480p or 576p? which is better?

Hi

I assume you are connecting the Panasonic to Apple TV via component.

The formats are getting confusing but for UK PAL sourced stuff you would be better off with the 576p rather than 480p which is more for NTSC stuff.

If your TV can hadnle 720p that would be better.

You may also be able to choose 1080i which would be better still - I can see a distinct reduction in pixellation on menus in 1080i 50Hz compared to 720p 50Hz on my Panasonic which though recent is not full HD resolution either. The set will probably just take care of any up/down scaling for you so it may be best to use your own eyes to determine which looks best. Personally I found 576p looks quite soft compared to 720p/1080i.

AC

Oh BTW AppleTV has 50Hz options which again are probably best for PAL sourced material as the others default to 60Hz for the US.

I think also anecdotally that this affords us a bit more leeway in encoding specs - as the frame rate is lower there is more bandwidth available per frame.

AC