Ok someone has to clue me in on what the hell this gibberish coming out of Microsoft Exec, Andre Vrignaud, means. Our buddies at Gamasutra are running a more concise story on it. From what I understand he is saying there is no difference between 1080i and 1080p for HD movie playback and games will all be 720p for cross platform reasons. The quote is, "1080p Meaningless this Generation".

Microsoft is notorious trying to changing the field of play when it does not suit them. FUD, or "fear, uncertainty and doubt", was first coined by Gene Amdahl to describe IBM's aggressive and somewhat shady marketing tactics. Fill the customers head with gobbelygook and they will not buy your competitors product. Mostly because they are too confused to buy anything. Microsoft in its various product wars has become a master of the art. Whether this little rant is some FUD is left to be seen. I for one am hopeful that 1080p is meaningless this generation. My HDTV can only display 480p and 1080i, making 720p and 1080p capabilities an expensive upgrade. Of course I do not know why Microsoft even cares. Sony is so far doing an excellent job of messing the playing field for themselves. Old habits die hard I guess.

Hmm, I'd say yeah it's probably somewhat FUD. 1080p will look better than 720p; it's also much more expensive and whether it's a noticable enough difference will be up to someones particular pickiness. Maybe it is overhyped, but 1080p is definitely not meaningless though.

"From what I understand he is saying there is no difference between 1080i and 1080p for HD movie playback"
Yeah, more or less true. Could depend on your particular setup though.

Most modern HD displays (Plasmas, LCD, DLP, etc.) display content progressively
True; Plasma, LCD, DLP can only display a progressive signal; CRT's can display interlaced or progressive.

"when you're watching a 1080"x" signal on a modern HD display, you're almost always watching a 1080p signal. The only difference is where the de-interlacing happens - but the displayed output is always 1080p."
Often not true; HDTV's that don't support 1080p (the vast majority of sets currently available) will not convert a 1080i signal to 1080p when watching movies; they will resample to what they can display, usually 1080i (CRT) or 720p (DLP, LCD, etc).

As to games, 99% of PS3 titles will natively render at 720p; the few that come out with 1080"x" support are either going to be simple classic arcade ports that don't need to render complex scenes (think the original Battlezone), or will give up a lot of in-game visual effects and simply won't look very good (hence the poor showing of Gran Turismo "HD" at this past E3).


I don't know, I can't see too many games abandoning 1080p for cross platform reasons; PC game developers seemed to be able to deal with the concept of multiple resolutions just fine, I think console developers will adapt. (Indeed they will have to if they want their game playable by the majority of players stuck at 480i). If Sony really is overhyping the PS3 as much as he thinks they are and the system really is that underpowered, then yeah that could be right. I wouldn't be too surprised though if some crafty programmers find ways to utilize 1080p well, we just may not see it in the first generation of games.

"My HDTV can only display 480p and 1080i"
Are you sure? That's really strange, as almost all (if not all) HDTV's can handle 720p. Do you have a CRT set, or some other technology? (DLP, LCD, plasma...)

When I am back at home I will look up the model number, but yeah it is an early model 32" Samsung HD TV CRT I bought in 2004. It supports 480i 480p and 1080i. 720p is noticable absent and if I enable that mode it comes out all blarberly. The bugger weighs an f'n ton. I think close to 250lbs. Plasmas were too expensive back then and I didn't want to wait.

Flipkin, I thought his reasons were pretty straight-forward. Think about it. The only difference between 1080i and 1080p, is that (if I understand it correctly, which I'm pretty sure I do) you're getting the same resolution (1280x1080 lines) except 1080i is interlaced (each "frame" is drawn in two passes of interlacing lines), where as progressive 1080p draws each frame at once.

I would say for anyone to take the "pepsi challenge" to notice a difference between 1080i and 1080p. At lower resolutions like 480i/480p, one could see small differences such as "jaggies". But 1080 is more than twice the resolution, therefore such visual artifacts will not likely be a factor.