I've been tossing my opinion in various threads about 1080p and 720p in various threads but now I see my opinion was based on mis-information.  I've been saying that there is no noticeable difference.  THERE IS!  I have a 1080p capable HDTV.  I also have my PS3, Wii U, Xbox 360, and my (shitty) PC connected to it.  Anyway, the three HD consoles are all set for 1080p.

The thing that made me realize the difference was the fact that I bought a new PS3 on Black Friday.  With the Wii U and Xbox 360, my HDTV says "1080p" no matter what game I play on them.  I could play a 480p Wii game on my Wii U and my TV will still display 1080p in the upper right hand corner, despite the game being blurry crap.  Games like Super Mario 3D World and Tomb Raider look fantastic because they're already HD games.  Not 1080p but 720p upscaled.  Yesterday, on PS3, I tossed in a few games like Little Big Planet and The Last of Us (Fantastic title, so far!) and the TV settings changed to 720p.  The thing is, a 720p game on the 360 was upscaled to 1080p.  A 720p game on the PS3 stayed at 720p.  I don't know how I had my old PS3 configured but this wasn't the case, before.  Even when my PS3 games weren't native 1080p, they were displayed at the higher res, according to my TV.  Now, they aren't doing that.

The point of this whole rant is this:

I think a lot of PS3 owners that are buying PS4's have been playing native 720p games displayed at 720p and are now experiencing the quantum leap to 1080p.  A lot of Xbox 360/Wii U owners that are playing Xbox One/PS4 games are used to playing native 720p games that were upscaled to 1080p so they haven't noticed the difference.

The difference between 720p and 1080p is huge so I'm glad to know that I'm not "blind" like many on this site have been calling me lately!  I've just never played a 720p game at 720p until yesterday. 

*edit* disregard.  I still have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about.  Some 720p games look great.  Some 720p games look blurry.  I don't know what to say.

On a side note, can somebody tell me how to set my PS3 so that 720p games are upscaled to 1080p, again? For the life of me, I can't figure it out. The Last of Us at 720p is pissing me off!

You do realize that playing games at a upscaled resolution is far worse than playing it natively?

So I keep hearing but that's not the case for me.  I just tested that with Tomb Raider on the 360 a few minutes ago--before I made this thread, actually.  I played it at 720p and 1080p on the 360.  I prefer the 1080p setting by far.  At the same time, I'm going crazy trying to figure out how to get The Last of Us to run at an upscaled resolution.

There isn't a big difference between 1080p and 720p.

What's going on:

Unlike CRT TVs, LCD TVs have only one native resolution. Everything that don't have that res is upscaled/downscaled. So when you send an image to the TV that doesn't match the screen native resolution (like that 720p image from a PS3) it looks like trash because it's the TV the one upscaling it to 1080, and they usually do a poor job at it.

Your X360 720p games look good because the X360 takes the 720p game image, upscales it to 1080p and then sends it to the TV.

So: Use a 720p TV for games with 720p output.

If it's full screen, it is upscaled to 1080p. Doesn't matter if the console or the TV does the job (unless you have a real bad TV). Think about it, your TV has 1920x1080 pixels. If that screen is filled up, you have an upscaled image, period.

Oh, and by the way, the PS3 doesn't do upscaling automatically. There is no option for it. You can set it to 1080p in the video settings, but if a game decides to run at 720p (like The Last of Us) there is no way to force the PS3 to upscale. It will be done by your TV.

My Panasonic viera 42" 1080p plasma TV does a pretty good job at upscaling actually. Wii games looks much better when I play them on my Wii with component cables and 480p. I've tried some Wii games on the Wii U, but they look MUCH worse and pixelated there. So the Wii games looks a lot more delightful from the Wii.

Games like Uncharted at 720p looks great on my TV too. My brother's more modern LED TV makes 720p games look horrible in comparison.

In the living room there is another model of the Viera that's 37". And that produces the same result at upscaling, really great.

Console Upscaling > Standard HD TV Upscaling

There are TVs that have superior upscaling tho

Maybe the PS3 can't upscale, so your TV is doing it

Wii U I know for a fact does it itself, hence why upscale 1080p still looks nice

No idea on 360

I may be misunderstanding what you're saying.  I'm using an LED HDTV (still an LCD, I know).  It always shows what resolution it's displaying in the upper right hand corner. 

Doing a quick run through of the things connected to it

• If I run DirecTV HD on it, it shows "1080i" in the upper right, even when the programming itself is sub-HD
• When I run the 360, it says "1080p" regardless of what resolution the game I'm playing is running
• When I run my Wii, it says "480p" regardless of what game is running, even Super Nes games!
• When I change to Wii U, it says "1080p" regardless of which game I'm running...even if I change it to Wii Mode (which is still blurry)
• When I run my PS3, it says "1080p" until the actual game starts playing.  Then, it says 720p.
• When I run the PC, it says "1024 x 768" (I can run it sharper but I sit so far away that everything is too small to see)

Give me some guidance, here.

360 upscales, my brother has one.