720P or 1080i, what's better?

[Arial Assasian]

[B]OK...ONE SIMPLE QUESTION..........which is better..720p or 1080i? because people say 720p cayse its progressive...to be honest i cant c the diffference but wut do you guys think i should use...720p..or 1080i? /B]

[Nineset]

Eye Candy? Which Wins? 1080i vs 720p And What About 1080p?
By Bob Wood Platinum Quality Author

The latest great thing in home theater displays is the emergence of 1080p resolution displays. p stands for progressive, which means the screen fills all at once at 1/60th of a second, versus i for interlaced, which means every other line, then the other half of the full picture, each field displaying at 1/30th of a second.

At this time, there is no source for broadcast 1080p programming. Instead, we have 1080i: two interlaced fields make a frame, at 1/30th second for each field.

Finger it out!

Take your fingers and spread them apart. That’s a crude example of interlaced. When you bring the hands together, you combine both fields and you get the whole picture (one frame). It happens fast enough that you don’t notice the effect unless there’s motion on the screen, then you might see a difference in the smoothness of the motion.

Progressive is all the fingers at once. 720p is fewer pixels, faster: 1/60th second per frame.

1080 = 1920 x 1080 pixels | 720 = 1280 x 720 pixels

Till recently, HDTVs were either 720p or 1080i. Most TV transmissions were 1080i. I believe ABC adopted 720p because it would have shown sports with better pictures. I also remember back when Panasonic Broadcast underwrote ABC (as 720p) – or at least Monday Night Football. Fox and ESPN now also do 720P. The others are 1080i.

The new 1080p sets don’t have the front end circuitry to actually receive that resolution. But, again, nothing is transmitting that res anyway. What the advantage is, is how these sets show 1080i – they have the pixel count to do it without trouble. They deinterlace the transmission and present it full frame without throwing away any detail. A 720p set has to downconvert a 1080i signal. In that downconversion you can lose some detail.

(BUT) OH SAY CAN YOU SEE?

But there’s a more important issue – can you really see the difference in resolution between 1080i and 1080p? Tests of visual acuity to determine the resolution required of a television transmission system by the BBC’s J.O. Drewery and R. Salmon determined that at 9 feet, a 50 inch screen at 720p’s resolution will give you all the resolution you can see! At 9 feet, a 56 incher needs 1080i to avoid seeing the pixel structure. If you sit farther or closer, you may need more resolution.

1080i vs 720p: MOTION CHANGES EVERYTHING

Motion is different issue. If you want to see motion clearly, then live action 720p is what looks best, compared to 1080i. Here’s why: the information content of 720p is about the same as 1080i, though what it lacks in spatial resolution, it makes up for in temporal resolution (because the picture is at 1/60th of a second, not 1/30th x 2.) On 1080i, this would show as flickered or jagged edges on bright horizontal objects (like in the background of a camera pan.)

The good news? As the retailers hawk 1080p, you might find a killer deal on a 720p set and not give up anything in what I’ll call ‘effective’ picture quality to get it.

Bob Wood cuts through confusion and technical detail to offer a clear guide: what you need to know to shop wisely; how to then maximize the performance of your Home Theater system. His website, http://www.GreatHomeTheater.com has been called “refreshingly easy to understand!”

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Wood

[Sir SpankalotUK]

geometry wars works best in 720p.

[Ponder416]

I use 720p...And Im thinking the next TV I buy will only be 720p.

[Voyager2k]

Wether you benefit from 1080i/p or not largely depends on the size of your screen and your viewing distance. Higher resolution simply allows you to get a little closer/get a bigger screen IF the source material is of good enough quality.

For example, if you have a 40" Screen and your viewing distance is 3 meters or more 1080i/p makes no sense because your eyes can not see the diffrence. 720p will look absolutely the same to you. If you increase the screen size to say 50" you will see a diffrence, if you get closer to the 40" screen (say, 2 meters distance) you will also begin to see diffrences.

All that techno mumbojumbo is totally irrelevant if you're not "close up". At normal size/range ratios you do not need 1080 resolution. It's as simple as that.

You get the best bang for the buck if you examine your viewing environment, do some math and buy the display that works best for your place (size, distance, source signals <---- plays a HUGE role too for non-hd)

[UKJAY]

i was using 1080i but I actually prefer 720p - in 1080i mode DeadRising had this horrible line that ran right the way through it on the screen, it renders the vid and then comes back. I think 720 looks good on tvs up to 40inch, anything past that and 1080i visually is probably better overall on most games, except deadrising and UNO...

