High-definition Television

High-definition television (HDTV) provides a resolution that is substantially higher than that of standard-definition television.

HDTV may be transmitted in various formats:

  • 1080p - 1920×1080p: 2,073,600 pixels (approximately 2.1 megapixels) per frame
  • 1080i - typically either:
    • 1920×1080i: 1,036,800 pixels (approximately 1 megapixel) per field or 2,073,600 pixels (approximately 2.1 megapixels) per frame
    • 1440×1080i: 777,600 pixels (approximately 0.8 megapixels) per field or 1,555,200 pixels (approximately 1.6 megapixels) per frame
  • 720p - 1280×720p: 921,600 pixels (approximately 0.9 megapixels) per frame

The letter "p" here stands for progressive scan while "i" indicates interlaced.

When transmitted at two megapixels per frame, HDTV provides about five times as many pixels as SD (standard-definition television).

Read more about High-definition Television:  History of High-definition Television, Inaugural HDTV Broadcast in The United States, European HDTV Broadcasts, Notation, Contemporary Systems, Recording and Compression

Famous quotes containing the word television:

    The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?
    Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)