The Future of ATV and 1080 (i or p)

[secondcup]

Does anyone know or care to venture a guess on the following: if AppleTV was to support 1080 output (i or p) in the future, would it require a hardware revision or could it be done with software?

I have an ATV connected to my 1080i monitor, and I think it looks great, but not as great as a 1080 signal. I guess the broader question is why Apple didn't go with 1080 for ATV in the first place.

Sorry if this has been covered before, but I'm a Super-Newbie.

 

[err404]

I suspect that it is possible given that it can scale output to 1080. The hardware might be fast enough, but the bit-rate (limited by the CPU) would likely be to low for it to deliver an experience significantly better than 720p.

Apple is positioning the Apple TV as an internet delivery system, so I don't see official support for 1080 coming in the near future. Broadband in the US just isn't up to the task of delivering that much bandwidth.