720p question (1 Viewer)

[Matt Weldy]

How can you tell if you tv supports 720p. I have an x box and I have it set to to 720p. And the game plays. However I have a pretty cheap hdtv its a samsung I bought at bestbuy about 1 and a half years ago. It model number is something like hc551w5 or something close to that. The front of the tv only says 480p/1080i. And if it dosent what does that mean.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

If you're getting a picture, the set "supports 720p" to the extent that it can recieve it and produce a picture.

Chances are that it's not displaying it natively but is actually converting it to either 1080i or 720p (EDIT: OOPS!, I meant 480p.) If you still have the owner's manual for the set it might tell you what the set is doing with the 720p signal.

 

[Bill Slack]

Not quite right... Most Xbox games don't support 720p though. So if the game doesn't support 720p, even though you have it set to output it, it will still be displayed in 1080i.

If the game is 720p, the Xbox is set to it, and you see a picture. Congrats, you can do it... but like Steve said, it's most likely converting it.

 

[Hanson]

Yeah, 720p is that Microsoft and ABC HD format that most HD sets do not display. Even rarer is the set that resolves it natively. The MS/ABC partnership is the only reason a handful of XBox games support it. In my estimation, it's totally not worth getting a 720p set just for a few games -- and I don't know what kind of difference there would be between converted 720p and native 480p, but I imagine it would be minor.

Hanson

 

[Bill Slack]

What are you talking about? What MS/ABC partnership? They seem to have a bit closer relationship with NBC, don't ya think? Not that it matters, anyway.

The reason it supports 720p is that it's an HD format, and in this case, is easier to render because that fact that 1080i is interlaced doesn't decrease the processing and rill-rate requirements so 720p, for now, is the only easily achievable resolution. Then there's the whole fact that it can't really display 1080i anyway...

 

[Robert P. Jones]

At CES in January, I learned that all plasma displays for this year - at least the ones I looked at - had 720p displays. So it seems to be coming. I heard recently that the new Fujitsu plasma actually does 1600x1200!

Anything received as 720p will be downconverted to 1080i automatically unless your RPTV does 720p native. The only RPTVs that did 720p native so far that I have heard of were the Pannys, which disco'd that practice this year, and are back with everything else, at HD of 1080i only. Luckily, I had a chance to get one of the 720p equipped Pannys on closeout at onecall.com and I jumped on it. Alias, on Sunday nights, is incredible!

I surely hope this is a temporary condition, and that more and more CRT based RPTVs will be doing 720p native in the future.

Mr Bob

 

[Bill Lucas]

Robert,

Not all plasma displays released this year are native 720p displays. In fact, there are more 480p plasmas out now than 720p plasmas. How do you think they've gotten the price point below $5K?

 

[Robert P. Jones]

I guess I must have just seen the most topnotch ones, at CES. All the big names had it.

Guess that's what you'd expect, at CES...

Mr Bob

 

[Gabriel_Lam]

I heard recently that the new Fujitsu plasma actually does 1600x1200!

Alas, not on their site yet.
http://www.plasmavision.com/prodcomp.html
A UXGA native plasma display would be something.

 

[Sean M]

For anything that has a lot of motion in it, like sports or videogames, 720p is a superior resolution to 1080i as it minimizes interlace artifacts like line twitter and it increases temporal resolution. You'll have 60 720 line frames per second as opposed to 60 540 line fields per second. Progressive resolutions will also appear more stable to eye. 1080p would be ideal, but given the choice between 1080i and 720p, I'll take 720p any day.

 

[Robert P. Jones]

My sentiments exactly.

Re. 1080p, as Joel Silver said at our ISF training, how much more res do we need, than we can see with the human eye?

1080p will someday be the cat's meow in HT, and probably still needs to stay the format shown in the theaters, a la Star Wars Episode 2, all done in 1080p with prototype HD cams.

But as far as HT viewing rooms go - and I sit 8' from my Panny 65" - I cannot see scanlines on any CRT based display device showing either 1080i or 720p - which my Panny does, native. And I delight in studying the grain of the film used to shoot CSI and The Agency - both in 1080i - and Alias, every week. That's pretty darn tight res.

Once the 1080i motion artifacts are considered - and they won't probably ever be remedied in 1080i simply because it is interlaced - you're left with 720p or 1080p.

I have seen none of these artifacts common to interlaced HD on ANY episode of Alias that I have watched, when in 720p native, and it has plenty of action sequences.

I think we've got it, with 720p...

Mr Bob