1080/720 - Not so different?

[Jedi2016]

For some reason, this thought popped into my head the other day, and I started thinking.

Is there really a huge advantage to a 1080 television over a 720 one?

On the downside, I don't have either one to actually compare.. Still running on my ancient SD television. But I do have ways of fiddling with HD imagery on my computer.

I did some tests, by fiddling with image sizes in Photoshop, varying between 1920x1080 and 1280x720, and I discovered that there's a surprisingly small difference between them. Most films, even those shot on digital HD video, have a slight softness to them. The image is never perfectly sharp. As a result, an up-sized 720 image is practically identical to a native 1080 image. In many cases, there's no discernable difference at all. And believe me, I'm a nitpicker when it comes to video quality, since I work a fair bit in video, VFX, CGI, etc.

I'm starting to question my once-steadfast idea of buying only an HDTV that supported 1080. I'm thinking that I could spend about the same as a big 1080 CRT, and get an even bigger DLP, with no real loss in quality, even when playing HD video off of Blu-Ray or whatever.

What do you guys think? Is 720 enough for a movie buff? I'm starting to think it is.

(for those of you wondering, in the instances where I did notice a difference between the two, the 720 image suffered from slightly softer edges, and in some cases, less visible film grain.. it's quite possible that most non-videophile people wouldn't have seen any difference at all).

 

[The Chukker]

It's possible you might not see a difference if you are in a small room close to the tv as in my case, or perhaps using a smaller panel where the distance between pixels is very small. But perhaps with larger panels and most certainly with projectors and their relative distance from the viewing position -- there will be a visible difference between 921,600 pixels and 2,073,600 pixels.
I guess we'll have to wait and see when the content becomes available
If you are planning on buying a panel now...good things come to those who wait ...

 

[Jedi2016]

Price is keeping me away from flat-panels for the forseeable future. That was why I was thinking of a CRT, although it looks like I can get a decent DLP for not too much more.

 

[mtrycrafts]

For some reason, this thought popped into my head the other day, and I started thinking.

Is there really a huge advantage to a 1080 television over a 720 one?

On the downside, I don't have either one to actually compare.. Still running on my ancient SD television. But I do have ways of fiddling with HD imagery on my computer.

I did some tests, by fiddling with image sizes in Photoshop, varying between 1920x1080 and 1280x720, and I discovered that there's a surprisingly small difference between them. Most films, even those shot on digital HD video, have a slight softness to them. The image is never perfectly sharp. As a result, an up-sized 720 image is practically identical to a native 1080 image. In many cases, there's no discernable difference at all. And believe me, I'm a nitpicker when it comes to video quality, since I work a fair bit in video, VFX, CGI, etc.

I'm starting to question my once-steadfast idea of buying only an HDTV that supported 1080. I'm thinking that I could spend about the same as a big 1080 CRT, and get an even bigger DLP, with no real loss in quality, even when playing HD video off of Blu-Ray or whatever.

What do you guys think? Is 720 enough for a movie buff? I'm starting to think it is.

(for those of you wondering, in the instances where I did notice a difference between the two, the 720 image suffered from slightly softer edges, and in some cases, less visible film grain.. it's quite possible that most non-videophile people wouldn't have seen any difference at all).

As The Chukker mentioned, you need more resolution as you increase screen size. Your computer monitor is rather small. I am surprised you saw a difference.

If you ARE a movie buff, get the highest resolution TV will not be 1080p, too much bandwidth needed for that.

Go for a front projector, 10080p.

 

[The Chukker]

If you haven't quite made up your mind which panel you are leaning towards I would suggest perusing the article audioholics just posted a couple of days ago; there are some very useful comparisons between the different techs as well as a few that haven't made it to market yet.
Here: http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19905

 

[Jedi2016]

As The Chukker mentioned, you need more resolution as you increase screen size. Your computer monitor is rather small. I am surprised you saw a difference.

Well, let me tell you what I did, how I came up with the "not so different as we think" idea.

It started off several months ago in response to a friend of mine.. one of those "I don't see the big deal about high definition" folks. I decided to show her what the difference was by comparing SD and HD visually, side by side.

I would take a 480 screencap from a movie trailer, the H.264 things that Apple's been putting up lately. Then I took the same screencap from a 1080 trailer. I left the 1080 at it's native size, and up-rezzed the 480 cap to 1920x1080. Then I put them side by side in a single Photoshop image. The difference was (obviously) night and day. The SD image was fuzzy, and lacking almost all detail compared to the 1080 image.

I basically did the same thing with the HD images the other day, I up-rezzed a 720 image to 1080, and laid it over the 1080 image in Photoshop, so I could switch between them with a single mouse-click. And I noticed absolutely no difference whatsoever.

