"1280 by 1080i is what DirecTV calls 'HD', but its what I call HDlite"

You know, DVCProHD also calls 1280x1080i HD. I even was bored enough to do a comparison as to the difference it makes. Not that much really, the bitrates they broadcast at are going to be giving a bigger quality difference. http://www.vectorfrankenstein.com/?page_id=14

So this article is a month old at this point, but I thought I might clear some stuff up anyway. I'm an HD broadcast producer and always find it interesting what people consider HD and not HD.

For starts, what is this 640x480 on SD TV that is being listed? Broadcast SD is 720x486, SD never used square pixels for 16x9 or 4x3. HD is broadcast using non-square pixels as well, but it's also SHOT using non-square pixels. Two main formats for anything shot in HD would be DVCProHD and HDCam. DVCProHD is 1280x1080 in 4:2:2 for 1080i and 960x720 4:2:2 for 720P. HDCam is 1440x1080 in 3:1:1 for 1080i. So, neither will actually give a recorded format of 1920 pixels at all, and chroma will give you far less...chroma resolution would be 640x1080 for DVCProHD and 480x1080 in HDCam.

So yes, not all pixels are square, but also realize that not all resolutions contain full RGB888 resolution, any video broadcast/record format is in a YUV or similar colourspace that subsamples chroma far more than luma.

And to say that HD Lite is a crime is pretty ignorant, since most of the time your HDTV doesn't even have 1920x1080 resolution. Just because it is a 1080i HDTV doesn't mean it has a true effective resolution of 1080i. We were doing some broadcasting at E3 displaying on 42" monitors that were 1024x768 widescreens, no body would have guessed that these were technically "not HD".