[Voyager2k]

i was using 1080i but I actually prefer 720p - in 1080i mode DeadRising had this horrible line that ran right the way through it on the screen, it renders the vid and then comes back. I think 720 looks good on tvs up to 40inch, anything past that and 1080i visually is probably better overall on most games, except deadrising and UNO...

As I wrote above, it's all screen size vs viewing distance.

We tend to believe that our human eye has the ultimate high resolution but it hasn't. Not at all. In fact, seeing is half information input and half filling in gaps with previous experiences stored in our memory. What we see is kinda interpreted and references previous experiences which allows us to "process" visual data much faster.

Take reading for example. If you read some text you never actually read every single letter. You see the words and usually a few letters are enough for you to recognize entire words or even phrases and understand them. Reading isn't reading, it's low-res image recognition for the most part. Only if you read new words you actually read every letter.

And that's how it works for everything we see: our brain fills in the gaps faster than we could process all the information if we had to do it every time.

Apply this to HDTV and you'll understand why it's all about size and distance. Our brain does the rest and there is nothing we can do to change that. It's a hard to swallow pill because corporate marketing wants to sell you all those shiny new 32" or 37" 1080p displays and keeps telling you how much better true hd is ....

[Nekro Neko]

this became a science biology lesson.

[Rival24]

Changed topic title.

[Nino]

;(

[Rival24]

ZOMG I WANT ANSWERZZZZZZZZZZZZZ doesn't really tell what's inside :P

[Zerodisorder]

I have a question. Is 1366x768 resolution better than 720p. I don't know too much about HDTV's. Thanks.

[Machera]

1360x768 is the Native resolution of most wide screen displays. The TV will still ONLY display 1280x720. The 720 represents the "720p", there is no 768p. Native resolution is the BIG thing to remember.

For the longest time I desperately wanted an HDMI cable so that I could get my XBOX to display 1080p as my TV will only receive a 1080p signal over HDMI. My TV SHOWS that it can RECEIVE a 1080p@24hz, but being able to receive and displaying are 2 different things. The Native resolution is 768, guess what it can't display larger than that.

I purchased my TV Oct. 2006 for $3999. I didn't want to believe that my TV was NOT able to display a 1080p signal because I payed sooo much money for it. Much to my dismay it is only 1360x768. I no longer really want an HDMI cable other than the convenience of a single cable. I kinda wish I had purchased a DLP for half the price at 1080p. Oh well.

[Rossko_UK]

1360x768 is the Native resolution of most wide screen displays. The TV will still ONLY display 1280x720. The 720 represents the "720p", there is no 768p. Native resolution is the BIG thing to remember.

For the longest time I desperately wanted an HDMI cable so that I could get my XBOX to display 1080p as my TV will only receive a 1080p signal over HDMI. My TV SHOWS that it can RECEIVE a 1080p@24hz, but being able to receive and displaying are 2 different things. The Native resolution is 768, guess what it can't display larger than that.

I purchased my TV Oct. 2006 for $3999. I didn't want to believe that my TV was NOT able to display a 1080p signal because I payed sooo much money for it. Much to my dismay it is only 1360x768. I no longer really want an HDMI cable other than the convenience of a single cable. I kinda wish I had purchased a DLP for half the price at 1080p. Oh well.

What size TV do you have?

[Machera]

50" Pioneer Plasma, PDP-5071HD. I love it don't get me wrong, just wish it was 1920x1080 native resolution.

[BruNasty]

If you were looking for a answer to the which is better question. It boils down to preference and like mentioned before the size and distance.

1080i has 360 more lines of resolution. Albeit at half the speed. but come on, can your eye process 1/30th of a second? No. Can it notice an extra 360 lines? Possibly.

I think it also has to do with display technologies. Plasma vs LCD. and DLP vs LCD/Lcos. and unless it's all you can afford, throw out CRT because for gamers, CRT is not where you want to be.

Now I have both a Plasma and LCD (Flat-Panels) but I am a sucker for the LCD (flat Panel and Micro-display) The detail is VERY sharp on the LCDs color depth and motion is superb. On the flip side the textures and color saturation on the Plasma's are almost unrivaled.

The main thing I agree with that article is when viewing live television/sports events. 720p is the way to go. However, when playing games/movies and viewing HD movies on T.V. 1080i's where it's at.

Finally when it comes to display technologies and resolution, LCD flat-panels and LCD/Lcos Projections typically have higher resolutions (1920/1080) which is required for 1080p images.

