Home Theater AV Receiver question

They are different, but with mismatched components can appear the same. For instance, if our friend here had purchased a receiver which can do 1080i, but connected to a tv with a native resolution of 720, he's only going to get 720 out of the player. Even with upscaling technologies, the television would scale it back down to match its own native resolution.

The two technologies, 1080i and 720p, are in fact different, with interlaced sending the entire picture once every 30th of a sec, and progressive sending the entire picture twice every 30th of a sec. (That's why you hear progressive is "better", b/c it appears smoother at 2x the framerate). So 1080i would in fact be larger, and 720p would be smaller--but this is contingent upon the "native resolution" of the screen, or how many pixels are hard wired into the screen. Bottom line is its best to match your components up from the beginning. I tend to recommend 720p for 32" or less, and 1080p for anything larger, but I'm just a computer guy, not a home theater pro.

 

Big mistake up there, didn't mean to say 1080 is larger and 720 is smaller. Was picturing sizes of screens of clarity in my head... Meant to say 1080 is sharper, more packed with pixels, so you can go larger without losing clarity. 720 can't keep the same clarity unless it is a smaller screen. Hope this makes more sense.

 

1080 horizontal lines vs 720, vs the 480 of standard NTSC.

1080p is only supported on HDMI, component only runs to 1080i.
It is possible to run 1080p over component, but the equipment doesn't do it. This is primarily a DRM (copy protection) issue.

And yes... if I run the TV to the receiver through HDMI, and run the Wii into the receiver on it's composite cable, the receiver will "upscale" the 480p image to 1080p, but it will still be the same "sharpness"... like taking a downloaded JPG and viewing it at 225%.

 

Good info!