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greenmedic88 on 28 December 2009
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Reasonable said:
dahuman said:
Reasonable said:
As others have said - and to be fair the article makes clear itself - the major factor is distance.

If you are going to be sitting fairly close to the screen when playing/watching then even on smaller TVs you will see a noticeable improvement with 1080p - particularly with sports and action movies and fast moving games.

Secondly, going forward more and more content (even games potentially) will be in 1080p, so buying below that now may reduce the potential lifetime of your TV.

Of course, money is money, and a 720p or 1080i TV should serve fine for the foreseeable future, and will be ideal with a PS3 or 360.

But if you can afford it, going 1080p is simply a better choice and the cost differential between 720p and 1080p TVs is dropping all the time.

For videogames right now 720p is probably the key resolution for consoles, with 1080p the resolution if you really intend to watch BR movies and 1080p programmes.

Of course, on PC, as others have said, 1080p has long been old news!

to be reasonable, why the hell would people buy a 40 inch TV and purposely put it super far away anyways? totally defeats the purpose of having a big screen TV, might as well get a huge white wall and a high quality projector if your living room is that big.

I know.  It's just the weird fact that so many comparisons talk about 'unless sitting closer than 8 feet you won't notice much difference' and I think, heck, I've never really sat further away than 8 feet and tried to play a game or watch a movie.

I'm guessing that the "unless sitting closer than 8 feet" pops up so often is because it's probably around the average viewing distance of the typical living room.

I'm half of the notion that most people who say 1080p doesn't matter simply already own 720p sets, don't want to buy another one and tell themselves it doesn't make a difference.

But even on a 55" flat panel, I still find myself gaming at about 5' away. And at 1920x1080, you can still make out the individual pixels at that distance, even with a native 1080p source. A 720p signal would look extremely chunky at that distance on a screen that large. Personally, I like the tighter dot pitch of a 37" at 1920x1080p, but only at closer sitting distances.

It's kind of a moot point anyway since it's already been noted that you'd be hard pressed to find an HDTV over 32" that wasn't 1080p these days. It's not even a "premium" feature anymore. The only reason for anything smaller is for a table top TV or really small room.