720 or 1080 for a large room ??

j_garcia said:

Huh? Not sure where you got that but I don't know a single person who sits less than 5' from their display, and the difference between 720p and 1080p at about 10' is quite apparent. At 16' I'd say you would still notice a difference, though the fine detail will obviously be less apparent.

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Cool beans.

"THX recommended viewing distance for a 50" screen is 5.6 ft"

That's an interesting chart, but what exactly is it based on? Who's measurements and what are the determining factors? I just installed my new 1080p set this weekend and at the same viewing difference the improvement is easily noticeable from anywhere in the room between 720p and 1080p.

Worth the read

Here is the link to the article from which that chart came from. I don’t really think there is anything shady going on here and it is a worth while article.

j_garcia said:

That's an interesting chart, but what exactly is it based on? Who's measurements and what are the determining factors? I just installed my new 1080p set this weekend and at the same viewing difference the improvement is easily noticeable from anywhere in the room between 720p and 1080p.

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That is doubtful, unless you have extremely good vision. What you're most likely seeing is a superior TV with better color definition and less backlight bleed. I have 20/15 vision and I certainly can't see the different between 720p (1366x768 or 1MP) compared to 1080p (2MP) from 10ft on a 37''.

Go into a store and compare two TVs with truly equal technology except for resolution. Make sure they are both on the same picture setting.

I'm not the only one who noticed the immediate difference, so no matter what the numbers tell us, I know what I see and so does everyone else in the house and nobody needs excellent vision to see that difference. I went from a HD CRT that had excellent PQ to a fluorescent LCD that does not have blacks that are as good as the CRT. The difference is easily noticeable on the same material.

j_garcia said:

I'm not the only one who noticed the immediate difference, so no matter what the numbers tell us, I know what I see and so does everyone else in the house and nobody needs excellent vision to see that difference. I went from a HD CRT that had excellent PQ to a fluorescent LCD that does not have blacks that are as good as the CRT. The difference is easily noticeable on the same material.

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The resolution is 4th on the list at that link above of importance for seeing differences, according to ISF. Contrast, Color saturation and something else may be the reason for the differences? And, bias can still be a factor, no?

The chart says you would need to be approximately 5ft to see ALL of the benefits. That does not mean you cannot see the benefits at 10ft or that at 6ft you can't see any difference. This new TV does not have contrast anywhere near as good as my CRT did, but it does have clearly finer detail when viewing 1080p material and better color. I don't disagree that on the exact same set, 1080p and 720p would be close at the same distances, but that doesn't mean they would be nearly impossible to identify. There was a "study" recently where they asked random people at CEDIA if they could tell the difference between Apple's 720p HD and true 1080p Blu-ray and 80% chose 1080p (on the same, uncalibrated digital displays).

j_garcia said:

The chart says you would need to be approximately 5ft to see ALL of the benefits. That does not mean you cannot see the benefits at 10ft or that at 6ft you can't see any difference. This new TV does not have contrast anywhere near as good as my CRT did, but it does have clearly finer detail when viewing 1080p material and better color. I don't disagree that on the exact same set, 1080p and 720p would be close at the same distances, but that doesn't mean they would be nearly impossible to identify. There was a "study" recently where they asked random people at CEDIA if they could tell the difference between Apple's 720p HD and true 1080p Blu-ray and 80% chose 1080p (on the same, uncalibrated digital displays).

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Now it comes out that you owned a CRT and though it was 720p. Your CRT was most likely a 1080i native display, which is the same resolution as your 1080p set, only interlaced. The eliminated flicker is probably what you noticed the most. That would be visible from up to 30' or more I suppose.

No, 1080i and 720p are not the same resolutions. You could have been feeding your TV a 720p or 1080p signal, but how the TV may have used that signal is another story. Maybe it was scaling the 720p signal down to 540p then back up to 1080i, or something like that. Who knows. It seems like a lot of those TVs handled 1080i or 480p the best if my memory serves me correctly. The bottom line is that your 1080i CRT doesn't apply to this conversation about two similar LCDs with different progressive scan resolutions. (don't mean to sound condescending if it's coming off that way).

The study you're quoting doesn't mention viewing distance, picture size or whether or not two comparable displays were used.

No, it doesn't come across as condescendign. The article said the comparison was run on the same display, not two different ones.

I was feeding the CRT 1080i for Blu-ray and 720p for games on the PS3.

j_garcia said:

No, it doesn't come across as condescendign. The article said the comparison was run on the same display, not two different ones.

I was feeding the CRT 1080i for Blu-ray and 720p for games on the PS3.

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FYI - A lot of blu-ray players have pretty poor quality through the component output. The poor quality I'm referring to has nothing to do with 1080i resolution itself or the component format, both are fine. Try it on your present TV and compare it to 1080i through HDMI. I think you might be surprised.

rekced said:

FYI - A lot of blu-ray players have pretty poor quality through the component output. The poor quality I'm referring to has nothing to do with 1080i resolution itself or the component format, both are fine. Try it on your present TV and compare it to 1080i through HDMI. I think you might be surprised.

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I was using HDMI for both. I didn't have any complaints about the PQ on my old set at all; that was the reason I kept it for so long. The only thing I was really looking to get with the upgrade was the ability to mount it on the wall. 1080p was just a bonus.

How can anyone with a 50" screen sit 5.6' from it? That's just lunacy. My eyes would jump out of my sockets and yell at me if I did that.

I bet jostenmeat would if he had to settle for a 50" screen

Nemo128 said:

How can anyone with a 50" screen sit 5.6' from it? That's just lunacy. My eyes would jump out of my sockets and yell at me if I did that.

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Nemo, a lot of people seem to say this kind of thing. I believe, if what you say is true, that you cannot ever enjoy a movie theater. Even from the back row.

I just saw two movies (and it's been a year or so since I last went). Both movies were in different digital DLP projector theaters.

I saw UP from 1/3 from the front. I saw Terminator from about 3/4.

3/4 back from Terminator was nearly identical in viewing angle to my front row, which is 42 degree viewing angle, or only 4.7 ft from a 50" TV.

UP from 1/3 back was significantly more immersive than my front row. I will guess 4ft from a 50" TV to be similiar. Give or take a couple of inches.

Do your eyes jump out of your sockets and yell at you in the theater?


Now, I am somewhat confused as to what exactly the THX rec of 36 degrees applies to. For many, for a while now, I think people believe it to be the middle row of a theater. However, I've been told by videophiles that 36 degrees is the THX recommendation for the BACK row of a theater.

Therefore, 5.6' from a 50" TV is the back row of a THX spec'd theater.

Just want to put this in perspective for those who think this way.

EDIT: I was going to attach a diagram here that I've posted before, but it appears to have been deleted.

jostenmeat said:

Nemo, a lot of people seem to say this kind of thing. I believe, if what you say is true, that you cannot ever enjoy a movie theater. Even from the back row.

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There will always be a group that disagrees with that, considering we are coming out of a 70-80 year period of interlaced televisions that were NOT intended to be used as theater screens. Because of that, people just see the theater as "big" and have rightfully disconnected that from what we see at home. I'd assume that 99% of people buying larger TVs see it as a luxury to have a big screen, for whatever reason. Very few of them ever realize that the same picture could be achieved by sitting closer to a smaller screen. Obviously, the "ideal" size and brightness based on many factors relating to human vision never occurs to most people. One more point: Since most people watch television constantly, they know very well that a theater screen would be too large for watching some crappy reality TV show (are those still popular? I wouldn't know)