Progressive scanning for Blu-Ray overrated?

[filmshooter]

Ive been reading up about this new 'war of video formats' involving Blu-Ray and HD DVD and the merits of each. Like a lot of people, this reminds me so much of the clash between VHS and Betamax in the 80s. Regardless, it seems that in general, Blu-Ray seems to have more going for it than HD DVD - for example significantly larger storage capacity and currently more film studios supporting it. The only real disadvantage I can see with Blu-Ray is the increased cost compared to HD DVD as many are predicting.

Although both of these High Definition formats can resolve 1080 lines of horizontal resolution, I was under the impression that Blu-Ray would have the edge in image quality because it uses progressive scanning as opposed to the interlaced scanning of HD DVD. Afterall, I would think that presenting all the horizontal lines simultaneously would give a 50% increase in visual information every fraction of a second compared to simply showing half the lines every 30th or a 60th of a second.....well that's what i initially thought with regards to image quality.

However, I have read a number of comments on the internet that seems to suggest that the progressive scanning used by the Blu-Ray format gives no increase in picture quality. Indeed, there was one article online written by someone who repeatedly changed the scanning mode on his Blu-Ray player from progressive to interlaced while watching a movie and according to him, there was no noticeable change in image quality. So is progressive scanning not what it's cracked up to be?

[yoda313]

I thought hddvd outputted in 1080p as well???

[Baldrick]

Yep, both bluray and hddvd supports 1080p. Most new hddvd and blureay movie releases are in 1080p.

[filmshooter]

Most websites seem to state that Blu-Ray uses progressive while HD DVD uses interlaced. Though I have no idea how old most of the text on these websites are. Obviously, both of these HD disc formats are evolving as we speak. It may well be that some company has already released a HD DVD player that utlizes progressive video.

[filmshooter]

I'm also intrigued by the High Definition television sets that are highly recommended to get the full benefit out of Blu-Ray and HD DVD formats. Obviously, a 1080p HD tv would be out of most peoples' budgets, including mine. That leaves the 1080i and 720p HD tvs. I have heard according to one source that a 720p tv will have higher image quality than a 1080i tv. Is the reasoning behind this based on the idea that with a 1080i display, you would only receive half of those lines every fraction of a second - (540 lines) compared to the 720 lines of a 720p display?