I saw in the avsforums where members say High Def is useless if your TV is smaller than a 30 inch screen because there is no real visable difference at that small a level. Is this true?
If so the follow up question is I see laptops saying they are High Def screens and of course cost a lot more. But if the laptop is only 15" or 17" does the Hi Def screen matter or are you just adding on costs of extra money for no real benefit
I find I appreciate HDTV no matter what the screen size. It just looks clearer.
As for a laptop with Hi-def, that sounds a bit dubious as at 1080p (1920x1080) which is a lot of pixels in a physically small space. My concern would be that because Windows doesn’t really understand display DPI, your buttons, task bar and window gadgets are going to be super small. 1920 pixels across on a 15" screen is going to make your mouse pointer a little blip.
However, 720p which is 1280x720 has been around in laptop format for quite some time. I’d dig a little to see what HDTV formats they natively support. i.e. without downscaling 1080 to 720.
tim
They can be worse. Sure, they have higher resolution, and you can fit more on the screen, and maybe your tiny-screen viewing experience may be a bit crisper, but is it worth it just for high-res? My work craptop has such high resolution, and Windows is so poor at trying to be resolution-independent, that I just use an external monitor as much as possible, lest everything be so small. If your primary use is to watch HD movies at full resolution, then you may find some value in it.
Probably for those who cannot tell the difference between a a television program created on film vs video tape it may have some bearing. Even a high def screen using an analogue signal is far clearer and sharper than an analogue television of any size.
They probably qualify it with something like “at typical viewing distances”. If you were to view at half that distance, then High Def would be useful for a screen half as large.
Say that distance was 6 feet, then at three feet, you could see all the detail in a screen only 15 inches. At two feet, you could see the detail for a screen down to 10 inches. So for a laptop, the extra resolution isn’t wasted.
Yeah. The average living room is set up so that the people sit 8-12’ from their TV sets. From that distance, you can’t resolve HDTV detail on a 30" set. To fully appreciate the detail of HDTV, you’d have to sit no more than 3-4’ away from that screen. Fine if you’re sitting behind a desk looking at a monitor. Not so much if you’re facing a wall in your home.
Anything bigger helps, but the real ‘sweet spot’ if you sit 8’ away from the screen is probably around 60" - right around the size of the biggest home TVs.
If you want to have a theatrical experience and have the screen take up the proper amount of angular size in your vision field, and you also want to sit baack 10’ from the screen as you would in room where multiple people want to watch, the sweet spot grows to 80-110 inches. And it’s no coincidence that most ‘home theaters’ with front projectors have screens right around that size.
Assuming you’re not building a theater, then buy the biggest screen you can afford. Every increment in size will result in a more enjoyable viewing experience. Every little bit helps. So even going from 30" to 36" will result in improved viewing.
Disagreed on account of potential room size. A large TV sucks if you’re sitting really close to it.