720P Good Enough?

[kiwiaudionut]

I'm presently building my home theater room in the basement and willl initially use my Mitsubishi 62" 720P DLP until finances allow otherwise. This set has a fantastic HD picture after tuning and I've often read about the human eye not being able to discern the difference between 1080P and 720P at certain seating ratios. After having seen 1080P at Cedia etc. I tend to disagree with that, but that is not the subject of this post.
I'm definitely hesitating on buying into the HD-DVD/Blue-Ray game right now for several reasons, primarily the format war b/s, also because I don't have full 1080P capability, but my question relates to the display I would receive from either of these formats on my 720P set.

So - I'm thinkin if either of these formats display a dvd as well as I now see HD broadcast channels, then that may well be good enough for us !
If this indeed the case, I can look in the near future to purchase a good 720P projector and save some buckos !

HD 720P channels from Time Warner on Cable look great on this set, with the exception of some obviously compressed ones (Fox) and do look better than my standard progressive scanned DVDs, which are 480P upconverted by the TV.

To try and answer my own question, i'm guessing HD-DVD/BR would display at full 720P and appear as good as this set is capable of.
Would I be wasting my time with either until I can display 1080P ?

Love to hear your comments on this.
Kiwi.

 

[evilkat]

I'm not sure how well your TV upscales content, but it can't be nearly as good as the upscaling you get from somthing like an Oppo DVD player. Your 480 content will probably look much better with a dedicated DVD player that does upconverting correctly. Of course you'd have to ensure that your TV can take an 720p pass through signal then.

A lot of people have already answered 'yes' to your final question and already bought into HD/BD and are enjoying their 720p content on their TVs. It really boils down to a matter of personal choice in the end.

Personally, I'm waiting out the format war for a bit longer before I decide to jump the gun. Of course this is getting harder and harder to do, but on the other hand, I don't want to get burned by it.

 

[Hi Ho]

I have a 720p Mitsubishi DLP projector and a Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player. It was definetely worth the purchase in my opinion. Not only does HD content look amazing, it upconverts standard DVDs very well. It's coming to a point that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to buy a standard upconverting player when one can get an HD-DVD player for around $200. I have my projector shining on a 73" screen and the picture is excellent with no visible pixel structure from 12 feet back.

I also have a 1080p Panasonic plasma and even though the HD-A2 is only 1080i I'll be damned if anyone could tell.

 

[mtrycrafts]

I'm presently building my home theater room in the basement and willl initially use my Mitsubishi 62" 720P DLP until finances allow otherwise. This set has a fantastic HD picture after tuning and I've often read about the human eye not being able to discern the difference between 1080P and 720P at certain seating ratios. After having seen 1080P at Cedia etc. I tend to disagree with that, but that is not the subject of this post.
I'm definitely hesitating on buying into the HD-DVD/Blue-Ray game right now for several reasons, primarily the format war b/s, also because I don't have full 1080P capability, but my question relates to the display I would receive from either of these formats on my 720P set.

So - I'm thinkin if either of these formats display a dvd as well as I now see HD broadcast channels, then that may well be good enough for us !
If this indeed the case, I can look in the near future to purchase a good 720P projector and save some buckos !

HD 720P channels from Time Warner on Cable look great on this set, with the exception of some obviously compressed ones (Fox) and do look better than my standard progressive scanned DVDs, which are 480P upconverted by the TV.

To try and answer my own question, i'm guessing HD-DVD/BR would display at full 720P and appear as good as this set is capable of.
Would I be wasting my time with either until I can display 1080P ?

Love to hear your comments on this.
Kiwi.

Well, I hope the data on this chart came experimentation not just thin air

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/assets/download/0602_tech_talk2_large.jpg

Certainly 480i DVD has a finite number of pixels and data bit rate. By upconverting, you don't increase either, just chop up the existing pixels into smaller ones. So, a HD video DVD will look better on that set, even at 720p.
When the time comes for a projector, the resolution should depend on the screen size and major uses, hi-def DVDs, or HD broadcast TV or a mix. If the screen is large enough, your distance may steer you to the 1080p projector and then the 1080i broadcasts should be better too.