What output/input will support 1080p?

[observer]

Toshiba has said they wont support higher then 1080i for HD-DVD because of the limitations of HDMI, so what is Blu-ray using to transmit 1080p, and are there TV's out there right now with these kinds of inputs?

[observer]

hmmm, now I'm confused, Toshiba claimed HDMI couldn't support higher then 1080i, which was always the reason I shyed away from HD-DVD, but the article below claims that HDMI can support 1080p, albeit only on a few TVs so far, whos right?

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11246_7-6388574-1.html

[Shadowself]

Originally Posted by observer

hmmm, now I'm confused, Toshiba claimed HDMI couldn't support higher then 1080i, which was always the reason I shyed away from HD-DVD, but the article below claims that HDMI can support 1080p, albeit only on a few TVs so far, whos right?

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11246_7-6388574-1.html

The original version of HDMI would not support 1080p/60. It just didn't support the bandwidth required. The current, updated version does.

For the record, 1080i/30 requires about 1.3 Gbps to transmit uncompressed (which is what you will want when going from a player to a monitor). The earlier HDMI standard (IIRC, but this might be a bit off) was at 2.5 Gbps. Plenty for 1080i/30.

Now looking at 1080p/60 ... it has approximately twice the data rate of 1080i/30 or approximately 2.6 Gbps. (I say appriximately because the video data is double but the sound data is the same. However, the sound data rate is a small fraction of the overall data rate.) The 2.6 Gbps signal clearly won't fit through a 2.5 Gbps transmission medium such as the original version of HDMI.

Upgrade to the rescue...
Within the past year or so the HDMI standard was upgraded to be approximately 5.0 Gbps. Newest HDMI chipsets are shipping with this new version of the HDMI standard implementented in them. AFAIK, the new chips are backwards compatible with the old ones. (Just like USB the slowest chipset in the chain rules and everyone in the chain operates at the speed of the slowest chipset in the chain.)

Thus if a player has the new chipsets which support 5.0 Gbps (such as a PS3 or BD player) and the monitor/TV has the new chipsets (probably most of them [but not all of them] shipping by summer 2006) then the system can transmit true 1080p from the player to the monitor.

Now... what the monitor/TV does with that signal once it gets inside the monitor/TV is a whole other can of worms. Virtually no monitor/TV shipping today handles 1080p/60 properly -- even most of those that claim to both accept 1080p/60 input AND display at 1080p/60 don't handle the signal through 100% of the internal chain as a true 1080p/60. Almost always the signal gets mangled into other formats within the monitor/TV. Will this get corrected within the next year? I certainly hope so.

[observer]

So what can we look for to know the difference?

Will devices list HDMI2.0 or something?

[Knight-Errant]

I look forward to lots of helpful advice from this forum when the time comes

[AV_Integrated]

I believe it is HDMI 1.1 and take a look at the new HP DLP rear projection 1080p unit.