EDTV vs HDTV

Is EDTV vs HDTV getting you crazy? I'm not surprised. Who can keep track of all the digital TV acronyms floating around? It's only going to get more complex. Many people have little knowledge of these acronyms.

I'll breakdown the technical jargon to make EDTV vs. HDTV as straightforward as we can. There are several EDTV sets available. You can decide whether you can live with any missing features.

Standard TV has 525 lines of interlaced video. Interlacing means that the video (which is split into 2 fields) gets shown alternately. Of the 525 lines only 480 have a video signal. That's the 480i you see floating around in all the EDTV vs HDTV specifications.

While standard TV has worked well for years TV sets have gotten bigger and the deficiencies of SD (standard TV) have become magnified.

There's no question that in EDTV vs HDTV the HDTV (for now) is the ultimate in PQ (picture quality). HDTV stands for High Definition TV. EDTV is the 2nd best PQ that we have. EDTV stands for Enhanced Definition TV.

EDTV has the same 480 lines as SD, but they are progressive scan. SD uses 480i (interlaced) and EDTV uses 480p (progressive scan). DVD players uses progressive scan to display PQ and EDTVs do a great job of displaying them.

Progressive scanning means that instead of splitting the signal into two fields and showing half the lines at a time, all 480 lines of video are shown at once. That's one of the reasons why DVDs look so sharp on your SD TV.

So the big question is --which format should you go with-- EDTV vs HDTV??? Well the truth is it depends upon 3 things......

1)your budget 2)your seating distance 3)your viewing habits

Right now there is very limited TV content available in HDTV format. So you won't get the full viewing impact of HDTV. Another factor weighing in against HDTV is how much DVD viewing do you do?

A controversial point disputed by many HDTV owners is that some TV experts believe that shows watched from a DVD player on EDTV displays better.

Why? Because there's no scaling to be done by the EDTV. An HDTV needs to re-process the signal before it can display it to you. As said before a DVD player's natural resolution matches that of the EDTV format.

Perhaps the most important factor is the viewing distance. How good the PQ is has a lot to do with seating distance. It's a fact that if you sit 8 feet or more from you TV you won't be able to tell the difference in sharpness between a 42-inch EDTV and a 42-inch HDTV side by side.

If you get close to an EDTV say 6 feet or less you start to see the screen door effect (SDE). That's when you start to see the actual pixels on the EDTV.

If you watch sports, the Discovery channel and other channels that will eventually swing into HD programming and you sit close to you TV then HDTV may be for you.

At this point in time EDTV vs HDTV depends mostly upon your viewing distance. If you have the bucks or you sit close to you TV than the EDTV vs HDTV choice is HDTV.

I have both an EDTV and HDTV. The truth is that in most cases after 6 feet or more I can't see the difference between the two. Panasonic EDTV's are the way to go in this tecnology.

About the Author

movieman90 is the webmaster of www.the-hdtv-review.com. A site that offers current, unbiased and valuable info on the latest Hi Def technology.