1080i vs. 480p HDTV smackdown on Lord of the Rings
by Richard Lawler 
posted Feb 27th 2006 at 3:19PM
If you have a high definition TV this really isn't news for you, but for your friends and family who don't yet understand the difference this may be interesting. This guy took captures from Fellowship of the Ring, both on DVD and from a high definition broadcast to compare the two. On the first page is a mouseover comparison of the screens at DVD resolution, but if you click them, you can see the difference when the DVD is upscaled to match the high definition resolution.
There's a lot to be said for additional visual information, but in the end, do you think this provides a powerful argument for upgrading to HDTVs (and high definition DVD's) or is 480p just fine for you?
Thanks for the tip Tyler! [Also via digg]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
pete @ Feb 27th 2006 3:49PM
quick question: why did the author choose to resample the DVD pic from 480P to 1080i? Won't doing this cause a possibility of additional distortion in the pic?
ventivent @ Feb 27th 2006 3:53PM
Very cool. It's like putting on contacts or glasses. The 1080i image is so crisp, even scaled down. Nice work. I love HDTV.
TV @ Feb 27th 2006 4:40PM
480p isn't "fine" for me, but this won't make me go out and buy (or shall I say wait) for all of the "editions" of this/any particular movie to come out. I'll be content watchin' my DVDs until a movie hits the airwaves and I can snag it with my TIVO for export.
Side note: With the addition of space on BR/HDVD, you'd think that we should only see ONE version of the movie and not:
The Movie
The Movie : Special Edition
The Movie : Collector's Edition
The Movie : Director's Cut Edition
The Movie : Extended Remix Edition
To do that with 3 seperate movies and start all over again as a box set!
Buck Q. Fitch @ Feb 28th 2006 10:40AM
This is the best explanation of hi-def I've ever seen. I sent it to all my friends, but then I ended up having to explain what to look for in a TV set and the difference between 720p and 1080i. Oh, and I had to deal with crap like "Hey, the HD is darker." Too bad there's no way to adjust brightness and contrast on TV's. Wait a second...
nickpicker @ Feb 28th 2006 2:59PM
The "smackdown" is highly misleading. Those captures look like they were taken from the NTSC Standard Edition. The PAL Extended Editions look much better, while admittedly still being inferior to the HD version.
Also, there's no production quality HD release either for Blu-ray or HD-DVD. The first batch of HD disc releases will most likely use MPEG-2. The broadcast captures from the article are H.264, i.e. superior to common MPEG-2 encodings.
Plus, no commercial TV set mere mortals could afford will be able to downscale in Photoshop quality. Unless people are willing to buy 4000+ Plasma/LCD sets running at 1920x1080 native resolution the actual reproduction will not look nearly as good as you indicated.
_leech_ @ Feb 28th 2006 3:33PM
Very impressive. More people need to see stuff like this (actual visual comparisons), i don't think words like "HDTV" and "1080p" mean much to the general consumer.
Lord @ Apr 10th 2006 4:18AM
I think that's the argument. I just had no possibility to compare.
Jason @ May 27th 2006 5:44PM
"why did the author choose to resample the DVD pic from 480P to 1080i?"
He didn't. The DVD shots are at 852x480 and the 1080i shots are actually sampled down to 852x480. That's why it's cool; because the 1080i footage is sharper even when it's in DVD resolution.