But there must be techie people out there who can say which picture has more detail. SD picture through a sky HD box to , for example, a panny px600 plasma -- 576p or 1080i??
What difference does it really make as to what people say after all are you going to ignore the evidence of your own eyes if it doesn't match what you have read or are going to choose the setting that is more pleasing to watch day in day out?
First of all changing the broadcast resolution to 576p or 1080i requires the box to do some serious processing and it's doing it on a budget, the results are then sent to a HD display which may have to do it's own processing again with scaling/de-interlacing hardware supplied at a price point.
Even if someone with a PX600 said 1080i was better it may be that with your own personal settings on the display from the basic brightness/contrast to the more advanced digital processing (motion, noise reduction etc) would mean the result is different.
Do you have HD yet and/or are you considering buying a PX600?