I’ve researched this quite a bit and I thought I’d seek some Doper opinions.
I know 1080 is the way to go for a larger screen, but I’m in the market for a 32-incher for the bedroom.
Is 720 good enough? Would I even notice a difference? How about with a Blu-Ray player?
Thanks.
What’s the difference in cost? That’d be the deciding factor for me. Depending on how many screen lengths away you are will determine if you can see the difference. If the difference was an amount that was significant to me, I’d go with the 720p. TV in the bedroom, IMO, is just for casual viewing. It’s not my primary screen.
Oh, and I’m also a little weird… I stuck with a SDTV until it died because I still think that dollar-for-dollar, your money is better spent on better audio. Once you go HD, you fall into a component-and-furniture upgrade trap. Speakers & A/V receivers in your budget will always be about that price. TVs plummet rapidly.
That said, I recently got a 1080p TV and the amount of additional work and money I need to do/spend in excess of simply buying the TV drives me nearly to the point of nervous breakdown. Did I mention I’m a little weird about this stuff?
This graph tells you what you need to know:
http://www.thesoundroom.biz/images/resolution_chart.jpg
For a 32", there’s no point in going with 1080 if you’re sitting at least 6 feet away from it.
If you’re a really picky videophile and are sitting really close to the TV you could notice a difference, but probably not.
I have a 37" 1080p and would be hard pressed to tell the difference between 1080p and 720p video images at a distance of greater than 3 feet. At 32", I would say do not worry about the resolution–choose a set based on other features, such as: contrast ratio, color accuracy, number of inputs, or whatever else is actually important to you.
Agreed. I have both 1080p and 720p sets. At that size, it’s not going to make a noticeable difference.
This has been my experience as well. For a 32" you would need to sit uncomfortably close to even notice the difference between 1080p and 720p, so unless you make a habit of watching TV less than 3-4 feet away, go for the 720p.
Remember TV doesn’t broadcast in 1080p so all you would watch are your Blu Ray discs and the like.
The vast majority of HDTV is 1080i (ABC and ESPN are the only ones that I know of that broadcast in 720p; there may be a few others). Theoretically 1080i will look better on a 1080p tv than on a 720p TV. On a 1080p TV, it simply has to be deinterlaced. It can be shown at full resolution. On a 720p TV, it still has to be deinterlaced, but it also has to be downscaled, throwing away some of the resolution. My suspicion is that all else being equal (compression, etc.), there would actually be more visible difference between 720p and 1080i than 1080i and 1080p.
However, as I said, at the screen sizes we’re talking about here, I don’t think it’s worth worrying about at all.
I remember a Consumer Reports article from a year or two back that said if the screen was 42" or less, 720 is all that is required, and you wouldn’t notice the difference. Don’t remember all of the other details.
Indeed, at that screen size and presumed viewing distance, what you should focus on are reviews regarding the black level. Whether blacks look really inky dark black, or merely a dark grayish black, will make much more difference in your viewing experience than the likely imperceptible difference in resolution.
Also be sure to buy, borrow or rent a calibration disc (DVD or Blu-Ray) like Digital Video Essentials, to be able to set your color depth, contrast and brightness to best effect. Many, if not most displays come with factory presents that are designed to “pop”, i.e., bleed with oversaturated colors to look good in a brightly lit demo floor competing with other displays, to the detriment of a balanced, sharp and well contrasted image in a home viewing environment.
Historically plasma (as opposed to LCD) HDTV displays had better black levels, but that may have changed in the past 3 years or so, I haven’t kept up with the reviews.
Get the 1080
I have a 37in TV, which I didn’t realize it, but the cable box was set at 720 output. I had this TV for about 2 months. The HD was fine, then one day I found that setting and set it to 1080i.
I didn’t notice anything right away and played with it a few times switching between the 2, finally left in on 1080i setting. After watching it I started to notice times where the picture was extra sharp/clear, moments of TV clarity I didn’t get anytime when the box was set to 720, and it happens quite often. It’s not something you can look for, but it’s something that is noticable.
IMHO
True for broadcasts - but on DirecTV they have movies on demand and pay per view movies that are 1080p. I know because I watch them often on my 10 foot screen. I like being able to describe my screen size in feet, in case you couldn’t tell. 
This is a different issue than the difference between a 1080p and 720p TV. If you had your cable box set to a fixed resolution of 720p, it was deinterlacing 1080i content and downscaling it to 720p. Most cable boxes are very bad at deinterlacing and downscaling (and just about every other kind of video processing), so this can result in a very noticeable degradation of the picture, even if the TV is a 720p set. The fact that this is visible doesn’t really mean that the difference between a 720p TV and a 1080i TV is noticeable.
This would be a reason to get the 1080 wouldn’t it? If most cable boxes do a crappy job at 1080i to 720p conversion, get a 1080 TV so you won’t have this issue.
No - it’s a reason to let your TV do the conversion, not the cable box. There are plenty of other reasons to get the 1080 over the 720 - but not this.
No, because 720p TVs generally do a fine job of converting 1080i to 720p (far better than your run of the mill Motorola cable box).
Also, if you were pushing 720p to a 1080p tv, you actually had two conversions going on – 1080i → 720p (both deinterlace and downscale) → 1080p (upscale). That makes the problem even worse.
I’m willing to bet my lunch money that you wouldn’t be able to tell a difference between a 1080i signal on a 720p and a 1080i signal on a 1080p tv at normal viewing distance on a 32" screen (as the OP is buying), as long as there are no additional conversions happening. And I eat a big lunch.
We went with a 720p for the bedroom since I didn’t see any appreciable difference in image quality from 1080p at the 32" size and there was, at the time, a non-insignificant difference in price.
Both sets look good, but the 1080p set looks spectacular, even on cable supplied 1080i content.
