JVC NAB-2007 - page 12

JVC Professional APRIL 2007 NAB-2007 The ProHD Report
Copyright 2007 JVC Professional Products Company All rights reserved Page 12 of 43
Forecasters recently have projected that about
35% of all HDTVs sold worldwide in 2010
will be 1080p models, and implying that the
percentages in the years leading up to 2010
obviously are less. Let’s project that, of an
installed base of 100 million HDTVs in the US
by 2010, about 25% will be native 1080p
HDTVs and about 75% will be native 720p.
It’s a HDTV selling price issue, where it’s
likely that the 720p models will always be
around 30% less expensive than the 1080p
models.
What about native 1080i displays? Sorry, all new HD display technology is
progressive, thus there will likely be next to zero (0) native 1080i HDTVs in US
homes by 2010.
What will 1080p do for TV broadcast local news?
An ATSC OTA (over-the-air) 720p60 transmission will hit the built-in tuner, decode
internally to uncompressed 720p and then “up-convert” to 1080p60, resulting in true
reproduction of the 720p60 images, for stunning TV station news studio shots, as
well as HD ENG shots with the ProHD format.
An ATSC OTA 1080i60 transmission (note interlaced, as there is no 1080p60 path
available or contemplated in the ATSC OTA path) will hit the built-in tuner, decode
internally to uncompressed 1080i, and then “de-interlace and cross-convert” to
1080p. It is very technically challenging to convert HD interlaced to HD progressive,
and, although the resulting HD video displayed will generally be very good, there is
the possibility that artifacts may be visible to a trained eye, particularly HD ENG
shots in 1080i which has been through several stages of processing, editing and
color-space conversion.
So, what is the purpose of 1080p displays, if broadcast 1080i will not look better
than 720p to the majority of viewers?
Its for HD-DVD, Blue-ray Discs and Games, once these media are produced and
encoded at 1080p24/p25/p50 or p60. The home audience may at that time experience
a perceived temporal resolution higher than that of 720p and 1080i.