720P or 1080P?

[jschall]

I'm new here, but I've been reading the FAQs and various posts 'til my PC screen looks blurry

We will be moving from Saint Lambert to Mont Saint-Hilaire just before the Holidays, and we're NOT taking our 32" JVC CRT TV with us. Time to move into the 21st century!

With all the information and useful advice on Digital Home Canada, I have learned a lot, and have narrowed my purchase options to these:

Size - given that we will be watching in a small room, 8' from the screen, I will opt for a 40" or 42" screen.

Technology - Plasma

Native resolution - not sure

Given the sources we will have available:
- No strong Over-The-Air signal at 50 km from Mont Royal.
- Vidéotron HD Set-Top Box (Scientific-Atlanta)
- DVD player (Progressive Scan)
- Future BluRay disc player

And given that we will be watching Standard- and High-Definition broadcasts 90% of the time, and rented movies occasionally -

Should I pay the premium for a 1080P HDTV set, or would a 720P deliver indistinguishable picture quality?

I have slunk around the display rooms at Costco, Future Shop and Best Buy, and it seems to me, I can surely see the difference in resolution between a 720 and a 1080, but that's while standing only 4 to 5 feet from the screen.

My comfort zone budgetwise is $1500 - $2000.

Your opinions and recommendations would be very welcome.

And if I have missed a pertinent FAQ or post, please point me to it!

Respectfully,

Jeff Schallenberg
Saint Lambert, Québec

[Geoff]

MY rule of thumb.
Anything smaller than 50" 720p. Larger , 1080p.
Others will say they can see a HUGE difference on their 37" flat screen , but not me.

Make sure , when you are comparing one TV to another that you are comparing apples to apples.

[jean luc picard]

does anybody but panasonic make 42" 1080p plasmas?

[jvincent]

Just as an FYI, there are no 720p plasmas. They are either 768p or 1080p.

[jean luc picard]

thats not correct. hitachi has some funky resolutions including 1024 x 1024 and 1024 x 1080 "i". not quite interlaced, but not quite progressive.

[Michael DeAbreu]

I'd plan for the future and opt for 1080p with an ATSC tuner.

You might also consider if you will be displaying digital photos on it. Greater than 4MP will just fill a 1080 screen.

[Tom.F.1]

my 37" looks fine at 720.

if fine is ok, go cheap. If you want a great picture when you rent a great movie, spend more bucks.

[rabid]

720p should be fine for SD and HD viewing at 40" at your viewing distance. For viewing pictures and for connecting it to a PC, 1080p really makes a difference though.

If you will be connecting a PC to the tv, check with the sales staff to see If you could bring a laptop to the display rooms so you could test out various resolutions.

[rsambuca]

Originally Posted by jschall

Technology - Plasma

Just curious - Why Plasma only?

[Eluder]

Personally, after seeing my friend's new TV tonight, get a 1080p. I've had my Sharp Aquos 720P LCD for almost 3 years and I've been happy, but I just came back from seeing my friend's Samsung A750 1080p with Blu-Ray, and my goodness, it looks ridiculously good. The movies looked so real, as if you were there; I mean I was impressed when I first saw BD/HD on my own TV, but seeing them on his, made me drool. I'll now definitely be replacing my TV at the end of the year and going with one of the new sets, there really is a huge difference between a good 720p set and a good 1080p set.

[spensar]

I've had my Sharp Aquos 720P LCD for almost 3 years and I've been happy, but I just came back from seeing my friend's Samsung A750 1080p with Blu-Ray, and my goodness, it looks ridiculously good.

You are assessing the difference to 1080p, however, I think the key is that your TV is 3 years old. I think that even if his was 720p it would blow a 3 year old TV out of the water. The technology keeps getting better and 3 years is a long time in the LCD world.

[the hawk]

Originally Posted by spensar

You are assessing the difference to 1080p, however, I think the key is that your TV is 3 years old. I think that even if his was 720p it would blow a 3 year old TV out of the water. The technology keeps getting better and 3 years is a long time in the LCD world.

My thoughts exactly.

You can't compare a 3 year old LCD with the current crop.....the sets have come a long way in that short period of time in terms of contrast levels and processing.

Nowadays the discussion of 720p (768p) vs 1080p is almost moot......almost everything made these days is native 1080p and I'm sure within the next year or two nobody will make anything 720p (768p) that's 40" or bigger. Everybody has 1080p on the brain these days.

[jvincent]

Everybody has 1080p on the brain these days.

True. Unfortunately it's not the most important factor.

Accurate colours and greyscale are actually a lot more important to a good movie experience.

I'm not saying 1080p is inherently bad, but I'd be very curious to see how many people are actually benefitting from the extra resolution.

As you point out though, this will be a moot point in a couple of years.

[the hawk]

Yep...people and their 1080p HDTV resolution specs obsession remind me of camera buyers.

"If 6 megapixels is this good, 10 megapixels must be way better"

Sure...it's better.....if you do lots of tight cropping or want to blow up your pics to poster size. But anything 8x10 or less, there's no visible difference.

Don't get me wrong, 1080p certainly has it's place, but for many people given a certain sitting distance combined with a certain screen size won't see any PQ difference whatsoever and that truth has been proven a thousand times over in numerous blind testing sessions. I've always held the opinion that if you sit 8 feet away from your HDTV, you need a 50" or bigger set to truly appreciate the extra resolution 1080p provides.

[rsambuca]

Originally Posted by the hawk

Yep...people and their 1080p HDTV resolution specs obsession remind me of camera buyers.

"If 6 megapixels is this good, 10 megapixels must be way better"

Sure...it's better.....if you do lots of tight cropping or want to blow up your pics to poster size. But anything 8x10 or less, there's no visible difference.

Actually, the image quality starts to decrease since they are cramming too many pixels onto the small sensors in the Point-and-Shoots. The pixels get too small to capture enough light and the images start to get noisy, except in very good lighting conditions.