I have Sony Bravia 40" LCD TV. I thought I would get this model as it had Full HD at 1080p, thinking it would future-proof me ........ a bit.
However, what I have found is that most media devices, recorders and settop boxes upscale or run up to 1080i.
Wouldn't it be better for devices to go up to Full HD at 1080p?
Yes but at the moment the chip prices for the required hardware are quite high and they are being employed only in devices where the retail price is higher i.e. Blue Ray Players.
To me upscaling implies that a devices will take a standard image and does its best to upscale it to 720p or 1080i. This indicates to me that the image would be inferior to a full 1080i or 1080p image. So device running at 1080i or 1080p should be better than one that needs to upscale? Is this true? I'm not sure. The market seems to indicate that it is not the case, going by the number of devices out there with upscaling.
That depends on the bitrate, at a low bit rate the oposite will be true.
My upstanding is that the full 1080i and 1080p image is the same and the difference is how they are projected on to the screen in line order. Is this correct?
1080i is interlaced so only half the lines are sent per farme compared with 1080p.
So when looking for a recording and playing devices should I be looking for 1080p devices only or would a 1080i device be just as good?
You can look for 1080p devices but you wont find any.
In the future there will probably be Freeview HD boxes which output 1080p generated by multi field motion adaptive de-interlacing (very cool), that will improve the picture quality but is expensive technology right now.
