Monthly Archives: May 2010

Ebook Redux Part 1

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Thoughts of someone outside of the book industry on this most interesting of topics….

I understand that as of now – May 2010 – the eBook market is still quite new. However it does have some disturbing trends already; the main one being device specific formats, aka lock-in. I believe that if you buy an eBook for your Amazon Kindle that book cannot be read on your friend’s Nook reader device.

Note I say buy, the assumption being these are NOT the free, out-of-copyright texts such as Aesops Fables.

Hence you cannot lend them that eBook, nor can they buy it off you (assuming you can somehow sell 2nd hand eBooks, legally). I understand that some providers will allow you to lend ‘their’ (your?) eBook out to someone else, but they must have the same device as you. So again device lock-in.

This is Blu-ray versus HD-DVD all over again. Or, if you are older, VHS versus Beta. Where there’s no neutral standards, vested interests dive in and format wars erupt. The consumer is the loser.

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1080p versus 720p versus dear old analog TV

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So, how ‘good’ is the picture on a 1080p screen versus the older 720p and the even older, original analog Australian TV signal?

Some simple maths.

  • Original TV was 576 lines.  Rough estimate is it’s a 4:3 (4×3) picture ratio, so the width, in pixels (px), would be 576*4/3 which is 768 (see footnote)
  • 720p (720 rows of pixels) at 16:9 is 720*16/9 which is 1280 pixels wide, or 1280 columns.
  • 1080p is also 16:9, so 1920 pixels wide

Some more simple maths

Type Rows Col Rows x Col
(Total Pixels)
Analog 576 768 442,368
720p 720 1280 921,600
1080p 1080 1920 2,073,600

So, as a nice rule-of-thumb, each jump more than doubles the resolution – number of pixels – than the previous one.

Some quick comments, then a footnote:

  • There weren’t that many actual 720p TVs, at least here in Australia. They were 768 x 1366, very much the resolution of a PC screen. Nicely giving away the game that they were essentially big PC screens.   But the ‘double;’ rule is good enough here too (1,049,088 px total, that’ll do me as almost exactly 1/2 of the 1080p)
  • 1080p is sold as High Definition. But it’s barely 2 Megapixel (!).  If I tried to sell you a camera, in 2010, as being 2 MP, you’d probably laugh at me

Footnote: Due to technical reasons, to do with pixel shapes not being square, the equivalent digital resolution of our old TV is actually less than this, that is 576×720 pixels (414,720 px total). Makes the double rule slightly more obvious.