In this case, the images I used were super-high-resolution stills from Star Wars Episode III (3K+ in size). I would downsize two copies of the image, one to 1080, one to 720, then overlaid them both as 1080 (as they would be "projected" by a 1080 television). The difference, if there was one at all, was very slight.

I'm testing it again as we speak.. I'm going to take some screencaps from the high-definition Ice Age 2 trailer on Apple.com, 720 and 1080, and compare them. I'm using a CGI movie this time because they're raw digital files, and typically have sharper edges than live-action films.

My real question/point is that while 1080 is obviously the higher resolution, it might not provide enough of an increase in actual picture quality over 720. Which would beg the question of why I should spend so much more money on a 1080 TV than a 720 one, if I'm never really going to notice any improvement.

 

[Hanse18]

WHAT! You mean there IS a difference between 720p and 1080p? I thought it was just an excuse to spend more money so you could "beat" your neighbor's HDTV. I know that's the only reason I payed too much for my 1080p display

Yes, you have just proved another reason why 1080p is not what its cracked up to be. people may "future proof" by getting 1080p, but in reality, viewing a native 1080p image might let you sit like a foot closer to the TV than you would with 720p, but most people sit beyond that ideal HDTV viewing distance anyways (at least from what I have witnessed). Of course I am still buying a 1080p JVC (go ahead, call me a hypocrite), but it's a 70" screen, and since I am using a HTPC, it didn't seem right not to take full advantage of the video card, and skip the internal TV upconversion. And yes, the JVC will accept 1080p over HDMI, it just takes some minor tweaks and patience.

 

[djoxygen]

I would take a 480 screencap from a movie trailer, the H.264 things that Apple's been putting up lately. Then I took the same screencap from a 1080 trailer. I left the 1080 at it's native size, and up-rezzed the 480 cap to 1920x1080. Then I put them side by side in a single Photoshop image. The difference was (obviously) night and day. The SD image was fuzzy, and lacking almost all detail compared to the 1080 image.

I basically did the same thing with the HD images the other day, I up-rezzed a 720 image to 1080, and laid it over the 1080 image in Photoshop, so I could switch between them with a single mouse-click. And I noticed absolutely no difference whatsoever.

So the monitor you're using to preview these screen caps is actually 1920x1080? Damn I'm jealous. AFAIK, the smallest display that'll do that is about a 23" LCD. <sigh> Someday...

Anyway, it's not really entirely fair to use Photoshop as your basis for comparison. Photoshop is set by default to do bi-cubic interpolation, which is about a sophisticated as you can get for up-rezzing. I'm not sure there's many scalers in our video gear that will be able to do the equivalent processing on a 24 or 30 fps video signal.

 

[Jedi2016]

So the monitor you're using to preview these screen caps is actually 1920x1080? Damn I'm jealous. AFAIK, the smallest display that'll do that is about a 23" LCD. <sigh> Someday...

Anyway, it's not really entirely fair to use Photoshop as your basis for comparison. Photoshop is set by default to do bi-cubic interpolation, which is about a sophisticated as you can get for up-rezzing. I'm not sure there's many scalers in our video gear that will be able to do the equivalent processing on a 24 or 30 fps video signal.

No, my monitor is 1024x768. But it's not that difficult to look at an image full-sized. 100% in Photoshop, there ya go. Yeah, it goes off the edges of the screen, but it's full-sized.

And the up-rezzing was only done to match them in terms of size. A TV isn't going to up-res them, it's going to down-res them. If you're watching a Blu-Ray movie on a standard DLP television, it's going to downsize from 1080 to 720. My point is simply that you're not going to lose much, if anything, in that conversion. Makes me wonder why I should shell out double the money for something that isn't really going to make much difference in the end.

 

[djoxygen]

And the up-rezzing was only done to match them in terms of size. A TV isn't going to up-res them, it's going to down-res them. If you're watching a Blu-Ray movie on a standard DLP television, it's going to downsize from 1080 to 720. My point is simply that you're not going to lose much, if anything, in that conversion. Makes me wonder why I should shell out double the money for something that isn't really going to make much difference in the end.

Well, yeah, a 1080p source and a 720p source both shown on a 1280x720 display are going to look pretty much the same.

Eventually HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players will be capable of spitting out 1080p, and if you've got a 1080p display, you oughtta be able to tell the difference between a 1080p source and a 720p source (assuming the original mastering source is at least 1080p). 2.25x the number of pixels is going to be worth something. Whether it's worth 2x the money to get a 1080p display is something only you can decide.