HDTV (UK) for your next gen consoles
- Thread starter London Geezer
- Start date
From the TVs I have seen, the 1280x768 ones just don't have square pixels and the 1366x768 ones do, but all are still 16:9 aspectratio. As for hooking up a PC, it doesn't really matter as modern cards can run at whatever resolution you want them to up to their max resolution as as long as the horizontal res is a divisible by 8.
As for why they make them higher resolutions than 1280x720, its becuase more pixels can make them look beter. With a decent scaler an all else being equal a 720p signal will look beter displayed on a 1366x768 display than it will on a 1280x720 one, and a 1080i/p signal will obviously look beter if it is downscaled to 1366x768 or 1280x768 than wouldl at 120x720. Eventually we are going to see TVs with mad resolutioins like 3200x1800 and greater, but for now they stick to what they can make and/or sell at a price that people will pay.
As for why they make them higher resolutions than 1280x720, its becuase more pixels can make them look beter. With a decent scaler an all else being equal a 720p signal will look beter displayed on a 1366x768 display than it will on a 1280x720 one, and a 1080i/p signal will obviously look beter if it is downscaled to 1366x768 or 1280x768 than wouldl at 120x720. Eventually we are going to see TVs with mad resolutioins like 3200x1800 and greater, but for now they stick to what they can make and/or sell at a price that people will pay.
If we're at it, what would happen to an 1280*720 game framebuffer, with say 2x AA, when it gets scaled up to 1366*768 on an LCD? Wouldn't it look bad? A friend who runs such a shop thinks that since Xbox has component output, it would be OK, but I'm not sure...
Laa-Yosh said:
I think it all depends on the circuitry in the display. For example the 1024x728 LCD TV i used to use to play PS2 games did pretty much nothing to even try to make the picture look better, and you could actually see the different odd and even lines due to interlacing - same for any interlaced signal, but with PS2 it stood out more because of the way its signal seems to be somewhat "sharper" than, say, the fuzzy TV broadcasts.
I'm sure a good LCD with that odd resolution 1366x768 will show 720p just fine. Nowadays LCD displays have pretty decent imaging chips, unless you got them in your box of Cheerios.
Laa-Yosh said:I'm thinking about the Samsung model mentioned here. I've seen it today up close, hooked to a Mac, and it was already impressive using the VGA input only. But there's no way to check it with an Xbox/PS3 yet
I'm sure it will be just fine, but maybe it's a good decision to wait and see how it looks hooked up to those 2 consoles.
Laa-Yosh said:Yeah, that's the voice of reason. But I have a good deal that won't be available for long, and I have lots of DVDs but no TV to watch them on
Well... How good is that deal?
Keep in mind that if u wait and see how it fares with an X360, it will be even cheaper then.
I don't follow your concern; there isn't going to be anything special about either console to make them be displayed any different than any other devices using the same inputs, resolution and refresh rate. Digital inputs might look a little better or worse on a TV than analog ones depending on the hardware on the TV, but you don't need a PS3 to check that.Laa-Yosh said:I'm thinking about the Samsung model mentioned here. I've seen it today up close, hooked to a Mac, and it was already impressive using the VGA input only. But there's no way to check it with an Xbox/PS3 yet
kyleb said:
I think he's just being a bit overly anxious about where his hard-earned money will be spent, and wants to make sure 100% that if he spends a grand on a TV, it will work just fine. Can't say i disagree, especially if he's in Europe, with all the mess about 50 and 60Hz carrying over to HD resolutions (which in itself is utterly ridiculous) and all these different resolutions... They never make it easy for us do they.
My question is, in the past, with the PAL system, we got more lines of resolutions than NTSC but at a slower refresh. Now with HD resolutions, we get the same lines of resolutions (720p standard) but we still get bloody 50Hz?! That's just being mean.
My 'worry' is that there's a notable difference between DVD or HD TV sources and a console's output, and that's aliasing artifacts. It's safe to assume that many games will only have 2x AA, and the jaggies might look pretty ugly when rescaled... I'll try to get an Xbox with a HDTV supporting game to check it out. Dragon's lair was one like that, right?
kyleb said:
As noted before, not all scaler chips are equal. And when you're spending that much money, you want to be certain that when running at non-native resolution, the scaler chip better be darn good.
l-b is right most modern LCDs have pretty good scaler chips, but you still notice it, especially reading text. Good thing these console games won't be pushing text fidelity to the limit (I hope).
They won't be pushing text fidelity because they have to make things still readable at 480i for the vast majority of people still using standard CRT TVs. And yeah, different TVs have different quality scalers but a "decent TV" as I suggested will have a scaler on par with a what an image edit program can do. To give an idea of how good scaling can be; I'm typing this running 720p to my 852x480 plasma at standard font sizes and sitting about 8' away. Granted, I have very good eye sight {in one eye that is} but I think that still goes to show what a good scaler can do.
scooby_dooby
Legend
Laa-Yosh said:
Good examples are MVP Baseball 2k5 (720p) and The Incredible Hulk (720p)
I have a hdtv big screen, and jaggies are terrible in most games, however 720p really seems to make the majority go away. Those two games above are both some of the best GFX ever on the XBOX, expecially in HD, those are probably the main two games I use to show off the IQ on my TV to friends..and splinter cell 3 of course
if you're looking at a TV and want to see a night and day comparison of jaggies, compare GTA: SA to The Incredible Hulk on the xbox, make sure to enable 720p in the dashboard
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crystalcube
Newcomer
london-boy said:
That is rated at 16 ms response time. Dont know about UK but in US/Asia new Samsung comparable Models have 8 ms response time ( its LA32R51xx series ) . I have just ordered a comparable Model and also paid around same price. I bought this as I was primarily looking for something that displays decent 720p and this seems to one from a leading brand within my budget
Lord Darkblade
Newcomer
Watch out, many of the 8ms models tend to be Gray to Gray rather than Black to White to Black (or is it vice versa).
