720p or 1080p for gaming?

[destroyer_of_knights]

This has been bugging me for a while, which resolution in a HDtv is best/optimal for both gaming and watching blu-ray movies?

I ask this because everyone keeps praising 1080p tv's as being the best, and I too would have bought one, however because I have a smallish room I have to take into consideration the size of the HDtv, and in this case my real only option at the moment is a 720p HDtv.

This is were I got to thinking:-

1) If a game output of the PS3/360 is in 720p, then would it not look better on a native 720p HDtv since it would not need to be scaled to fit the native 1080p resolution?

2) or will the 720p source signal from the PS3/360 be scaled anyways because even the native 720p HDtv's actually have a native resolution of 1366×768?

3) also wouldn't upscaling from 720p to 1080p result in a not so good image seeing as filler pixels are being added to the 720p image, or does this really depend on the quality of each HDtv internal scaler?

4), would a HDtv with a native resolution of 720p be the best solution for both gaming and watching blu-ray movies, seeing as the 720p HDtv would be running at or close to the native resolution of the source signal for the PS3/360 as well as having any game that runs at 1080p as well as moves downscaled to 720p while maintaing the image quality?
(I'm under the assumption of course that downscaling is a better alternative to maintaining image quality than upscaling)

5)and finally, in terms of the PS3, would it upscale ps1/2 games to 720p or would it in fact upscale them to 1080p which would then force the 720 HDtv to downscale it 720p, and the same thing with blu-ray movies, would the blu-ray movies get downscaled to 720p, or would something cause it to get downscaled to 480p if it's not on a 1080p HDtv, assuming a HDMI cable was used for the connection?

Sorry for being long winded but I just had to ask these questions, and despite this being my first post, I've actually been coming to this forum for some time and just reading the topics, so I thought the community here would be the most knowledgeable when it comes to the above question.

you answers will be much appreciated.

 

[destroyer_of_knights]

anyone?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

This is something I've been giving some thought in the past few months as well...

1.-2. It might look a bit better, but honestly, I can't see anything wrong because of the upscaling, images are still sharp enough, it won't help with aliasing, and so on. I have a 32" Samsung LCD with 1366*768 and it works well enough for me; I actually have more problems with the image quality, colors and blacks and such. Then again it's a 2-year old model and nowadays most LCDs are considerably better.

Still, if you can actually find a native 1280*720 display, it'd probably provide a slightly better image for 720p games.
Now there are many high profile games that run in smaller resolutions at the moment, like COD4, Halo3 and you'd get a scaled image on a native 720p display as well. But as developers get better with the hardware, this should change - most UE3 games are 720p, PS3 exclusives are 720p, upcoming multiplatform games like Battlefield and Capcom's stuff are 720p and so on.

3. Again, I don't think it has any detectable negative effect on image quality.
But it's important to know that you can output a 1080p signal from both consoles through HDMI, and thus you can get the console to do the scaling instead of the TV. Then you can use a native 1:1 pixel mapping to get the sharpest possible image on the TV. Haven't actually seen it with my own eyes though.

4. First, native 720p TVs are very rare (most of them are rear projection models which are very big, have a low angle of view and so on).
Also, if you plan to watch HD movies, then I'd say go for 1080p. You will get the best overall results IMHO, games will look fine and movies will look spectacular. Also make sure to get a set that supports 24p, which means it can adjust its refresh rate to the 24 fps playback speed of HD movies. Without it, pans and movements get a little jerky as the TV tries to display a 24fps movie on a 60/50Hz refresh rate.

However you are also right that 1080p TVs are usually at least 37-40" big, and at this size they're almost all LCD TVs, the only plasma is a Panasonic 42" model and that doesn't really support 24p either. Then again, one of my friends has a 40" Tv in a relatively small room but has absolutely no problems with it.
Another thing to consider is that the current selection of HD movies isn't really that wide, and there's still no clear winner in the format war; we'll probably have to live with both, and multi-format players. So to me it also makes sense to get a temporary solution, a relatively basic and cheap model for 1-2 years, and delay the purchase of a 1080p-24p TV until things become a bit more clear.

 

[kyleb]

Even when the display resolution matches that of the content, you likely won't be avoiding scaling as most displays overscan slightly regardless. Best just to aviod displays with poor quality scalers, so what is scaled is scaled well.

As for if you would benift from a higher resolution display; what size of a display are you planing to get and at what distance do you intend to view it from?

 

[Randell]

viewing distance is paramount to the perceived IQ.

 

[WhiteCrane]

Honestly, I would think that scalinjg from 720 to 1080 would look much nicer thans caling from 720 to 768.

PS1 PS2 ames are not upscaled, and if they were, it would not improve their visuals.

 

[kyleb]

It can, but only if you are sitting close enough to a large enough display to see the difference.

 

[destroyer_of_knights]

Even when the display resolution matches that of the content, you likely won't be avoiding scaling as most displays overscan slightly regardless. Best just to aviod displays with poor quality scalers, so what is scaled is scaled well.

As for if you would benift from a higher resolution display; what size of a display are you planing to get and at what distance do you intend to view it from?

Well because my room is small, I was thinking of going for either a 32"-37" HDtv.
As for viewing distance, I'm about 196cm (77.2") away from my tv or the place my eventual HD tv will be.

Also, how is it possible to know weather a certain tv has a good scaler or not, I mean all the HDtv on display have had their contras/brightness cranked up so stand out and they also all play some blu-ray/HD DVD movies which are 1080p which makes the native 1080p resolution.

