HDTV's

[Kwaad]

baka said: I don't necessarily agree with that last bit, although I do believe that 1080p resolution in general is not important on a television. 720p is 1280x768, and 1080p is 1920x1080. I have a laptop with a 15.2" 1920x1200 display, slightly higher than a 1080p television can display vertically due to a television's interface bandwidth limitations. (Single link DVI has the same limitation FWIW.) You can definitely tell when it's running a game, or anything for that matter, at a lower resolution by which the physical resolution cannot be evenly divided. This is mostly due to interpolation, as said interpolation causes a blurring effect. The center of some pixels in a 720p image will map to a location in between two physical pixels of a 1080p device, which means you either have it serviced by two pixels (possibly at different levels for good interpolation,) pick one and have it offset, or resample the entire image in real time. Some displays do a reasonably good job of this, however it's definitely visible on any LCD I've ever seen when it is running at a lower resolution. An image with large areas of high contrast should show the effect of the first two operations, it's the down side to having well defined physical pixels while subsampling your data selectively to a lower resolution. If the display resamples the entire image and redisplays it, you lose some of the input data and its associated contrast. That may well be true for televisions. I'd wager that the majority simply aren't interested, especially those with poor vision. Look at how long it's taking digital broadcasting to take hold. It's taken a mandate from the government to shut down analogue television, no doubt because people largely aren't willing to get rid of their current televisions. I know I'm not. My computer monitor on the other hand is HD resolution almost all the time, barring a game that pushes the hardware too much. It's certainly not 27", but you can tell when it's running at a lower resolution. Still, I don't mind the resolution difference at all when I use one of my consoles.

if it is a notebook. You are less than 2 feet from the screen. You are talking about you notice the interpolation. You dont notice that on a 1080p screen. And once agian, on the 720p Everything runs native to it. 1280/768=1.7777 1920/1080=1.7777 There is an aspect ratio problem with notebooks. As you just said 1920x1200. Let's find a aspect ratio that is equal. 1920/1200=1.6 1280/1024=1.25 1280/960=1.33 1280/800=1.6 1024/768=1.33 960/600=1.6 800/600=1.33 I have never seen a Normal Computer monitor run a 1.6. Unless it is a notebook. Notebooks have some weird widescreen aspect ratios. As long as you run your notebook at one of the listed 1.6 resolutions. It WILL look horrible. Welcome to screwing up aspect ratios. You dont have that from 720p to 1080p. I dont care if a rat can kill a goat. Not counting the screwed up aspect ratio of a widescreen monitor. What you are seeing is NOT the problem of up-scaleing, it is the problem of changeing aspect ratio. :)