I like playing on the 26" LCD I have in the bedroom almost better than the 50" plasma in the other room. I do sit about 3-5 feet away from the 26"er but I don't have to worry about burn-in I play with 1080i on both and love it I just don't like the 720p, It's not that my eyes can tell the difference just in the back of my head I am thinking that I'm losing out on 360 lines of information and detail.

[Voyager2k]

[.............]I play with 1080i on both and love it I just don't like the 720p, It's not that my eyes can tell the difference just in the back of my head I am thinking that I'm losing out on 360 lines of information and detail.

You need to tell your brain that you are actually harming quality because no 360 game renders at 1080i. They all render at 720p OR LESS (!!) and scale up to 720p or 1080i/p.

By setting your xbox to 1080i all you do is tell it to upscale a 720p image to 1080i which is then processed AGAIN by your display and scaled to it's display resolution/aspec ratio. So you're scaling the image twice instead of once. With 720p you're on the safe side for most games because that's what they render at and that's what the 360 will output natively without scaling.

[Machera]

I was the same way. I set the Xbox to 1080i because I thought that was the best resolution I could get. I then realized that the Xbox was just having to upscale to 1080, send it to the TV, the TV in the top right corner SAID 1080i, but that was simply what KIND of signal it was receiving. Since the Plasma is only 1360x768 max res, it was then having to DOWNscale back to 720p.

It is difficult to find many Plasmas that are 1080p. The only Pioneer TV that is 1080p is $8000. No thankyou. Now a'days it isn't to hard to find an LCD that is 1080p, but for some reason the Plasmas seem to be falling behind, in the resolution area.

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/v3/pg/product/details/0,,2076_310069731_290043890,00.html
^^^ isn't even called a TV but a monitor.

[xXChaoticFireXx]

what the problem is with the 1080i for most people is that you have a mutiple progressive scanning and integration tv that can be set to 720p or 1080i. If you have a single setting HDTV it will look crystal clear on any one of them.

[kidkit]

I was the same way. I set the Xbox to 1080i because I thought that was the best resolution I could get. I then realized that the Xbox was just having to upscale to 1080, send it to the TV, the TV in the top right corner SAID 1080i, but that was simply what KIND of signal it was receiving. Since the Plasma is only 1360x768 max res, it was then having to DOWNscale back to 720p.

It is difficult to find many Plasmas that are 1080p. The only Pioneer TV that is 1080p is $8000. No thankyou. Now a'days it isn't to hard to find an LCD that is 1080p, but for some reason the Plasmas seem to be falling behind, in the resolution area.

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/v3/pg/product/details/0,,2076_310069731_290043890,00.html
^^^ isn't even called a TV but a monitor.

Plasma TVs have larger rectangle shaped pixels, it's hard to fit high resolution on them, that's why it's taken this long... and also why 42" panels have the rediculous resolution of 1024x768.

If you could afford a Pioneer to begin with than you can afford to replace it in 2 years or so with an SED display (<1s response time, 1080p, better contrast than anything on the market).

I own a plasma too, i love it, but I'm 98% sure it's the only one I'm ever going to own - the format will die off pretty quick me thinks because of the growth of LCD and any emerging tech.

[Machera]

LMAO, afford another!! I saved up for 6 months for this TV. I would take it to bed with me if I could. I have not recovered from buying it yet though. There is no way I will be getting another any time soon, unless some Amazing technology comes out.

I used to be big into PC gaming. Since I am solely Xbox now I don't have to spend all that money on graphics crads/new PC's. Microsoft is amazing at coming out with new things though. I find myself wanting to buy all the Xbox crap so maybe console gaming isn't as cheap as PC gaming now days.

[Mkeller]

You need to tell your brain that you are actually harming quality because no 360 game renders at 1080i. They all render at 720p OR LESS (!!) and scale up to 720p or 1080i/p.

By setting your xbox to 1080i all you do is tell it to upscale a 720p image to 1080i which is then processed AGAIN by your display and scaled to it's display resolution/aspec ratio. So you're scaling the image twice instead of once. With 720p you're on the safe side for most games because that's what they render at and that's what the 360 will output natively without scaling.
Interesting..
Well, I'm going to throw something else into the mix. I use a VGA cable and I run 1280x1024, am I getting an inferior upconverted picture because of that?
Is there a specific resolution I should use?
Would I get a better picture(not resolution) on a 720p TV?
Just comparing the sheer number of pixels says otherwise, but I'd like a second opinion.

Thanks!

