Should 480P still be "standard definition?"

As you probably know, there's been a lot of discussion lately about video games running at either 720P or 1080P (or weird in between resolutions like Battlefield 4), and it got me thinking. 480P (or 480i) is still considered and classified as "standard definition."

But are we at a point now, as a society, where 720P should be "standard definition?" I mean, you'd be hard pressed to go back to to 480P and call that standard after years of 720P, 1080P, and even higher if you're one of those crazy PC video-games-men. I think we need to move forward and call 480P low definition, and 720P should be standard. I might go so far as to say that 1080P should be the new standard, but maybe we're not quite there yet.

Edit: People seem to be in agreement that 480P as "standard" is here to stay, so that's that then!

I think so, the new consoles don't even display in 480p (right?) so why should that be the standard definition.

@nightriff: Because the terms standard definition and high definition are bigger than just video games.

I do think this change will happen, but probably not until 4K TVs become a real thing for average people.

Uh no. High Definition refers to widescreen format of 720p or greater. 480 is actually not widescreen. Most importantly "HD" is a catch phrase, it doesn't mean anything just like "SD" doesn't either. When we get to the point where enough tv's and broadcast shows/movies come in definitions higher than 1080 they will probably create a new catchphrase for that. That is still a few years off though however.

The terms "Standard Definition" and "High Definition" were invented during a particular time, but just because technology marches on doesn't mean we need to change the names. That's just confusing for the rest of us down the road.

It's a semantics argument. This is like getting annoyed when someone on a podcast says "thanks for tuning in" even though the days of tuning a radio are pretty much long gone. SD is the shit pumped out to old TVs, HD is the stuff you need an "HDTV" for.

There is already names for those resolutions. They're not catchphrases, but classifications. 720P is HD, 1080P is FHD and 4K is UHD.

Your logic from this is basically because the Wii's component cables are 480p? Or some of the last gen consoles could out put like that depending on the cables?

There's nothing weird about BF4's resolution just because it's not 720 or 1080P. It's 900P on PS4 right? So probably 1600x900, hell my laptop could be called 900P if you wanted to be dumb about it, because it's 1440x900.

@karkarov said:

480P is a family of resolutions and one of them is a 16:9 aspect ratio, so 480P actually can be widescreen.

This is the problem with the 'P' nonsense. I'm pretty sure people claimed Gran Turismo 5 was 1080P just because it ran in 1280x1080, which is still a fuckload less pixels than 1920x1080 despite the vertical lines being the same.

Nailed it. Just take a look at the contents list of this Wikipedia article, and everything is answered.

Doesn't make them any less of a catch phrase.

What are 8K and 16K gonna be, SUHD and SDUHD (Super Duper Ultra High Definition)?

8K is still currently referred to as UHD. 16K doesn't exist.

...wasn't being serious, just making fun of stupid marketing terms.

Why can't it just be called 480p? Why does it have to have some other terms associated with it? Once you slap a term like that on it it just makes the whole thing unnecessarily complicated as there is never a unanimous decision to agree to what that is and then you get people using the term all over the damn place with no idea of what it really means. Just use the number that it is and let the person watching it pick what they can based on their bandwidth.

It will never stop. Lest we forget:

• CGA
• EGA
• QVGA
• VGA (480P 4:3)
• WVGA (480P Wide)
• FWVGA (480P Ultra Wide)
• SVGA
• WSVGA
• XGA

ETC

Standard def is referred to as such because it was (at the time) when pixels began to matter for displays the NTSC standard pixel count for all cable and over the air TV content. It was a broadcast resolution that was applied almost everything at time. Thus it was "standard" resolution or definition. That begin said there is no reason to change what Standard is because we are actually further from a standard display resolution now than we were back then. With resolutions varying between, consoles, individual games and displays (not all "HD" Displays are created equally) 480/I is still the "Standard Definition" that all displays are held to both as a minimum and a point of comparison. Anything above 480 is something else entirely. Just let your resolution be your resolution. Why should we care what the standard is? Just semantics I know but if we "standardize" HD now, in a few years we will have the same discussion. pointless to change what "standard def" is

That'll never happen, purely because of the way those terms are used in marketing. The average person going into a store to buy a new TV would be confused or turned off hearing that new TV's are no longer Hi-Def, that only Standard Def models are available. It's also a nice thing for the manufacturers to say about their TVs, that they "display crystal clear 1080p Tru HD bullshit bullshit bullshit". Same for cable companies; Comcast will have a harder time upselling customers if the question becomes "do you want to upgrade to standard definition," especially when there is a price bump associated with it. Plus they would have to change their marketing from "more HD channels than any other provider" to "more standard definition channels..." which will confuse people unnecessarily.

What's going to happen is that eventually 4K will become the term that means what "high definition" means now, and high definition will have the stigma attached to it that standard definition does today. But, for a number of reasons, that transition will take another decade of TV cycles, if it happens at all.

Yeah, the "standard definition" terminology isn't going to change. In common lexicon, people know that it refers to the old broadcast resolution of 480, and changing what that means is only going to cause confusion.

As for people talking about marketing, that's a totally different conversation. Companies will often adopt terminology that isn't technically accurate in order to more easily market something as being the new and flashy thing that you should want. All you need to do is just take a look at how cell providers started abusing terms like 4G and 5G without any consideration for the actual ITU standards for those designations. It's just easier to say that 4G is better than 3G than to say that LTE is better than UMTS or CDMA.

480p is still the standard. DVD's are still much more popular than blu-rays. A lot of broadcast television is still SD, and is still more popular than streaming media. Gaming is literally the only form of televisual entertainment that has adopted 720p+ as its standard.

In PAL regions 480p never existed, we had 576. That was our SD. Just to add more dumb shit to this. :D