thankfull, this really explained what the best difference is! Thanks great reporter! :) I love youtube and it's videos made by awesome people!

I'm glad I read the description because I was going to bash him SO hard for mentioning HD-DVD. As it is I'll limit myself to my normal comment. This is mostly just videophiles fear mongering. It's not that big of a deal. Still I applaud the accuracy of the information if not the opinion. Carry on.

If you increase the shutter speed on the video during live recorded, theres less blur

What about upscaling artifacts? 720p doesn't map 1:1 to a screen that has a native resolution of 1920x1080. Plus 1080i60 created by taking 1080p30 footage, and splitting that into two fields, you can easily deinterlace it before you display it... so... you'd be recieving a 1080i60 broadcast but only ever seeing a 1080p image. I'd rather do that than upscale.

My tv was made around 2007, which is it?

Does the 'p' in 240p stand for potato?

EXCELLENT. Those are the most important features one must know before buying tv or video devices. Thanks a lot for the info.

That's akin to saying that if I do a survey of youtube and ask everyone to rate your understanding of interlacing on a scale of 1-10, and then throw out half the responses, my survey will be as accurate as if I had kept them. No, it doesn't work like that. 5/10 is 50% and 10/20 is also 50%. But 10 is still a higher number than 5 and, 1080p still has twice as much data / info as 1080i. If you can't see the difference that's your problem. Source: I'm a video producer and editor by trade.

720p is higher than 1080i, if you slow down 1080i while comparing 720p in slow motion, the 1080i will be blurry and laggy, try it out yourself. The truth is there 720 is still above.

The 540x1920 field is already cut in half of 1080x1920. You don't divide a field in half twice. Plus your math is broken: 1,036,800 / 2 = 518,400

I totally agree that the quality versus size ratio is to 720p's advantage. In practice, 1080p only results in minor improvements on a TV screen. Anyways, in Canada, the TV broadcasting in 720p is so compressed that I don't think they are even close to 1080p...

Well done. Still relevant for me. Thanks guy .

I believe his comparison is flawed. In the video he is comparing only a half a frame of 1080I to a full frame of 720P. In the real world watch a football game on CBS compared to ABC or ESPN. CBS kills it in resolution...

unless you blink your eye at least 30 times per second, you can't see the different between 1080i and 1080p.

as something that hugely annoys me persona.. width is held by convention. Since video philes decided that one aspect ration is better than another for no reason whatso ever.. what essentially happens is this. When talking about HDTV we assume a ratio of 16:9. So if you know the ratio and the height you can calculate the width (720p - 1280×720p)

he said u can download 1080p and a youtube vid works like downloading but its not saved to the computer so u only download the vid for the ammount of time that ur watching it for

What about 720i and PAL standard resolution?

But what about the just released 64K resolution?

You completely gloss over the fact the "interlace artifacts" ONLY occur when viewing interlaced on a progressive monitor. Watching interlace video on an interlace monitor is SMOOTHER than progressive, 50 images a second is twice the "Temporal resolution."

The Hobbit is being shot in 5k resolution, what is that?

but i think part of his argument was that most viewing screens are progressive not interlace. He even listed which screens are progressive (not CRT basically). Now if you are suggesting that plasma are not progressive then you have a point but if the ones he listed are progressive then his point isn't wrong for that reason.