Is 1080p that great? I am gonna buy a new tv soon and am wondering if I will even need it, a 720p is much less

Answer 1

For a SMALL TV, 720P will do the job

But if you go up to 40 inches or more, you'll WANT 1080....that's why it was developed, to improve the larger Projection pictures...

Answer 2

Unless you have money to burn, a 720p set should do just fine, especially if you're not talking about some massive size set.

Just FYI, both ABC and Fox have chosen 720p as their HD broadcast standard. The others are 1080i. No-one broadcasts in 1080p (the standard doesn't support it). Cable channels may be able to do 1080p, but in general, the only time you may see an advantage would be in HD DVDs. And until Hollywood starts producing movies with 1080p display in mind, you may not see that much difference from 720p.

Answer 3

The current issue of Money Magazine talks about this in their article about 'when it's worthwhile to pay the extra bucks for more'. With 1080p HDTVs, their position (echoed by Consumer Reports) is :
1. On sets 50" and smaller, there is no noticeable difference in the sharpness of the picture.
2. It is difficult to find programs that broadcast at that high resolution (HDTV broadcast only gets up to 1080i ).
Bottom line. They recommend saving money with a 720p set.

I'm a gadget guy that's always looking at what's new coming out, but I would still point out that high-tech equipment prices drop very fast, and new features comes out very quickly in these equipment. This is something we have all seen. So, by the time there is enough movies in Blue-Ray or HD-DVD to make sense buying a 1080i set, the sets you can buy then will cost much less and have more must-have features than what you can buy today.

You can buy equipment that 'Up-convert' current DVD movies so that they can be played on 1080i HDTVs. Standard TV shows 345,600 pixels, A 16x9 aspect ratio 1080i HDTV shows 2,073,600 pixels. When the Up-converter creates this HDTV picture, it has to fake over 83% of the pixels to give you the HDTV picture. I've read that this process is not very good and people are usually happier showing the unchange picture with black-bands around it. Unfortunately, a standard TV picture would be shown in a small box in the middle of the screen. So, don't count on an Up-converter to give you satisfaction with your collection of DVD movies.

Hope this helps you decide if it's worth the bragging rights.

Answer 4

I have discovered that most TV programming is not made in 1080p resolution, nor are most movies. The two most important are 1080i & 720p.

Answer 5

Reggie Man is correct.

The bigger the screen, the more resolution you want. The smaller, you wont need it as much.

It depends on what size.
>32" 720p is awsome
40" is about the half mark 720p looks good, but 1080 will notice a difference.

Answer 6

Unless you're going to buy a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player to go with it I wouldn't bother. As of yet there are no 1080p broadcasts available. By the time there is, there will be reasons to upgrade again.

Answer 7

you can get the 720p but its not going to be a crisp clear and clean look of 1080p and plus you won't be able to be an a hole and say "HEY GUYS LOOK AT ME I GOT 1080P, i don't know what it means but it sounds awesome don't it?!?!?!" but 720 good way better then mine lucky