HDTV Hype – 7 Marketing Terms and What They Really Mean

HDTV dealers have two important jobs: to bring you the best technology available, and to help you understand exactly what it is. One way to help you understand the new technology is to come up with a simple, descriptive name for it. But sometimes the names are too simple, sometimes they’re not.

quite descriptive, and sometimes downright misleading.

Here are seven common HDTV terms that can be misleading or unclear:

HD Ready

Ready for what? “HD-ready” means the same as “HD monitor”. It is an HDTV with no built-in tuner, so an external ATSC tuner or cable box will be needed to receive broadcasts. If you only intend to use your HDTV for gaming or watching DVDs, it might be better to save a few hundred dollars with an HD-ready TV.

Native 720p/1080i display

Most HDTV screens have 768 or 1080 rows of pixels, and some have 900. And all HDTVs have a

inherently progressive display, so the most common native resolutions are 768p, 900p, and 1080p. So when a manufacturer or retailer claims that an HDTV is “native 720p/1080i,” they usually mean that those are the highest resolutions it can handle, and the input is scaled and deinterlaced to fit a 768p display. However, some DLP HDTVs have a native 720p display.

HDTV antenna

There is no such thing as a dedicated HDTV antenna. Over-the-air HDTV broadcasts use the UHF spectrum, just like public access television. So any UHF antenna will work.

Full HD

This refers to a 1080p display with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and the ability to display a full 24, 30, or 60 frames per second. The term isn’t wrong, but it implies that 720p or 1080i content is somehow incomplete. Since almost all HD content these days is still 720p or 1080i, that would be quite

depressing for HDTV owners.

HD1080

Sets labeled “HD1080” have 1080 pixel rows and a progressive display, so they can properly be called 1080p. But they only have 1024 or 1280 pixels in each row, so they don’t display the full resolution of 1920 x 1080. A 1080i or 1080p signal would downsize in the horizontal direction, turning an image with many square pixels into one. with fewer rectangles. This does not alter the basic appearance of the video content, but it does cause problems when using the HDTV as a computer monitor.

Motionflow, Auto Motion Plus, Clear Frame, Clear Motion Drive

These are all trade names for the new 120Hz high frame rate display technology. HDTVs with this feature will generally display smoother motion because they can display 120 distinct images per second instead of the typical 60.

1080p Upconversion DVD Player

Many DVD players claim to convert content to 1080p, rather than 1080i. This is unnecessary as all HDTVs have progressive displays and there is no visible difference between content upconverted to 1080i and content downconverted to 1080p. The transfer from “i” to “p” is called deinterlacing, and the TV performs this task anyway. The only benefit would come from a low quality HDTV (with poor deinterlacer) and a high quality DVD player with good deinterlacer.