Understanding of Interlaced and Progressive Scanning on HD TVs

There have been many innovations in the TV industry over the years. From the first generation of TVs to thin， wider HDTV displays today, the industry has evolved and become more advanced. Today, HDTVs provide superior viewing experiences to audiences around the world and the incorporation certain technologies makes this possible. The way that HDTV televisions display content is determined by one of two major technologies, namely interlaced image scanning or progressive image scanning.

Interlaced image scanning has a long history with TV production. It was first used on the analog platform and on a number of SD (standard-definition) TVs. It had a number of benefits such as removing the flickering effect that made video and images hard to view. Interlaced scanning uses separate odd and even lines of images to stitch an image to together. The odd lines are drawn separately on the TV while the even lines are also drawn separately. This creates the stitched like effect. Progressive image scanning first came to light in the early 1990s and went mainstream with the DVD player because it could store and playback content in excellent quality. With progressive image scanning, the image lines are drawn sequentially to create a complete picture, similar to a paint brush effect.

There were a number of reasons why progressive scanning was used for the DVD player platform. Since most cinema and film production companies use the 24p (24 frames progressively per second) standard for recording and making movies, the technology was able to reproduce content without any deinterlacing or flickering of original content. This is not to say that progressive scanning is always better than interlaced scanning. For example, on most broadcast stations today, interlaced scanning is still being used for transmitted images in 1080i at a speed of 60 frames per second, which is the equivalent of 1080p at 30 frames per second.

This means that interlaced scanning uses less bandwidth to broadcast and is better suited for fast paced recording and broadcasting. Progressive scanning is able to display and upscale for stored and digital media better because of its ability to reproduce the content correctly.