I’m not sure if this falls in GQ or IMHO, so if isn’t in the right forum, my apologies.
I’m thinking about getting an LCD TV and am trying to figure out which would suffice. 780p is cheaper but I have been told that it won’t show HDTV well enough. Seeing as I don’t have a blu-ray DVD player is this even an issue?
Can the average person distinguish the difference? Will it make a difference to the naked eye?
Most HD Cable and satellite systems will provide a 1080i signal. For this purpose, 1080i and 720p are effectively the same.
Most DVD’s are not even 1080i, but some DVDs and some player will provide a 1080i signal. The High Def DVD will push a 1080p signal. So if you are looking to buy a High Def DVD player, you should get a 1080p LCD.
I use my 1080p LCD panel as both my family room TV and as an occasional use monitor off a computer. Via a DVI output, I push 1080p signal and in looking at text, it is actually very easy to see difference between 1080p and 1080i.
In my bedroom, I have a nice inexpensive Visio 720p and it is only use for TV & DVD (and VCR). This is all I need, as I don’t plan to buy a HD DVD player in the near future, especially one for my bedroom.
The people telling you that 720p won’t show HD TV as well as a 1080i or 1080p are mistaken. They are correct about HD DVD, Computers and probably some game consoles. Additionally, sometime in the future, Cable will probably go to 1080p signals, but I have no time frame on that currently.
BTW: the 1080 means 1,080 lines of vertical resolution. The I is for Interlace which is inferior to P for Progressive. If you want more on this, wiki did a better job than I could in explaining it. The 720p has fewer lines but as it is Progressive and not interlaced, the video playback is very close to 1080i quality. 1080p is noticeably better if you have a signal to use it.
Jim
The two main numbers you’ll see shopping for an HDTV are either 720p or 1080p.
From what I can tell the only way you’ll get the full potential out of a 1080p set is by using an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player with an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc.
Otherwise standard DVDs and hi-def broadcasts (sports, network shows) while still hi-def are not 1080p and will not look any better on a 1080p set compared to a 720p set.
Networks that do broadcast in hef-def also do not have any current plans to upgrade any of their hi-def equipment to broadcast in 1080p becasue it so expensive. If they do it wouldn’t be any earlier than 4-5 years from now.
Depends.
How big a TV are you going to get?
I have a 50" 780p, and I think it is fine.
Current Network HDTV broadcasts are either 780p or 1080i. I don’t think anyone broadcasts 1080p. (780p and 1080i are not the same, but are usually considered roughly equivalent.) So unless you get a high-def DVD player, you won’t be able to fully use a 1080p set. At least, not for now. In the future, who knows?
I can say, that 780p on 50" looks quite nice to me. But! my 780p is a plasma.
If you are just watching TV and standard DVD’s, the difference between 780p ad 1080p will not be significant (for now).
I would also suggest you get an up-scaling DVD player for your standard-def DVD’s. We didn’t want to buy blu-ray so we got an up-scaling DVD player… standard-def ends up looking quite nice this way, and the up-scaling DVD players are not very expensive. Better than re-purchasing your DVD collection.
So get 780p if you are mostly concerned for present performance and cost.
Get 1080p if you are concerned about future performance.
Also it depends on how far you plan to sit from the screen and how big the screen is. There’s no point in having a 40" 1080p screen if you’re sitting 10’ away from it, you won’t see any benefit over a 720p screen.
To get the full benefit of a 40" 1080p screen, you have to sit within 5’ of it. If you’re sitting more than 7’ away, you won’t gain anything from a 1080p set over a 720p set. If you’re sitting more than 15’ away, you won’t see any benefit over a normal standard definition set.
Ofcourse as the screen size increases so does the optimal viewing distance, but it doesn’t increase by much.
That chart is faulty when it comes to computer text, I can’t speak to HD DVD playback as I don’t have one.
I don’t think that I want anything larger than 42" This is for the bedroom and we will be at most 10 feet away.