One thing I've curious to know though, and this is because I've read it in another forum, but is it true that Plasma produces a much smoother image with less noticeable jaggies than the LCD tv?
The post I read was saying something that plasma has like a natural AA effect by the way the pixels output the light/coulors and such

 

[kyleb]

At that distance from a 37", you'd need better than 20/20 vision to resolve any difference at all between a 768p and a 1080p display. So there is no reason to be conserned with resolution in this case.

As for scaling, again, HDTVs tend to scale the image slightly even when they are accepting their native resolution, so what you see in the stores is most likely scaled even if it is a 1080p TV running a 1080p Blu-ray movie. And most HDTVs these days do respectable quality scaling, where as PC monitors are still rather hit and miss. But of course stores will usually be happy to let you hook up your 360 or whatever you want to check the image quality of whatever display you are interested in buying. And real home theater stores are where you should go to check out properly calibrated displays in livingroom type conditions, places like Best Buy and such have to crank the contrast and saturation to overcome the bright florescent lighting in their stores.

As for the bit about plasmas, I've heard such claims before but not sure what to make of them. I do prefer plasmas for various reasons and have used them as my primary display for years, but I've never seen an difference in aliasing with them. It may be that people are attributing the difference to plasmas, when really the difference is just that plasmas tend to have lower display resolutions than LCDs, and a lower display resolution hides aliasing better than a higher one.

 

[destroyer_of_knights]

Thank you all for being so informative.

one more thing that came to mind is, since all HDtv use scalers seeing as they all overscan, then what's the point of having 1:1 pixel mapping since it's all being scaled anyways?

Also, how do you even know if a tv even has a 1:1 pixel feature, I mean what are the signs that such a feature is available?

 

[kyleb]

1:1 does mean no scaling; each individual display pixel is used to display a single source pixel. And many TVs have options available to do that, it just generally isn't done by default but rather often requires going into the service menu to adjust picture sizes settings for a given input. Some manufactures do provide such options in the user menus, but there is no standard name for the feature. For instance, Samsung has a "just scan" option on some models that displays the image with no overscan or underscan, making native resolution signals display at 1:1 on the display. On the other hand my Panasonic has a menu that allows for a wide range of control over both the vertical and horizontal position and size adjust the amount of overscan as needed per input and run 1:1 when that is perfered as well.

Regardless, if you do run 1:1 you'll often see ugly things in poorly edited content. For instance, letterboxing or other overlays not quite covering the very edge of an image, but rather the underlying content showing though on a few lines or rows of pixels at one or more edges. Also on broadcast HDTV, 1:1 will often reveal random noise on the very edges of some content. Manufactures use overscaning by default to avoid consumers ever seeing such ugliness, while the option to run 1:1 is mostly valued to avoid poor quality scaling, which again is generally a non-issue on modern HDTVs.

 

[Kyyla]

I've found this graph very informative:

http://www.carltonbale.com/2006/11/1080p-does-matter/

 

[Hazuki Ryu]

I've found this graph very informative:

http://www.carltonbale.com/2006/11/1080p-does-matter/

Hi guys, i have a feeling i talked about this with kyyla before if not maybe it was kyleb that showed the exact same graphic, and I'm going to give my opinion here I'm actually writing this post in a 32" inch LG HDTV that its connected via VGA cable and I'm sitting at approximately 7/8 feet from it.

So what i want to say is that though I obviously can't count pixels from this distance I can definitely see the difference between setting the pc to the television's native resolution of 1366*768 or 1280*720.

About native 1080p for gaming i think its worth it to play 1080p games it make a nice difference even from more than 6 feet away, I have tested that on a friend's PC with some LG plasma though you cant count pixels obviously from that distance, you can see a big difference in sharpness and jaggies on more distant objects.

So if you can connect a pc thats capable of 1080p for games or are looking at it as an investment for the future HD movies (next gen consoles ps4/xbox 3) you should probably put some money on it, if you are buying it mostly for play x360/ps3 i don't think you should do it most games are 720p or less.

On the other hand i think theres still and advantage on having a 1080p to play games that are less than 720p i know it sounds weird and might be wrong i still haven't tested this, so what i mean is Halo 3 for example its a 640p game you cant set x360 to 640p so the scaler of the console scales it to 720p if you have a 768p tv, the tv will scale the 720p to 768p so it scales 3 times you probably lose a good dial of quality on this right?

If you have a native 1080p tv the x360 would scale halo 3 to 1080p the tv native resolution so it would be scaling 1 time only from 640p to 1080p i would think it looks better this way.

Hope you have the patience to read through all this

 

[kyleb]

Hi guys, i have a feeling i talked about this with kyyla before if not maybe it was kyleb that showed the exact same graphic, and I'm going to give my opinion here I'm actually writing this post in a 32" inch LG HDTV that its connected via VGA cable and I'm sitting at approximately 7/8 feet from it.

So what i want to say is that though I obviously can't count pixels from this distance I can definitely see the difference between setting the pc to the television's native resolution of 1366*768 or 1280*720.

About native 1080p for gaming i think its worth it to play 1080p games it make a nice difference even from more than 6 feet away, I have tested that on a friend's PC with some LG plasma though you cant count pixels obviously from that distance, you can see a big difference in sharpness and jaggies on more distant objects.

And like I explained to you last time, you are talking about rendering resolution here while the chart is referring to display resolution. Again, the two are seprate subjects.