[jayasena]

The best HD picture is over the air broadcast because there is no compression.

Over-the-air is still compressed -- popular video coding formats all have inherent lossy compression. Over-the-air bandwidth isn't as constrained as over satellite or cable, so the degree of compression is usually less, but it's not uncompressed.

Also, I' don't think 1080p60 is in wide use even in OTA broadcasts in the US. It's typically 1080i or 720p. However, the fact that OTA still looks significantly better tells you there's more to this than 720p vs. 1080i (there are lots of knobs that can be dialed in the encoding process without changing the resolution to trade-off video quality vs. the bandwidth consumed). But almost everything else being equal, progressive is better than interlaced for fast motion even if it's at a lower resolution (as is the case with 720p vs. 1080i), modulo the vagaries of video scaling if you are watching on a 1080-line display (TV).

[jayasena]

The best HD picture is over the air broadcast because there is no compression.

Over-the-air is still compressed -- popular video coding formats all have inherent lossy compression. Over-the-air bandwidth isn't as constrained as over satellite or cable, so the degree of compression is usually less, but it's not uncompressed.

Also, I' don't think 1080p60 is in wide use even in OTA broadcasts in the US. It's typically 1080i or 720p. However, the fact that OTA still looks significantly better tells you there's more to this than 720p vs. 1080i (there are lots of knobs that can be dialed in the encoding process without changing the resolution to trade-off video quality vs. the bandwidth consumed). But almost everything else being equal, progressive is better than interlaced for fast motion even if it's at a lower resolution (as is the case with 720p vs. 1080i), modulo the vagaries of video scaling if you are watching on a 1080-line display (TV).