interlaced video

Almost all current HD broadcasts are interlaced too ("1080i"), and will be for some time :-(.
AFAIU the reason they do this is that for most shows it's actually considered superior to the
equivalent progressive format ("720p"), because at a given bit-rate, interlaced video gives
better spatial resolution at the cost of some temporal resolution.  Maybe.  Something like
that.

Looking forward to ubiquitous 1080p, myself.  (At last, something to use those terabyte drives
for!)