MY PC monitor is 24 inches and 1080p, was that a bad choice? I think not, if the size of the pixels was even a little more noticeable I'd be staring at a grid, as it is it's a crystal clear image thank you very much.

Determine how much you are willing to spend, how big a TV you want, and what you will be using it for. Find a few TV's online that interest you and head to the store (you have no obligation to buy from the store you are visiting, so pick one that works well with customers and has all the TVs you are interested in)

Want to watch Blu-Ray movies? Take a movie that you love and know very well (preferably new rather than an old film updated to blu-ray). Ask the store clerk to load that movie into the player and compare the two TVs side by side (well, in the same store so you can walk back and forth). Play with the TV settings to make it look the best possible, as anyone could have adjusted them, and store defaults really could be anything.

Buy the TV that looks the best to you for the money you are willing to spend. All the bells and whistles mean nothing if you can't notice a difference.

Plasma TV's are great if you can control the light level in the room and are the cheapest, however I believe the new LED TVs are superior in most situations as Plasmas don't work so great in brightly lit rooms. I've seen equivalent LED and LCD tv's from the same brand side by side and the LED look so much more vibrant. In theory any type of TV on the market today (with exception of projectors) will last 10 years under normal use. Obviously sometimes electronics break and they'll die early, but bulb life and burn in shouldn't be a problem unless you run the TV 10hr/day every single day.

As for brands, Sony and Samsung are considered among the top. I personally like to buy Vizio as it is a nice compromise between cost/features/quality. They make a quality TV with a good warrnary (no bright pixels). Mine still works great 3.5 years later compared to my parents Sony which has 1 stuck pixel right in the middle of the screen and a bright spot in the lower left corner. Obviously there is a bit of luck in if you have a problem. Vizio, Panasonic and LG rank higly on CNET right along with Sony/Samsung. Which is the most reliable, I don't really know.

I honestly don't even know why PC monitors even use the 720p, or 1080p branding other than trying to get sales using HD buzz words. PC monitors have had greater than HD resolutions even before they went wide screen. IMO, buying a 1080p monitor is almost a downgrade. Nowadays especially when you can buy monitors with 2560x1600 monitors or 2048x1152.
Either way, I am glad you are happy with your 1920x1080 res monitor.

Since I've been a PC gamer for a really long time, I can start telling the difference even on screens smaller than 30', of course, it also depends on how far away you sit, the further you are, the lesser the difference it will appear to your eyes. The sharpness in the display picture makes a huge difference in between 720p and 1080p with trained eyes. That being sad, I'm clearly not a big fan of AA in general when it comes to gaming and would rather be at a higher res than blurring out the edges like a cheap whore. /shrug

1080p is a downgrade yes, 16x10 > 16x9. there shouldn't be a reason to not get a 1920x1200 monitor as a bare minimum PC display.

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!

Cool, cool. Well, I'm not gonna listen to test results and statistics for people that aren't me.

I'm going to use my monitor and experiment with the different resolutions and the viewing distance that's comfortable for me *did his like a year ago*. End results:

Hey!!! Guess what?! 1080p looks much clearer on my 25'5 monitor... i've very close to the screen though. My face is less than 4 feet away most of the time.

It's not possible to get native 1080p from a DVD....we wouldn't need bluray if we could

ok well i didnt read the article really....so what they are saying is the game was made on a hd disc for that old hd drive add on?? that article is tl;dr

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.

now this is just complete garbage. 1080p has nothing to do with the medium it is stored on (DVD, Blu-Ray, HDD, USB Stick). Anyone who is posting any kind of information should know that.