HD Ready
Many TV stores advertise 'HD Ready' TV's for sale. The phrase is a source of confusion for lots of consumers, as it means different things in different places. In Europe the European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Associations (EICTA) has an official standard that means that all TV's displaying the HD Ready logo meet the following requirements:
- They display 720 horizontal lines in widescreen format (i.e. 720p).
- The display device accepts HD input via Analogue YPbPr, DVI, or HDMI.
- The inputs accept the following minimum HD video formats:
- 1280x720 @ 50 and 60Hz progressive (720p)
- 1920x1080 @ 50 and 60Hz interlaced (1080i)
- The DVI or HDMI input supports HDCP content protection. This is to allow the future display of Blu-ray and HD DVD content, which will provide HD content only through HDCP compliant TV's.
The HD Ready 1080p standard expands on the above, and also means that a TV displaying the logo will not just accept 1080i and 1080p inputs, but is capable of displaying a 1080p signal (i.e. 1920x1080 progressive scan pixels at 24, 50, and 60 Hz).
To learn more about what the details above mean, see our display resolutions page.
Even TV's conforming to the EICTA standard can have significant limitations, which include:
- The TV may have an analog tuner, and therefore be unable to display a digital TV signal without the use of a digital set top box.
- HD Ready TV's may be incapable of displaying resolutions higher than 720p (e.g. 1080i, and 1080p). TV's displaying the HD Ready 1080p logo are not affected by this limitation.
The equivalent standard in Australia is the HD Tick logo.