[Machera]

Doesn't that look weird, stretched? These games are designed for 1280x720, a wide screen picture. It has to be stretching the image or scaling regardless of the setting you dictate. I could be wrong though, never tried a setting like that with an XBOX, mainly because I can't.

[Mkeller]

Doesn't that look weird, stretched? These games are designed for 1280x720, a wide screen picture. It has to be stretching the image or scaling regardless of the setting you dictate. I could be wrong though, never tried a setting like that with an XBOX, mainly because I can't.

I know most every game is set to work with the VGA converter. It looks slightly distorted the first time that it's run, but a few adjustments on the monitor and it looks very good.
I'm running an old Sun workstation CRT monitor a 21 incher.
I figured that it would provide much better picture quality than 1080i/p etc.
After reading this thread, I began to wonder whether that is the case.
Does anyone know if a CRT outputs a progressive scan image?

[Voyager2k]

Well, I'm going to throw something else into the mix. I use a VGA cable and I run 1280x1024, am I getting an inferior upconverted picture because of that?
Is there a specific resolution I should use?
Would I get a better picture(not resolution) on a 720p TV?

To answer the first question: yes, you get an inferior upscaled picture

At 1280x1024 your xbox needs to scale the 1280x720 image quite a bit because of the largely diffrent aspect ratio of your display.

The best resolution to use is the one that requires no scaling or scaling ONCE.

No scaling would only be possible in very few cases of course (game renders 720p and you have a native 720p display (dlp for example) or game does 1080i/p and you have a 1080i/p display).

If you have a standard LCD display with a native resolution of 1366x768 you'll want your xbox to output 720p for games, and 720p or 1080i for movies depending on what resolution the movie has. That way your xbox never needs to scale the image and your TV does it all.

Now, there are those crappy cheap LCD's out there that have pisspoor internal scalers. If you have one of those it CAN (!!) make sense to force the 360 to scale the image by using a VGA cable and scale to the display's native resolution so the pisspoor tv-scaler won't touch the image.

Unfortunately a disturbingly large part of the community seems to believe in voodoo magic and insists that VGA almost always is the better option because the xbox outputs 1360x768 via VGA, not knowing that games render at 720p or less anyway and assuming that outputting (not rendering) at a displays native resolution would result in the best image quality.

To make a long story short, keep in mind your xbox renders at 720p or less (may change in the future) and you'll want to avoid scaling if you can and if you can't the let your TV do it because it's better at it in most cases than your xbox is :) Also helps your xbox to produce less heat ^^

[Mkeller]

To answer the first question: yes, you get an inferior upscaled picture

At 1280x1024 your xbox needs to scale the 1280x720 image quite a bit because of the largely diffrent aspect ratio of your display.

The best resolution to use is the one that requires no scaling or scaling ONCE.

No scaling would only be possible in very few cases of course (game renders 720p and you have a native 720p display (dlp for example) or game does 1080i/p and you have a 1080i/p display).

If you have a standard LCD display with a native resolution of 1366x768 you'll want your xbox to output 720p for games, and 720p or 1080i for movies depending on what resolution the movie has. That way your xbox never needs to scale the image and your TV does it all.

Now, there are those crappy cheap LCD's out there that have pisspoor internal scalers. If you have one of those it CAN (!!) make sense to force the 360 to scale the image by using a VGA cable and scale to the display's native resolution so the pisspoor tv-scaler won't touch the image.

Unfortunately a disturbingly large part of the community seems to believe in voodoo magic and insists that VGA almost always is the better option because the xbox outputs 1360x768 via VGA, not knowing that games render at 720p or less anyway and assuming that outputting (not rendering) at a displays native resolution would result in the best image quality.

To make a long story short, keep in mind your xbox renders at 720p or less (may change in the future) and you'll want to avoid scaling if you can and if you can't the let your TV do it because it's better at it in most cases than your xbox is :) Also helps your xbox to produce less heat ^^

I'm sure the Voodoo Magic problem, as you put it, comes from PC users, the higher the resolution, the better. IE, jack the resolution up until you start to experience problems with your frame rate. That's one of the reasons that I prefer console gaming. I used to spend more time trying to optimize a game than I did actually enjoying it...

So, I set my 360 to 1280x720, the picture looks no better, inferior in fact, but I'm not having to change the horizontal size of the picture to account for the distortion.

Thanks for the assistance.

[Curry]

It's all a simple matter of using the one that fits your screen's native resolution best. I have a 1920x1080 telly, hence my 360 runs at 1080i. It's much MUCH MUCH better than 720p on my TV. Because it's native and thus no interpolation/stretching.

