1080p vs 720p

okay so i am going to be getting a new HD tv for my ps3 in the next few months whether it be 3 months or 10 months. now i was considering buying a 32 inch model but don't know whether i should get one which is 720p or 1080p. i watch tv and play games from about 10-11 feet away from my tv. now my question is would i be able to see an improvement or difference between the 1080p and 720p at that screen size and viewing distance?

1080p.

720p is pointless. There is a very noticeable difference. Especially in PS3 games. 1080p is much more crisp, better coloring, lighting, etc. A year or two ago I would have said get the 720p because the price difference would have been gigantic, but today there are LG-Brand 42" 1080p LCD HDTV's at Best Buy for under $700.

1080p.

720p is pointless. There is a very noticeable difference. Especially in PS3 games. 1080p is much more crisp, better coloring, lighting, etc. A year or two ago I would have said get the 720p because the price difference would have been gigantic, but today there are LG-Brand 42" 1080p LCD HDTV's at Best Buy for under $700.

rawr_xd

Unless you plan on watching alot of Blu-Rays, get a 720p. Most games and TV shows are broadcasted at 720 or 1080i, the only thing broadcasted at 1080p are Blu-Rays and stuff you download online that's presented at 1080p.

[QUOTE="rawr_xd"]

1080p.

720p is pointless. There is a very noticeable difference. Especially in PS3 games. 1080p is much more crisp, better coloring, lighting, etc. A year or two ago I would have said get the 720p because the price difference would have been gigantic, but today there are LG-Brand 42" 1080p LCD HDTV's at Best Buy for under $700.

KHAndAnime

:P

[QUOTE="KHAndAnime"][QUOTE="rawr_xd"]

1080p.

720p is pointless. There is a very noticeable difference. Especially in PS3 games. 1080p is much more crisp, better coloring, lighting, etc. A year or two ago I would have said get the 720p because the price difference would have been gigantic, but today there are LG-Brand 42" 1080p LCD HDTV's at Best Buy for under $700.

Makari

:P

You know, I can't tell the difference.

My hdtv supports 1080p but not sure, when I play 360 or ps3 is set on 1080p or not.

Since the tv is 32inch its not gonna make a huge difference between either one. if its gonna save you alot get the 720p because nost ps3 games come in 720p

Since the tv is 32inch its not gonna make a huge difference between either one. if its gonna save you alot get the 720p because nost ps3 games come in 720p

ASRCSR

I'm currently in the same situation as OP, trying to figure out whether or not to go with a 1080p or 720p screen for my consoles (although I'm looking at getting a 22-24" screen that I'll be sitting 2 feet away from, not a 32" screen from 10 feet away).

The conclusion I've come to after looking around online is that it's best to go with a 720p screen. Very few games on either the PS3 or X360 are in native 1080p and the ones that are tend to have simple graphics (hence why the console can run them in 1080p native). As a result the image quality actually looks worse on a 1080p TV than it does on a 720p TV (as any PC gamer who's tried to play a game at a lower resolution than their monitor's native resolution can tell you). You get the same issue with television broadcasts, most are in 720p/1080i, not 1080p.

1080p only seems to be worth it if you have an extensive blu-ray collection or want to play PC games on it. The infrastructure in place for TV broadcasts doesn't allow for enough bandwidth to transmit uncompressed 1080p signals and current gen consoles are too weak to play games at resolutions higher than 720p (in fact, many games don't even run at 720p but rather at resolutions slightly lower like 540p).

Also, if you sitting 10 feet or more away from your television you're not going to see a lick of difference between 720p and 1080p. Hell, it's questionable whether you would even be able to see a difference between SD and HD at all from that distance. And on a screen that's 32" you wouldn't see a difference between 720p and 1080p unless you're sitting very close anyway.

It makes absolutely no sense to buy a 1080p 32" set that you watch from 10' away. In fact, at that distance, even full 720p is not completely evident to the human eye. People that say 1080p is the only way to go without any other point of reference have no idea what they are talking about. Resolution is entirely dependent on how far you sit from a set size TV and the limits of the human eye to discern that resolution. As for PS3 gaming at 1080p, all you are really seeing is upscaled 720p games as there's something like 2 PS3 games that are natively 1080p available. alphamale1989 states the most truth in his first 2 sentences, but then makes a mistake in the the last one by not saying "But ideally you'll save up and get a good 1080p if you are going to sit close enough to the set such that your eyes can discern the difference. See the chart: http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html" Lastly, if most of what you watch is 720p, you will probably have a better picture watching such material on a 720p set. Don't believe me? Look how good a 480p Wii game looks on a 720p TV. It's an issue of having to scale the picture up to whatever the native resolution is on today's fixed pixel flat panels. HDTV CRT's had some downfalls (namely size and heft), but they could natively accept 480i/p, 720i/p, 1080i/p, etc such that they could adjust to natively display these resolutions with no scaling or artifacting.rastan

I'm currently in the same situation as OP, trying to figure out whether or not to go with a 1080p or 720p screen for my consoles (although I'm looking at getting a 22-24" screen that I'll be sitting 2 feet away from, not a 32" screen from 10 feet away).

