While much HDTV equipment can indeed be made to function very well in progressive mode (assuming cost and extended bandwidth do not represent any practical impediment), the fact remains that the camera and VTR (the very basis of HDTV shoot and capture) are both subject to fundamental physical and technical limitations. This article discusses the effects of the nonideal beam spot, the low-velocity-beam interface with the photoconductive target, the self-sharpening effect of electron beam scanning, the astigmatism of the beam spot profile, and the way all of these affect the three primary dimensions of the real-world television picture: horizontal, vertical, and temporal resolution. When the totality of the camera's resolution (in all dimensions, simultaneously) is examined, it can be seen that the gap between progressive and interlace narrows considerably. Camera sensitivity, however, emerges as the singular pivotal issue. A substantial loss is incurred in progressive scanning because of degradation in signal-to-noise performance. This sensitivity penalty actually worsens in the future HDTV charge-coupled device (CCD), if progressively scanned. Consideration of such progressive scanning would push the advent of the solid-state imager into the far future.