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HD (High Definition) vs ED (Enhanced Display)

Overview:

HDTV stands for High Definition Television and EDTV stands for Enhanced Display Television. Today, the TV market is flooded with many different technologies: Direct View, DLP, LCD, LCoS, and Plasma. You’ll notice a wide range in prices as well. Plasma’s will say that they are HD or ED. While you are viewing them you might notice that both look the same, but the ED is considerably cheaper than the HD version. On the surface, this really looks good; you can purchase an ED 50” Plasma for $1,000 to 2,000 cheaper than a HD 50” Plasma. Do not be mislead! ED is an inferior display format that will cause you to miss out on the wonderful world of HDTV channels and games. To put it simply, ED has almost half as much resolution as HD. ED looks great for DVD but can’t display at the resolutions that the HD Channels are. ED TV’s have 480p lines of resolution, while HD TV’s have 720p up to 1080p lines of resolution. Currently DVD’s display at 480p lines of resolution and HD channels at 720p lines of resolution. Just say No to ED.

What is HDTV?

HDTV, or High Definition Television, is a new set of standards for the quality of television. It is the only significant change that has been made to the television format since we switched from watching black and white to watching color television many, many years ago.

To start off, regular color television is scanned at 480i, which means there are 480 horizontal lines that are scanned in an Interlaced format. This means that at any given time, only half of the picture is on the screen at a time. One frame will only display on the odd lines (1, 3, 5); the next frame will only display on the even lines (2, 4, 6). This happens so fast that the human eye is tricked into thinking that it is only seeing one picture.

This is different from progressive scanning, which means each frame is displayed all at one time. Instead of interlacing the lines, each frame is displayed on every line. The end result is a much sharper image that looks much better. Although the difference in an interlaced signal and a progressive signal is the way the picture is scanned, it does have a big difference on the resulting image.

Different HDTV sets can display at 1080p, 1080i, or 720p horizontal lines. However HDTV channel programming signals are signals that are broadcast in a format of 720p or 1080i. 720p means that there are 720 horizontal lines that are scanned progressively and 1080i means there are 1080 horizontal lines that are scanned in an interlaced format. Although there is a big difference in the number of horizontal lines, the fact that 720p is progressive and 1080i interlaced means that the resulting pictures are similar. However 720p is a higher quality format than 1080i lines. 1080p horizontal progressive lines are the best, but no current HD channels are transmitted in that resolution. However recent advances in technology has seen the rise of media in 1080p.

What is EDTV?

EDTV is Enhanced Definition Television and represents the digital broadcasting format of 480p horizontal progressive lines of resolution. This is the standard DVDs are encoded in and the standard that FOX has adopted as their primary broadcast format. This format is also what Standard DTV – Digital Television is broadcasted at. Whereas DTV-HDTV is at 720p or 1080i. EDTV format is inferior to the HDTV formats.

What is SDTV?

SDTV stands for Standard Definition Television and represents the broadcast format of 480i. This is the television that we have come to know as regular old television. SDTV is considered the lowest resolution of all television formats, except for black and white. EDTV and HDTV are of higher quality.