Yes it's interlaced, but contrary to popular belief this does NOT mean you get 30fps instead of 60fps. Interlacing means that you get 60 real frames at half the height, slightly moved and then fitted into eachother. Essentially this means that, since the human eye can discern 60fps, you can see a "comb" effect on fast moving scenery. The television is responsible for deinterlacing this using comb filters and the like. On my television it's impossible to see any kind of combing at more than 2 feet distance (37" LCD), and obviously the usual viewing distance is rather higher.

[GhosT]

My tv's res is 1366 x 768 but I always keep it on 1080i, would it be better for me to keep it on 720p or does it just not matter at all.

[Praetorian]

720 p is closer to the resolution your TV can manage, but try it with your own eyes. Take a game and run it at both resolutions and see what you like.

I would still say 720p would work better for you.

[max2663]

Eye Candy? Which Wins? 1080i vs 720p And What About 1080p?
By Bob Wood Platinum Quality Author

The latest great thing in home theater displays is the emergence of 1080p resolution displays. p stands for progressive, which means the screen fills all at once at 1/60th of a second, versus i for interlaced, which means every other line, then the other half of the full picture, each field displaying at 1/30th of a second.

At this time, there is no source for broadcast 1080p programming. Instead, we have 1080i: two interlaced fields make a frame, at 1/30th second for each field.

Finger it out!


Take your fingers and spread them apart. That’s a crude example of interlaced. When you bring the hands together, you combine both fields and you get the whole picture (one frame). It happens fast enough that you don’t notice the effect unless there’s motion on the screen, then you might see a difference in the smoothness of the motion.

Progressive is all the fingers at once. 720p is fewer pixels, faster: 1/60th second per frame.

1080 = 1920 x 1080 pixels | 720 = 1280 x 720 pixels

Till recently, HDTVs were either 720p or 1080i. Most TV transmissions were 1080i. I believe ABC adopted 720p because it would have shown sports with better pictures. I also remember back when Panasonic Broadcast underwrote ABC (as 720p) – or at least Monday Night Football. Fox and ESPN now also do 720P. The others are 1080i.

The new 1080p sets don’t have the front end circuitry to actually receive that resolution. But, again, nothing is transmitting that res anyway. What the advantage is, is how these sets show 1080i – they have the pixel count to do it without trouble. They deinterlace the transmission and present it full frame without throwing away any detail. A 720p set has to downconvert a 1080i signal. In that downconversion you can lose some detail.

(BUT) OH SAY CAN YOU SEE?

But there’s a more important issue – can you really see the difference in resolution between 1080i and 1080p? Tests of visual acuity to determine the resolution required of a television transmission system by the BBC’s J.O. Drewery and R. Salmon determined that at 9 feet, a 50 inch screen at 720p’s resolution will give you all the resolution you can see! At 9 feet, a 56 incher needs 1080i to avoid seeing the pixel structure. If you sit farther or closer, you may need more resolution.

1080i vs 720p: MOTION CHANGES EVERYTHING

Motion is different issue. If you want to see motion clearly, then live action 720p is what looks best, compared to 1080i. Here’s why: the information content of 720p is about the same as 1080i, though what it lacks in spatial resolution, it makes up for in temporal resolution (because the picture is at 1/60th of a second, not 1/30th x 2.) On 1080i, this would show as flickered or jagged edges on bright horizontal objects (like in the background of a camera pan.)

The good news? As the retailers hawk 1080p, you might find a killer deal on a 720p set and not give up anything in what I’ll call ‘effective’ picture quality to get it.

Bob Wood cuts through confusion and technical detail to offer a clear guide: what you need to know to shop wisely; how to then maximize the performance of your Home Theater system. His website, http://www.GreatHomeTheater.com has been called “refreshingly easy to understand!”

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Wood

Hi yeh you know to much go back to your day job unless your day job is this where i suggest a holiday to a place with no electricity for a very long time so once your back you'll be very confused at what happens to be the very best graphics at the time

[UKJAY]

My TV is a 50inch Panasonic plasma that only displays 1080i via HDMI so I have the xbox360 on the next best setting which looks great anyway.

I have seen an xbox360 with 1080 res on a HD projection machine (yes machine, not TV) where its projected onto a white screen...looked amazing

[Markoff_Cheney]

so far with my testing, 720p is the bees knees.
motion blur be gone-o. clarity wise i cant tell the difference between the two, but i got a fairly low-middle end 32 inch widescreen LCD.

[Vasu]

The only things that count is if you screen can handle 1980x1080 (see manual) if it does it should look slightly better and bigger :P