The Plasma TV Blog

EDTV is short hand for enhanced definition television. The term was first applied to televisions that utilized 480p60 display resolution. The 480 referred to the vertical lines of resolution, and the letter p referred to progressive scanning. The 60 referred to 60 hertz, or a 60 cycle a second refresh rate. EDTV was basically an advertising term to counter HDTV. HDTV, or High Definition Television, was being used to describe units offering 1080I display resolution. This large increase in vertical lines of resolution was producing remarkable picture clarity, but it was still using interlacing scanning as indicated by the letter I. Interlacing scanning was presenting the image with an empty line between each line of resolution. When the next image was created, the empty lines now held the image, and the lines that had held the image became empty.

With the advent of progressive scanning, the empty lines were eliminated, and this meant that the 480p resolution when operating at a speed of 60 hertz was producing a picture comparable to the 1080I. With the popularity of the term HDTV, EDTV began to be used to denote the new technology. At the time this was done, most viewers were still finding HDTV with its 1080 lines of resolution to be a slight bit superior. This was especially true in viewing of DVDs and HD broadcast. With the introduction of 1080p display resolution, the larger number of lines coupled with the progressive scan technology was able to surpass the normal HDTV image that still used interlacing scanning. This new picture was really enhanced, but with the advent of terms such as plasma TV, DLP, and LCD TV, the use of EDTV has decreased, although this new generation of televisions were certainly worthy of the title.