It’s amazing how many self-proclaimed “HD Experts” there are who don’t have the slightest clue as to what high definition is. Pretty much all you see them say is “1080p! 1080p!” while they point proudly to wide-screen Sony’s and Toshiba’s television sets. So, in order to spare you from this highly annoying type of person, allow me to explain to you what HD really is.

“High” has to do with amount, and “Defining” has to do with resolution. So, translated, high definition means high resolution. That’s a bit better of an explanation, but resolution still is a bit unclear. But that’s fine, because resolution is an easy concept to understand. It has to do with the number of pixels that make up the screen. The more pixels your screen has, the more detail it can show in images, and therefore the higher its resolution. And as we just discussed, a high resolution means high definition.

All this 480p, 720i, and 1080P talk is about different resolution standards in the industry. Kind of like different sized shirts: small, medium, and large. The number represents the number of pixels that line up against to each other horizontally across the screen (or the “X-axis”). The higher the number, the more pixels, which means a higher resolution, and therefore higher definition.