As you know the Tv subscriptions ie: disk antennas and vendors like hathway for tv connections is compulsory all over,These are satellite Tv services.
There are chances of having a toggle somewhere on the set up box that allows you to switch between 720p and 1080i but you also noticed that most Tv’s advertise them as 1080p FULL HD which doesnt match either of those.
So the 1080p stands for PROGRESSIVE i am talking about progressive scan that is all of the lines in a single frame loads so that each frame contains a complete image that fills the screen.
By contrast the “i” stands for INTERLACED in which every other line of the image is displayed in one frame.
Interlaced signals are common not only for 1920×1080 Tv channels but they were also dominant back in the day of analog television.
Almost everyone was watching at 480i or 576i but why wont it be possible to get one whole image in one frame.
The reason is “Bandwidth” only so much data can be transffered over wireless or cables at onces.
Interlaced videos saves on bandwidth by only sending half of the compelete frame at once.
These allowed older Tv sets to refresh more frequently for smoother motion, As they could do 60half frames per second instead of 30 full frames.
But modern LCD flat panel Tv’s only support Progressive scanning so how do they work with interlaced 1080i signals provided by cables or satellite images.
Well the signal was called “Deinterlaced” signal and this was done by setupbox. You see the 2 halfs of a fully interlaced frame arent 2 halfs of the same image rather they are interlaced of 2 slightly different images so when you put them together they dont look perfect on low quality display this shows what called combing Tv uses processing tricks to help protect deinterlaced and blury images.
Many cables boxes arent choosed to do this job as they are either made by lowest bidder.
Its 2016 why do we need to sacrifice anything??
well there comes a cost for upgrading where everything is based on 1080p, with 1080i service we wont probably see any real 1080p anytime soon.
However the good news is computers have no issue with producing 1080p, From gaming to watching series on ‘Netflix’ in HD or even 4K, You wont have to worry about interlacing.
Just see to it that you need not have to give a lot of money to your satellite provider or Internet provider.