The Progressive HD Framerate Initiative

It's time to stop the confusion that arises when people speak about progresssive video resolutions (such as 720p and 1080p). Here is an example: you are told about a HD camcorder that shoots in 720p. But only after you dig deeper into information about this model you realize that it acutally shoots in 30p, not 60p! Half the framerate - 30p and 60p are two big differences. Or you read about a piece of hardware that displays "gorgeous 1080p". How do you know whether it can accept 60 frames per second signal from your PS3, which is really cool, or the best thing it can do is to inverse telecine 1080i movies to display them progressively at 24 FPS (which any decent HDTV must do by default)? Or when you are going to download a HD video clip from the internet, how do you know is it 24 FPS, 25/30 FPS or stunning 50/60 FPS?

So, the initiative is to make everyone

Always specify frame rate when
speaking about a HD video resolution,
like "1080p/24" or "720p/60".

So simple, and so useful! Whenever you write "1080p" or "720p" on a web site, in a forum or wherever else, just add two more digits and the information becomes much more valuable. And spead the word about this rule, and let's make the HD world a little better!

Update: But how about the difference between "European" 50 FPS and "American" 60 FPS, you ask? Well, if you are wriring about a specific video footage that is already shot (or going to be shot) in one of the framerates, you specify the framerate exactly as it is. If you are speaking about a tv that can display 1080p/60, it is obvoius that it can also display 50 FPS of the same resolution, so just write either "1080p/60" or "1080p/50" and don't worry about that. The same generally goes to camcorders, but among them there may be exceptions, so it would be fine to reference exactly which frame rates a camcorder can handle if you are saying about its capabilities.