A good way to determine how big a screen you can live with is to make a cardboard template the size of the screen, paint it black and then stick it up for a week or two in the place where the TV will go. Sometimes, what appears massive at first (in the shop) is totally swallowed up by the room, other times an apparently tiny TV can totally dominate a room (which for a bedroom isn’t generally what you want).
Then get a 720p if you can still find one. Unless you’re planning to have your nose right up against the screen, you won’t notice a difference. The TV manufacturers are pushing 1080p as “full HD”, but the reality is they are trying to keep the price point > $2000.
If you were buying an 80" screen, it might make sense.
Someone else said this yesterday and I thought it was a typo but here it is again. Am I misunderstanding or do you have to have a LCD, Liquid Crystal Display, as opposed to a Plasma or a DLP? I find it extraordinary that either of those two mediums in full competition with LCD for dominance would be incompatible with 1080p.
I’m misunderstanding, right?
You can get 1080p projectors and plasma screens. The various technologies have their own individual strengths and weaknesses. LCD is better in some situations, where Plasma may be in other. I’ve heard the Pioneer 1080p plasmas have a better picture than the comparably LCDs, but without seeing them myself I couldn’t comment.
In your case, shop online for a 42" 720p or 1080i then. Look for lower end but still quality manufacturers like Visio. You can try online outfits like TigerDirect.com or work with a search engine like Techbargains, this link includes the LCDs in your range: http://techbargains.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=197/st=category/popup1[]=3:73/popup2[]=160:1022/sortby=priceA
Copy and paste the link, they use some coding incompatable with the SDMB.
Jim
What are you talking about? I have a 1080p LCD 37" Westinghouse. I did not even comment on DLP and Plasma. 
The big advantage to LCD is the reduced glare in rooms with a lot of ambient light. If you aren’t in that situation, plasma will generally be a better picture. LCD tends to have the look of peering through a meshed screen, whereas plasma generates a sharper image. But both are better than projection TVs wrt viewing angle. My old projection HD TV started to loose image quality at about 45 degrees, whereas my plasma looks fine even at 160 degrees.
You’re referring to rear-projection, right?
I’d kill for a 1080p projector (front-projection) and a decent sized room.
I found the newer LCD are as good as Plasma for picture, have better viewing angles and weigh less. The other bonus that people overlook is the average LCD panel use about 50% of the energy or Plasmas.
DLP is a great option if you want a huge picture. You want 60" or better, go DLP. If you want quality, go LCD and settle for smaller.
Jim
This site has some good info.
People seem to be confusing a few types of sets here.
LCD panel and LCD projection are two completely different types of sets.
LCD panel are the thin wall mountable sets. LCD projection are table top models 1-2 feet deep.
DLP isn’t a category. It’s a type of TV that falls into the category of “Rear Projection”. LCD projection also falls into the “Rear Projection” category.
“Rear Projection” sets (both DLP and LCD) are popular because you can get a huge screen for a low price. However these aren’t sets you’re going to be hanging on a wall.
To further clarify (or confuse):
CRT-based sets, quickly becoming extinct, are the only sets capable of displaying 1080i signals as 1080i. Everything else (i.e. digital sets) will either upconvert them to 1080p or 720p.
I have not heard of any plans to broadcast 1080p signals, either OTA or on cable, as the amount of bandwidth required is essentially double that of 1080i. A good quality deinterlacer should pretty much make it a moot point (for video, as opposed to computer displays) anyway. Remember that movies are filmed at only 24 FPS (frames per second), and 1080i @ 60 FPS (the standard rate) is essentially the same as 1080p @ 30 FPS, which is still more picture information than a converted film.
Pardon me for injecting a new question here, but it seems related.
I know my flat panel computer monitor has a “native” resolution. It can operate at a lower resolution but when doing so the picture looks fuzzy at best; the best image is produced when it is operating at its native resolution.
Do HDTVs work the same way? If OTA HD broadcasts are 720p and I try to watch them on a 1080p screen, will the resulting image actually look worse than if I watched it on a 720p screen of the same dimensions? How about if I watch a blu-ray DVD on the same screens?