In a recent test, a half-dozen of my engineering colleagues and I couldn’t identify a high-definition (HD) image from a good standard-definition (DVD) picture on two identically sized TVs any more than 50 percent of the time. You’d have as much luck just flipping a coin. These guys aren’t average consumers, either. They’re hard-bitten video engineers trained to spot video processing artifacts at 10 paces. HDTV can be as much as six times sharper than regular-definition television signals, and we’ve all seen the improvement this offers, so how come we couldn’t see it in this test? And more importantly, will you see it on any of the newest HD displays entering the market?

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What the heck is 1080p anyway?
One of this year’s hottest buzzwords has been “1080p” (read: ten-eighty-pee). It refers to the vertical screen resolution of many high-definition televisions that are hitting the market this year. General industry consensus is that a high-definition TV is one that has a vertical resolution of 720p or greater, and this has been the case with any number of plasma, LCD, and digital-projection TVs that have been introduced so far. Generally speaking, a 1080p television is the flagship of the line. And as the top dog they usually command a stiff premium.

So how can a charlatan (that’s me) fool innocent, hard-working HDTV development engineers into believing they are looking at SD instead of HD? Easy, I stack the deck. Usually, there are two things that can go wrong with a 1080p system. First, the content may not be real HD. Second, the viewing environment may not be designed to handle the display. The unfortunate thing is that many well-meaning HD enthusiasts can make these mistakes.