The conclusion I've come to after looking around online is that it's best to go with a 720p screen. Very few games on either the PS3 or X360 are in native 1080p and the ones that are tend to have simple graphics (hence why the console can run them in 1080p native). As a result the image quality actually looks worse on a 1080p TV than it does on a 720p TV (as any PC gamer who's tried to play a game at a lower resolution than their monitor's native resolution can tell you). You get the same issue with television broadcasts, most are in 720p/1080i, not 1080p.

1080p only seems to be worth it if you have an extensive blu-ray collection or want to play PC games on it. The infrastructure in place for TV broadcasts doesn't allow for enough bandwidth to transmit uncompressed 1080p signals and current gen consoles are too weak to play games at resolutions higher than 720p (in fact, many games don't even run at 720p but rather at resolutions slightly lower like 540p).

Also, if you sitting 10 feet or more away from your television you're not going to see a lick of difference between 720p and 1080p. Hell, it's questionable whether you would even be able to see a difference between SD and HD at all from that distance. And on a screen that's 32" you wouldn't see a difference between 720p and 1080p unless you're sitting very close anyway.

gameguy6700

the difference bettween 720p and 1080p is negligable on consoles.

Since the tv is 32inch its not gonna make a huge difference between either one. if its gonna save you alot get the 720p because nost ps3 games come in 720p

ASRCSR

the difference bettween 720p and 1080p is negligable on consoles.

rockzo

Wow, you opened up a can of worms in here eh?;)

If you're getting a PS3 it would benefit a lot more from 1080p. However, I used to have a 32" and I was also about 10 feet away from it and I still found myself squinting at times to make out all the detail, both because of the size of the set and the tightness of the resolution. Sad to say, at that size it's really not going to matter dude, but with the little price difference between the two now i'd still go with 1080p for bluray's sake, also because more and more games are going to be made in 1080p, so you will want that extra detail as well as draw-distance quality. Maybe just sit a little closer.

Wow, you opened up a can of worms in here eh?;)

If you're getting a PS3 it would benefit a lot more from 1080p. However, I used to have a 32" and I was also about 10 feet away from it and I still found myself squinting at times to make out all the detail, both because of the size of the set and the tightness of the resolution. Sad to say, at that size it's really not going to matter dude, but with the little price difference between the two now i'd still go with 1080p for bluray's sake, also because more and more games are going to be made in 1080p, so you will want that extra detail as well as draw-distance quality. Maybe just sit a little closer.

clay1311

No they aren't. If anything less games will be coming out in 1080p. Console gamers don't really seem to realize that their consoles are really just very specialized PCs. They're still subject to hardware constraints on framerate and graphics quality. The reality is that neither the X360 or PS3 are powerful enough to run games with good graphics at resolutions higher than 720p. In fact, many of the better looking games on those systems don't even run in 720p but rather some sort of sub-HD resolution like 540p. The games that do run at 1080p on consoles tend to have either mediocre or simplistic graphics (such as the kind of graphics you see in XBLA games) that are easy to for the hardware to pump up to 1080p. A developer can't max out eyecandy on a console game and still get it to run in 1080p. They have to either cut back on graphics detail or cut back on resolution.

As someone else in here already said, the television manufacturers have a done a great job at convincing people that higher resolution are always better. In reality, you need to other factors into account such as screen size, viewing distance, and source resolution. For example, trying to play an N64 game on a 1080p TV will make it look like crap compared to playing it on an SDTV since an N64 game outputs at 240p and thus looks best on a 240p screen.

Okay, I'm interested in getting a 32" HDTV for my room. I've measured and from where I'll be sitting when I watch movies or play games, it's nearly exactly eight feet from the screen's location. I've heard from many places that there's no difference on a 32" whether you go 720p or 1080p, but I'm seeing lots of people here saying "720p is good, unless you're watching a lot of Blu-rays". What's so bad about watching blu-rays on a 720p HDTV when the screen size isn't huge?drummer131

No there is none. The limit is the human eye. Your eyes can not see 1080p on a 42" at 7'rastan

I can easily see the the image quality benefit of 1080P from 7' on my 42". Even that silly distance/resolution chart proves it.

No you can not and no the chart doesn't say you can either. What you can see is the difference between a 720p and 1080p signal on that TV. Your tv is natively 1080p so feeding any other signal results in scaling and of course a native 1080p signal will look better as teh scaling is what is causing the difference in PQ you are seeing. The only way to compare teh 2 would be to have 2 TV's in the same line, one 720p and the other 1080p and then calibrate them the same, and then play the same source. From that distance they will look the same. Remember that resolution is only one factor in PQ, and it is a factor effected by the limits of human vision to see the set resolution from a set size tv from a certain distance. Of course if you sit within those limits, then yes the difference between 720p and 1080p are noticeable.rastan