It was the European Broadcasting Union EBU that did tests and recommended 720p for best quality.

Judging by file sizes of my recordings BBC One HD uses less bandwith than SF SD.

And the cameras SF is using have been retrofitted to even get 720p out them as they were built for 1080i.

The add detail to everything & crush blacks as they can't light. This actually reduces resoloution as well, so I really don't think it matters very much.
Cinema Commercials have been SD for several years, I don't think many people noticed.

I want BBC One HD :+

I find 1080i far better than 720p but it may very much depend on the TV set spitting out the pictures. Some how I find the contrast better at 1080i than at 720p (both tried on my Cabelcom HD box and Sky HD) on two different TV sets.

This said, I take it that the compression and bit rate used will also alter the PQ as I remember some time back that auntie B started to play around with the bit rate over on Astra 2D for BBC HD which changed the PQ considerably... They firstly didn't admit to it, but came around to their senses again...

PS. Is it just me, or is the over freckled model used for the Suisse HD intermissions the wierdest choice ever???

It's been on freesat since it started...

The only time I could compare picture quality was when Manchester United played Basel. It was on ITV HD and Suisse HD at the same time. The difference was minimal and might have been because of Cablecom and Freesat and not 1080i or 720p.

I think the grass blades were clearer on ITV, but don't hold me to it...

Great news, thanks for sharing.

Never mind the blades of grass - you could make out the tears in the eyes of every single United fan...

In theory 720p50 should be better for fast paced, live action scenes such as soccer, formula one racing, downhill skiing etc.

In praxis, even the Suisse TV shots the Lauberhorn downhill race in 1080i50. After that they will convert it to 720p50 for there own transmission only.

My request to the tv stations: Transmit the signal in its source format, do not do any fancy processing, scaling, or converting, just leave it as it is. Most modern TV sets can do it better, nicer, and most importantly just the way the viewer wants to have it. This also includes recordings done in the American and the Movie formats 720p60/1080i60 and 1080p24 respectively. Watching the Salt Lake 2010 skiing events converted from 1080i60 to 720p50 on HD Suisse was horrible and headache inducing.

Switching the transmission format is the norm in the US. For ex. the main program is transmitted in 1080i60 then during the commercial break some advertisements are transmitted as bad as 480i60.

To be honest the guy said he moved to glass fiber, but didn't show much improvement. I don't think bandwidth capacity on the line is really the quality issue, how the operator handle's the stream, encoding, transcoding etc.. and the box at home plays apart too.

At least we see a few good channels go HD but thats just picture, my question is are we going to start seeing premium content streamed with DTS / Dolby 5.1, in 4 languages and subtitles options. All of these are possible on digital TV, but we've get to see Broadcasters really push this possibility