Rymix @ Jun 9th 2006 7:26AM

I know this has been discussed to death already, but it really is about time that the industry made all this stuff easier to understand.

Just the other day my dad was asking me if he should get "a digital TV for when they turn off analogue and we all have to go HD". (I'm in the UK, and analogue signals will cease to be broadcast in about 5 years' time.)

My dad doesn't know much about this sort of technology, but he's clearly read or heard something, and got himself into a complete mess.

My father-in-law, who is slightly more technically-minded, was recently quizzing me about "true HD vs 720p, because 720p is crap, right?" Again, he has some idea of the reality, but not enough to make an informed decision.

And now manufacturers are touting their TVs as "1080p-compatible", but actually underdelivering on the expectation born of their promise. Not many people understand upscaling, or, now, downscaling. You can bet that the shop assistant won't know any more than the customer, and we'll end up with lots of people buying TVs they will never full utilise, and lots of people buying sets that they think are better than they actually are.

I think we need some sort of universal scale or star rating system for picture input and output capabilities. Imagine something along the lines of:

Two columns; one for input signal and one for output. From top to bottom are the ratings: 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 720i, 480p. And somewhere beside this graph is the TV's native resolution, for absolute clarity.

Each TV would have ticks in the relevant boxes, making it far easier for Joe Public to understand at least the basic input and output capabilities they are sbout to shell-out their hard-earned cash for.

I know this idea would need a lot of work to make it accurate and universally acceptable, but who do you lot reckon?