When purchasing a Television, the terminology is sometimes confusing, therefore I have put together a basic explanation to help you understand what high definition TV is about.
The different types of High Definition TV can be very confusing for the consumer, but, I would first say, these days all TV’s that you buy at the moment are HD Ready, in fact they’re all ready to watch high definition channels.
Let’s start with what is Standard definition TV?
Standard Definition of TV is the resolution of the screen, which is basically measured by the number of pixels the screen has. A pixel is a ‘picture element, which is the smallest part of a picture displayed on the screen.
The higher the definition of a television, the higher the resolution and the higher the number of pixels . That, all in all, displays crisper, clearer and more vibrant images, improving your viewing experience. The higher the number of pixels, the greater the picture detail will be.
Now, what is high definition TV (also known HDTV)
High definition television provides a resolution that is so much higher than the resolution of standard definition TV’s.
In high definition TV today, there are three standards that define high definition, they are: 1080i, 1080p and 720p.
The number represents the number of horizontal lines of pixels scanned by the Television and the letter indicates the way the lines are scanned: “i” indicates the scan is interlaced, the “p” signifies progressive scan. With regard to the letter, we’ll leave that for the moment as we could be getting a bit too technical 
Below is the High Definition TV Defined Standards, number of pixels both vertical and horizontal and total number of pixels
| HD Standard | vertical lines of pixels |
| horizontal lines of pixels |
| Total Screen Pixels | |
| 720p | 1280 | x | 720 | = | 921,600 | 0.9 Mega Pixels |
| 1080i / 1080p | 1920 | x | 1080 | = | 2,073,600 | 2.1 Mega Pixels |
As you can see from the above, the 1080i or 1080p has the most amount of pixels, which provides more colour and contrast, therefore provides the highest resolution (picture detail) for the highest viewing experience.
What is the High Definition TV takeaway:
New Televisions sold today are now 1080p Full HD, which is the highest resolution available and provide the ultimate detail and viewing experience and we would recommend that you look out for this during your purchase.
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