7. SD Is Good But HD Is Better!

A little memory jogger on the different video resolution standards. In Europe, the formats used are PAL and SECAM. They're similar and it's only differences in the way color information is coded that separate them. Image resolution is 576 lines by 720 columns. This is the same resolution used for DVD movies. Also note that on today's TVs the image is interlaced. That is to say, two half-frames, of 288 lines each, are displayed one after the other. Due to our eyes' persistence of vision, we only see a single image of 576 lines. However, the image "twinkles". In the USA and Japan, primarily, the standard used is NTSC. The resolution is slightly different (720 x 480) but the principal's the same.

Standard definition (720x576)

High definition (1280x720)

Standard definition - Zoom

High definition - Zoom