1) Europe has adopted both 720p, (1280 by 720p @ 50hz), and 1080i, (1920 by 1080i @ 50hz). Same as in the USA, just that they output at 60hz.
2) There aren't as of yet, any 1080p tvs in the Uk, and they're only just starting to appear in USA/JAP. Few tv sets have the full HD res for 1080i let alone be able to display 1080p, (most hdtvs have a res of 1366 by 768 so have to scale down 1080i to fit). The only tv capable of displaying native, (i.e. pixel for pixel), 1080i is Sharp's 45" lcd costing £4,300 online, originally retailing for £6,500. Sharp also has a 65" £14,000 1080i set with 1920/1080 res out in the Uk this Dec. However, in Japan it has 2 1080p sets one 37", the other 57" that will also be released this Dec. Sony has it's own 1080p set the 46" Qualia that is LED based, removing the need for a backlight.
Sony is claiming it's PS3 will output 1080p, and it's hoped by most people here that Blu-Ray will output movies at this res. Just as dvds store movies at 575p 24fps, Blu-Ray should hopefully store films at 1080p 24fps. The player outputtin a 1080p50 signal in the Uk by showing each frame twice, (admitedly meaning that films would run 2 frames per second quick as they do with dvds).
3) I see no reason why Blu-Ray will not be able to capture a 1080p broadcast. Still, HDTV will be protected by HDCP which is the latest digital copy protection. It may be that digital copies of HD films, tv etc. may not be possible. Sky's first HDTV box will have a HDD to store programmes on anyway.
4) 540p and 1080i are not the same. 540p describes a progressive picture made up of 540 lines, where the whole picture is displayed in one go starting with the first line, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on til the 540th. 1080i describes an interlaced picture with 1,080 lines where in this case all the odd lines are displayed in the first frame, (i.e. half of the picture), then all the even in the second frame. A progressive picture is therefore preffeable as it displays twice the number of whole frames. In the Uk, 50 compared to 25.
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