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Mark asked: “I’m on Dish and when I hit the “info” button on my TV it says that every channel is in 1080i, even the SD channels say 1080i. And we had a 4k preview on one channel and it still said 1080i. Are they upscaling the SD to 1080i or is my TV misreading the signal? When I go over the air, the channels are a mix of 1080i, 720p and 480.”
Dish is probably sending out every channel in 1080i resolution, and they’re probably doing so your TV doesn’t misread the signal.
1080i uses about half the bandwidth as 1080p, and about the same as 720p, and broadcasting every channel in the same resolution means that customers don’t have to deal with TVs that don’t know to auto-detect and change the aspect ratio or resolution every time they change the channel.
1080i uses about half the bandwidth as 1080p
The 4K preview channel should really be broadcast in 4K, though. Otherwise, what’s the point?
We suspect you may be seeing 1080i on that one because your TV can’t display 4K content, otherwise it’d be a little like having a color TV preview channel that’s broadcast in black and white.
Remember that cable and satellite companies RE-broadcast their TV content, they don’t broadcast it. So they can easily change elements about the resolution and/or picture format before sending it along.
That would account for the difference you see between over the air and what you receive off the satellite.