I was hoping that I could get a bet settled. A friend claimed that since a Mitsu rear projection HDTV's native HD resolution is 1080i, when fed a 720p signal (from ABC, ESPN, et. al.), the Mitsu could not display it and the screen would be blank.

I said that Mitsubishi, like most rear projection HDTV makers, designed theirs to convert 720p to 1080i. I told him just imagine if they didn't do this and some guy brought one of their TVs home to watch SportsCenter in HD just to get a blank screen, could you imagine how ticked off he would be? Could you imagine how many returned products Mitsubishi would have to deal with?

Anyways, he still doesn't believe me and while we're waiting for a reply email from Mitsubishi, I'd appreciate any clarification that could be provided.