Apple Inc (AAPL)

[baldrick]

TV resolution: Sorry PDQ those figures are misleading. The 'lines' they are referring to represent how many vertical 'lines' each recording device can 'resolve'. This isn't the same as the lines a TV picture is made up of (which are fixed at 485 for you poor guys, 576 for us), or the 240 lines of the iTMS movies.

360 'lines' is the maximum no. of alternating black/white vertical 'lines' a standard TV transmission can show (hence Blue's 720 x 480).
BTW Current standard definition DVDs are exactly the same resolution as this, otherwise your TV couldn't show them.

240 is about right for VHS (this would be equivalent to a QT movie 480 pixels wide), though giving this a fixed number is misleading, as VHS is analogue & doesn't divide video into a fixed no. of pixels.
It depends on the state of the recorder, tape, heads etc. With a decent modern VHS off air recordings can be hard to tell from live TV sometimes & S-VHS can get up to near 300 lines. VHS (and all analogue tape formats) problem isn't resolution, it's noise & the fact tape degrades. That's why DVDs look so much better.

I'd imagine the scaled ITMS movies on your TV would look roughly VHS quality.