Thank you. You just posted an article that shows exactly what I already said...

From your article:

Here's the kicker... They just proved in their math that the 1080i shows more pixels per second, right after they qualify that it's the pixels per second that give better quality...

Granted it's only a "few" more, but it's still more.

Not to mention, they never said anything in that article about what the human eye can actually see. Please do a google search on that, and you'll find that there isn't a consensus as to how many "frames per second" the human eye can actually see.

The reality of it is, an interlaced 1080 picture will be clearer than a progressive 720 picture, because 1)the refresh rate of the interlaced is still faster than what the human eye can perceive, and 2)there are more pixels defining the same image, aka, crisper images.

The reason ESPN and ABC look so much worse is, there's just not as much information being displayed at any given time as it would have been if it were a 1080 picture. You can't make up for this missing information; refreshing the screen twice as fast isn't gonna' magically create better sharpness of the features. The only reason you can get away with using 720p for sports is, the edge sharpness is never there to begin with, because the camera and the focus of the action is constantly moving. So it's not clear that it isn't as sharp as the 1080 signal.

It's not that 720p is "better" for watching sports. It's "better" for the studio, 'cause ESPN can get away with the lower quality signal, lower quality cameras, and less bandwidth to deliver the signal, when the images are moving so quickly. However, when you watch Sportscenter, it looks like crap verses watching a football game. As soon as the background and things aren't moving, you finally realize you aren't seeing a sharp image anymore.