Yep. We can debate it all day. No, I won't be touching the settings on my TV, though; it's already set to autoswitch. Not much more I can do.

I'll tell you, though. Watch a hockey game on ESPNHD (720p), then watch one on HDNet (1080i), and I promise you, you'll never sing the praises of 720p being "better" than 1080i for sports... Sure, the 720p looks a helluva' lot better than SD TV (as it should). And as long as you watch the 720p first, then the 1080i second, you don't notice a huge difference, if at all. But if you watch the 1080i first, then drop down to the 720p, you will be sadly dissappointed with the 720p picture quality.

Now, maybe it's the cable company compressing the signals differently, or the cable company's box interpreting & sending out the signals differently; I don't know. All I know is, it's hooked up to my TV through HDMI, the TV is "auto-switching", and ESPNHD looks like absolute crap compared to any channel that broadcasts in 1080i. And that goes for ABC as well; primetime on ABC looks significantly worse than primetime on CBS, Fox, and NBC, as Disney only broadcasts in the 720p setting, and the other networks use 1080i.

(And FYI: television and movie film are STILL shot in only 24 fps, so it really doesn't matter if the screen is being refreshed 60 times per second (progressive), or 30 times per second (interlaced), as BOTH are faster refresh rates than the source was captured in...)

:p