Starting this thread, i'm just after reading an article that was submited on Pachter foreseeing PS3 price cuts. The article was about that neither HD DVD nor blue ray are actually selling  in a rate that would make people say wow.

My brother works at a tv station in Poland, which offers HD signals and channels. When i ask him about whether i should go for blue ray or Hd dvd, plus what tv i should buy, he tells me to let off and wait another 3-4 years. His reasoning is that right now, there is no standard as far as hd signals go. Furthermore, being the technology whizz at the station, he tells me that currently there's work being made on a better HD signal that would truly could be called full HD.

 What are your thoughts on this....fickle information that i have presented. I know that my brother isn't exactly world wide famous for his view on such matters but.. when you think about it we already have two hd signals 720p and 1080p, who says that we won't be surprised in the near future with a even better signal?

True HD is 1080p

 there is no real true HD as true HD at the moment is 5k+ resolution. HD will become a moving standard meaning the resolutions will be pushed higher every 2 or so years. But HD will get it's biggest foot hold in 2009. 

I always thought true High Definition was QSXGA... you know, 2560x2048.

And no, HD won't become standard in at least 5 years. That's on first world countries like yours... on third world's like mine, that is gonna be 20 years heh.

HD has been the standard in Japan for awhile... I know they had HD signals startting for the 70's :O

Who says true HD is 1080p. What about the higher resolutions that are already being discussed?

I say that from this point on there is a moving target of what is HD at its best. IMO if you want an HD set, just buy one. They are fairly cheep now, and you can get one that displays all resolutions pretty easy. Then in another 5-6 years when you are probably ready to buy a new set you can get the latest and greatest and 1500p or whatever. By then the groups who make this stuff up will probably stop as our eyes can't really tell much of a difference, if any, at that point.

It's hard to say ...

Over the past 6 years we have seen very unusual buying habits from people because of a combination of record low interest rates, record high housing prices, easy to access credit and the spread of home equity loans. Essentially, people tapped into their home equity (typically a non-liquid asset) to increase their spending faster than their income was increasing. Essentially, we have been in a period where people have lived above their means.

Personally, I expect that we are currently seeing the begining of a correction although I'm uncertain what the form of the correction will be; it could be inflationary where the cost of everything (except assets) raises at a rate faster than your income, or deflationary where people lose money and the value of assets drops, and it could be a quick and painful correction or a long term soft landing. As a result people are going to be far less focused on buying gadgets to "keep up with the Jones'" and far more likely to be conserned with "Making end's meat".

Basically, I expect the rate of HDTV adoption to slow to the rate of people replacing their existing TVs which will result in HDTV becomming the "Standard" in 2011 or later.

Full HD = 1080P
TrueHD = Dolby's next generation lossless technology

As for which HD resolution will likely become the next standard, I'd bet on 720P since it's the resolution that pretty much all current HD tvs can display.

There is an insane amount of misinformation in this thread.

The bottom line is that you can get good 720p/1080i feeds right now. The HD broadcast spec is restricted such that anything above 1080i would be too heavily compressed and this spec is unchangeable without breaking all existing ATSC tuners. This standard will be more adopted as time goes on and for home use, it doesn't make sense to look to higher resolutions yet. Cable companies are currently in a tight bandwidth crunch and satellite companies also have limited amounts of bandwidth to work with. More efficient compression algorithms may allow for higher resolution video,of course, but people have to be able to see the difference and want it.

There is always work being done toward the next new thing, so you may hear rumblings here or there about new, higher resolution standards to display the current HD spec. This isn't likely to happen anytime soon because it would increase the cost of everything -- from hardware to subscriptions and there are a slew of other barriers (manufacturing would have to shift, cameras for live TV would become significantly more expensive, etc).

There is also the issue of need -- if the consumer can't tell the difference on a 50" screen, why should the consumer want a higher resolution? Right now, depending on viewing distance it can be very difficult to discern between a 1080p and 720p source on a set that can scale to both resolutions well (or change resolutions in the case of CRT) on even 50" screens. I have a nice 50" 1080p screen, and 720p stuff still looks phenomenal.

If the US sticks to its "analog broadcasts to be disabled by 2009" then all broadcast TV stations will broadcast in both HD and DTV at that time. This doesn't mean the source will be HD -- but, as always, the costs of recording in HD are decreasing over time. Right now, a lot of shows are already in HD if they can afford it.

As far as video games are concerned, I can't imagine next generation games not rendered in 1080p. Progressive scan rendering makes sense for games and memories and fill rates should be large enough so that the difference between 720p and 1080p is no longer an issue.

Actually, 1080i is accepted by more sets than 720p.  There are tons of sets that can do 1080i but not 720p, but most 720p sets can take a 1080i signal and downconvert to 720p with no problems.  That's why satellite companies (and cable companies) like to focus on 1080i as their signal standard. 

if your into gadgets save your money for a sale.

but

if you really can't wait i'd say get a 720p lcd for bedroom or a 1080p 120hz lcd/plasma/dlp for living room