So you take Smithsonian's 1080i feed. Downconvert it to 720p. Then let your TV scale it to 4k?That's what I have been saying,except it does not look as good as Blu ray the only picture that looks as good as Bluray is Bluray because it's 1080p/24.
The picture looks like 1080p/60 and that's my Dish receiver set at 720p screen resolution and then my 4K UHDTV's spatial scaling engine upconverts it to 4K.
What kool-aid are you drinking?