The picture and sound are many times sharper and clearer than standard TV.

These tubes create the picture the same way a standard TV does - by firing electrons at a phosphor-coated screen.

But the commercials consume about three minutes of each hour of programming, versus 15 minutes on standard TV, Joost investors said.

Once screens can be made with 500000 individually addressed pixels, equivalent to standard 625-lint TV, the way will be open for larger screens.

Widescreen TVs have a larger aspect ratio than the standard TV.

While less expensive today, a high-definition set of comparable size costs hundreds of dollars more than a standard TV.

The more expensive sets deliver a screen resolution with two million pixels, or twice the resolution of the standard digital TV.

Oddly, though many other cameras can play pictures back on a standard TV, this one cannot.

The video can be up to 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, conforming to the 1080i high-definition standard, with either standard TV or widescreen proportions.

While video can be transferred to a standard TV, picture quality would suffer.