The broadcast industry is in the process of converting from the existing PAL/NTSC formats, the standards upon which video imaging systems are based, to high-definition television (HDTV).  There are currently two HDTV formats, but only one will be adopted on a global basis.

The most popular HDTV format is 1080i, or 1080 lines interlaced, which produces images by painting the odd lines first, then the even lines in a second pass. An alternative HDTV format is 720-lines progressive scan, or 720p; which has fewer lines of resolution, but paints all lines in one pass.

720p is predominantly used for video containing fast moving content where image jitter is less likely to occur when images are produced in one sweep. 1080i image reproduction is extremely sharp, highly detailed and exhibits less pixelation, even at high magnification, than the 720p HDTV format. As images of the highest quality are essential for endoscopy, 1080i has been adopted by Olympus for all medical imaging platforms

Conventional TV Image	HDTV Image