Defined

High Definition Television (HDTV), is a set of screen resolutions for television sets defined by the Advanced Television Systems Committee, commonly used on Digital Television. It provides a superior quality picture to regular analog television as well as progressive scan output, by providing either 720 progressive scan lines, or 1080 scan lines (interlaced or progressive). The screen aspect is always 16:9.

What is HDTV?

A broadcast in HDTV must either:

• Have 720 progressive scan lines
• Have 1080 interlaced scan lines
• Have 1080 progressive scan lines

An HDTV compatible display must support all these options.

How does it look?

Since HDTV uses at least 50% more scan lines, and a 16:9 aspet ratio, picture quality is much better, with increased sharpness, clarity, and detail.

In Practice

HDTV is available:

• over Digital Television, over the air, cable, and satellite.
• in a few special DVD players, playing special High-Definition DVDs.
• on Microsoft's XBox on only a handful of games.

HDTVs ar offered as (in order of increasing price/quality) DLP (front- or rear-projection), Plasma, or LCD displays.