Yes it is! The quality of 1080p you get is sometimes variable but you definitely get excellent (even 100% accurate) 1080p content from 1080i sources.
Aside: 1080i is the transmission standard used by most North America broadcasters - so there is lots of it around.
1080i is actually 1080/60i (1920x540 pixels in 60 interlaced fields per second). All plasma and LCD monitors render only progressive content (or complete frames). Interlaced content, like 1080/60i, must be converted prior to being rendered. For a 1080p monitor (i.e., a monitor with 1920x1080 native pixels or higher) that usually means conversion to one of the 3 most common 1080p variants, namely: 1080/60p, 1080/30p, 1080/24p (1920x1080 pixels in 60, 30 and 24 frames per second respectively). Converting 1080/60i to 1080/30p is the most straight forward - but even that is not easy. A top-of-line monitor (or video processor for that matter) will read two successive interlaced 1920x540 pixels fields and stitch them together to create one progressive 1920x1080 pixel frame. When done over 60 interlaced fields a second, you end up with 1080/30p. The challenge is dealing with the 60th of a second time difference between fields. Good software (with equally stellar processor power) can interpolate and create a "pretty good" reconstructed frame. But in practice, things are much better. Movies and anything shot with a progressive video camera have no time difference between successive interlaced fields because field pairs are constructed from one original frame (a variation of 3:2 pull-down performed on each frame). With movies and progressive source material, reconstruction of the frame can be PERFECT. In other words, this material makes 1080i == 1080p.
MYTH #2: You can't get good 1080p content from SD sources
Yes you can - if you can get properly encoded material.
Next time you see SD material on your HDTV, look closely. The jagged edges from the original 780x420 pixel content is hardly noticeable (and can be easily smoothed with good software). Of course you need a good conversion processor because most broadcast content and ALL SD DVD content is 480i (with all the challenges mentioned in MYTH #1). In the end, it is compression artifacts that are killing the image. The ghosts, random dots, color shifts and other common anomolies are compression problems.
Blu-ray and HD DVDs are great. But existing 480i content would be spectacular if it was encoded in progressive format at bit rates higher than the 6MB/s upper limit imposed on SD DVDs. Most SD material ends up being compressed near 10:1 by the time it gets on the DVD. It's the compression that makes SD content look bad in HD, not necessarily the 720x480 frame size.
MYTH #3: SD content has about 1/4 the resolution of 1080p content
It doesn't have to be. Think about MYTH #2. What if you delivered SD content without a 10:1 compression factor? How will that content look relative to highly compressed Blu-ray - or worse - highly compressed HD DVD content? Compression artifacts do more to hurt content rendering than almost anything else. What's going to happen to HD content when we stuff 20 GB of "bonus" material on every DVD?
i am dissapointed at M$ right now they have come out with these few add-ons but, in reality a next generation console would never have to add add ons cuz the console would already bring it.
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