You've probably seen the labels a thousand times. One has an "i" and the other has a "p." They both say 1080. If you’re standing in the middle of a Best Buy or scrolling through your TV settings, it’s easy to assume they’re basically the same thing. But honestly? They aren't.
One is a relic of the tube TV era that’s still hanging on for dear life. The other is the bedrock of modern streaming. If you choose the wrong one for your setup, you might end up with weird jagged lines every time a football player runs across the screen.
Let’s talk about why 1080p is almost always the winner, but also why 1080i is still haunting your cable box in 2026.
The "i" stands for Interlaced (and it’s kind of a trick)
Back when TV networks were trying to figure out how to squeeze high-definition signals through skinny airwaves, they ran into a bandwidth problem. Sending a full 1080-line image 60 times a second was too much data.
So, they cheated.
They invented 1080i, which stands for Interlaced. Instead of sending the whole picture at once, 1080i sends half the picture at a time. First, it sends the odd-numbered lines (1, 3, 5, etc.). A fraction of a second later, it sends the even-numbered lines (2, 4, 6, etc.).
Your brain is fast, but it’s not that fast. It stitches these two "fields" together so quickly that you think you’re seeing a solid image. On an old CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitor, this worked beautifully because the phosphors on the screen stayed lit just long enough for the next set of lines to arrive.
But on your modern OLED or LCD? Not so much. Modern screens are naturally "progressive." They want to show the whole frame at once. When you feed them a 1080i signal, the TV has to do a bunch of math—called deinterlacing—to guess what the missing lines should look like. If the action is slow, like a news anchor sitting at a desk, you’ll never notice. If you’re watching a Formula 1 car blast past the camera, you might see "combing" or "teeth" on the edges of the car. It's subtle, but once you see it, you can't unsee it.
1080p: The Progressive Gold Standard
The "p" in 1080p stands for Progressive Scan. This is the one you actually want.
Every single line of the image—all 1,080 of them—is drawn in order, from top to bottom, in one single pass. It’s a complete picture. No flickering, no stitching fields together, and no "guessing" from your TV’s processor.
1080p is basically the "Full HD" you were promised in the mid-2000s. Because the frames are whole, motion looks significantly smoother. This is why Blu-rays, Netflix, and your PS5 or Xbox Series X use 1080p as the baseline (when they aren't doing 4K).
Why do we still even use 1080i?
You’d think we would have killed off 1080i by now. It’s 2026! We have 8K TVs in stores!
The truth is, the broadcast industry moves at a snail’s pace. Upgrading a TV station’s entire transmission pipeline from 1080i to 1080p is insanely expensive. Many major networks—think CBS, NBC, and most cable sports channels—still broadcast in 1080i because it saves them bandwidth. It lets them cram more channels into the same space.
💡 You might also like: Apple Developer Program License Agreement: What You're Actually Signing
If you have a cable box or a satellite dish, you are almost certainly watching 1080i most of the time. Even if your TV says "1080p" in the corner, it’s often just taking that interlaced cable signal and "upconverting" it.
Which is better for gaming and sports?
If you are gaming, 1080p is the only answer. Interlaced video and gaming are a nightmare combination. Most modern consoles don’t even like outputting 1080i. If you force a game into 1080i, you’re going to get "input lag." That’s the delay between you pressing a button and the character jumping. This happens because your TV is wasting precious milliseconds trying to deinterlace those split frames before showing them to you.
For sports, it’s a bit of a toss-up depending on your source.
- 720p at 60fps is actually often better for sports than 1080i. Fox and ESPN figured this out years ago. They chose 720p because the motion is "progressive" and looks way smoother during a fast-break in basketball.
- 1080p is obviously king, but you’ll mostly only find this through streaming apps like Peacock or Paramount+ when they offer "enhanced" feeds.
The "Big Screen" Rule
Does the difference actually matter on a 32-inch TV in your kitchen? Probably not. You’d have to be six inches away from the glass to tell.
💡 You might also like: Why Your 03 Ford Taurus Starter Is Making That Click (And How to Fix It)
But on a 65-inch or 75-inch screen? Oh, yeah. On big displays, the artifacts of 1080i become glaringly obvious. The image looks softer. The edges of text (like the score ticker at the bottom of the screen) might look a little shaky or "fuzzy."
If you’re shopping for a TV today, you won't even find a "1080i TV." They don't exist. All modern flat panels are progressive. The real question is how your TV handles a 1080i signal from your cable box. High-end brands like Sony and LG have better "upscalers" that can make 1080i look nearly as good as 1080p. Cheap, off-brand sets often struggle, leaving you with a smeary mess during fast action.
Practical Steps for Your Home Setup
Stop worrying about the technical jargon and just do these three things to get the best picture:
- Check your Cable Box: Go into the settings of your Comcast, Spectrum, or DirecTV box. Make sure the output is set to 1080p if available. If the box only offers 1080i or 720p, choose 1080i for dramas and movies, but try 720p for sports to see if the motion looks smoother to your eyes.
- Use High-Speed HDMI: Don't use that random cable you found in a drawer from 2008. To get stable 1080p (or 4K), you need a cable labeled "High Speed."
- Stream when possible: If you have the choice between watching a game on the "Live TV" section of your cable box or through the network's app (like the NBC app), use the app. Apps almost always stream in 1080p, while the cable channel is stuck in 1080i.
1080p is the winner. It has been for twenty years. While 1080i still pays the bills for broadcasters, your eyes deserve the "p."
To make the most of your display, check your streaming app settings. Many services like YouTube or Netflix default to "Auto" quality, which can sometimes drop you down to 720p or 1080i-equivalent bitrates if your Wi-Fi hiccups. Manually locking your quality to 1080p (or higher) ensures you aren't letting your hardware go to waste. If you’re a gamer, always prioritize "Game Mode" on your TV settings to bypass the deinterlacing lag that 1080i signals can cause.