[mythtv-users] High end, state of the art Myth Frontend

[Michael T. Dean]

On 09/18/2013 03:30 PM, Eric Sharkey wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 3:23 PM, Jeff Siddall wrote:
>> I can only imagine highly compressed 1080p would look horrible, which again
>> makes me wonder why people are so quick to bash 1080i.
> But conceptually, 1080i is nothing but compressed 1080p.  The
> compression algorithm is "throw out half the pixels".  You honestly
> believe that there's no better algorithm than that?

No, 1080i60 has exactly as many pixels as 1080p30.  The only difference 
is where those pixels exist in the temporal axis.

Now it does have half the pixels as 1080p60, but since the number of 
pixels required for 1080p60 wouldn't fit into the 19.39Mbps bandwidth 
available with sufficient picture quality (using the MPEG-2 encoders 
available at the time the standard was made), 1080p60 wasn't an option.

So, really, you need to compare 1080p30 to 1080i60.  If you do, you'll 
find that 1080p30 is better for slow-moving content and 1080i60 is 
better for fast-moving.

If you're comparing 1080i60 to 1080p60, you might as well compare 
1080i60 to 8k UHDTV (7680x4320, so, maybe 4320p60) and call the ATSC 
implementers idiots for choosing 1080i60 instead of 4320p60.  It's the 
exact same comparison because neither 1080p60 nor 4320p60 would fit into 
the bandwidth they had available with the compression the had available.  :)

Mike