As the technology is developing further in resolutions and different  television standards,the technical language of this field was difficult for me to understand e.g. 720p, 1080i, 1080p and so on. These are all different definitions in the digital graphical entertainment that we have today.

A progressive image, and an interlaced image.

All the electronic stores brag about incoming products which have more incomprehensible functions and specifications than the product before. I will do one little digression before trying to explain it all; I think that there are two reasons that the biggest electronic stores like Elkjøp do not explain everything in their advertising, that they send out to everyone’s breakfast table with the morning newspaper. One; It’s easier to sell products that are of less worth, because most people do not have that knowledge to judge if it is a good product or not. Reason Two; if people don’t know, and they want to buy a new television, I think, or at least I would prefer to go to the store to get it explained for me, instead of doing research on my own. When people are at the store it’s much more easy to try to talk one person in to buying something.

Before we can understand what is best, we need to understand the difference between interlaced and progressive. In the older days, when we had old television monitors with glass in front of it, and the old computer screens (CTR instead of todays LCD) all the media that were streamed through were interlaced. Most people know that video has normally 30 frames per second to make it look realistic. But the thing about interlaced is this; each single frame only shows half the picture. The frame was divided into 625 vertical lines (PAL, the television standard in almost all of Europe), showing only the odd lines at frame one, and then even lines in the next frame. The human eye can not see this and the screens were built to show this type of media standard, therefore it was no problem. There are one obvious benefit with this system; Less data needs to be sent and with no loss of quality, since the monitors would put the images together.

When the producers of the television started to create such big screen as 32 inches (diagonal measurement) they realized that it would at a certain point be no use to have bigger screens. The quality on the media aired from the television stations was for screens below the size 32 inches. So looking at TV on a screen bigger than that would look slightly horrible. The answer was a whole new technology, and maybe something that would have seen more obvious today; progressive screens. Instead of using odd and even lines, each frame would instead be whole. All media would be progressive and all monitors would be progressive. Since the speed of the technology would support this, the big benefit is better quality.

So what is the best? Since interlaced media is not the proper thing to use at a progressive monitor the list over the best media will look like this:

1. 1080p is the best, which is standard blu-ray format. 1920 pixels across per frame, and 1080 pixels vertical.
2. 720p is the media below 1080p, with 720 pixels vertical and 1280 pixels horizontal.
3. 1080i is below 720p technically, because of two reasons; the quality does not actually exist, it is not there the whole time since it’s only showing half a frame at a time. Some 1080i got 60 frames per second, so then it contains as much data as the 1080p. But still the media is interlaced which creates a nasty look on it all when you look at it on a progressive monitor.

So, what should you choose?

If your screen is progressive, most people would choose progressive media if they could compare it to interlaced media there and then. If you have an old screen, its really not necessary with 1080i because most of the interlaced screen would not be able to show all the lines. Except if you have a really big interlaced monitor. So really, the choice is yours. And if you wonder if its really worth the extra money for a 1080p monitor, instead of 720p, a little note to yourself could be this; Screens less than 22 thumbs less difference, the higher in screen size, the bigger difference.