720p or 1080i?

[admin_exported]

hi guys,what should i set my tv to 720p or 1080i ,or does it not matter? which is best for watching bd .cheers.

 

[matengawhat]

i'd go for 720p - i did google this at one point and read a really deep article that went into far to much details but the conclusion was 720p is better - if i can find it will post the link

 

[Anonymous]

It largely depends on what you are watching. Slow, detailed film such as documentaries are best in 1080i whilst 720p is good for fast movement such as sports and action. 1080p (progressive) is the next step on from 1080i and offers a smoother, cleaner image.

 

[Anonymous]

festa:hi guys,what should i set my tv to 720p or 1080i ,or does it not matter? which is best for watching bd .cheers.Depends on what TV you have, Best for bd is 1080/24p but not all TVs support this.

 

[Dan Turner]

There's no simple answer - it depends on a lot of different factors, the most influential are probably the quality of the scaler in the source (i.e. DVD), the quality of the scaler in the TV, and the TV's native resolution.

Every HD TV a) scales the signal to fit the native resolution of it's screen and b) converts interlaced signals at 50hz (or 60) into 25 frames per second (or 30) progressive image (de-interlacing).

The questions when watching standard def material are a) would the scaler in the source do a better job than the one in the TV? and b) would the source do a better job of de-interlacing than the TV? Probably only something that you can find out by experimenting. If you use the source to scale then common sense would suggest that you set the output resolution to as close to the TV's native resolution as possible (i.e. so that you don't scale at the source only to leave the TV having to scale again to fit the image to the screen).

When watching HD material you might take the same view as above and set the source to allow the TV's scaler to do the minimum of work. Alternatively you might take the view that you want to supply the source material in it's purest form to the TV and trust the TV to take care of the rest.

I've got an HD-ready pioneer plasma and I have Sky HD permanently set on 1080i for everything, as is DVD upscaled by my Blu-ray player. Blu-ray material itself is fed as 1080p. I settled on this because I think that HD channels look slightly better fed in 1080i (skyHD native resolution) although the slight trade-off is that the SD channels look ever so slightly worse, but i'm not aware if there is a way of setting a different resolution for SD material on Sky HD. I really couldn't see any difference in quality on the DVD side between 1080i and 720p, so I set the blu-ray player to 'auto', which ends up being 1080i. Blu-ray is best left in it's native resolution to retain the original 24 frames per second signal, so 1080/24p.

If you've got a full HD TV then it's a no brainer - set all HD material to 1080 (i or p - preferrably p if the material/source allows) as that fits the native resolution of your TV. For SD experiment to figure out which scaler is better - the source or the TV. If it's the TV then set the source to output only the native resolution of the source material.

 

[Cliff1]

Dan Turner

Thanks for that,lots of info on things i'm trying to get straight in my head.

 

[Anonymous]

cheers lads that will help me.

 

[Sorreltiger]

I agree with you almost completely, Dan. ÿIMHO my Pioneer 4280 works best when fed the full 1080p signal from blu-ray and downscaling to 768. ÿCouldn't you set the Sky+HD box on 'Auto', though, so that you get 1080i on HD channels and let the TV upscale SD signals? ÿThe Sky box isn't a great upscaler.

 

[Dan Turner]

Sorreltiger - Cheers for that, I can't believe I hadn't figured that out for myself - D'oh! I've just done it and the picture is much improved on SD with the Sky HD box sending the native resolution of the content and the TV scaling.

Up to now I had been using 2 different picture setting modes, one for TV and one for DVD/Blu. The only difference was that on the TV one I was using the Pioneer's (mine's a '427) 'dynamic contrast' feature, which made DVD/Blu movies look a bit unatural, but gave a much needed boost to detail and clarity with the TV picture - I realise now that was purely down to the slightly soft and murky quality that the scaler in the Sky box gave to the picture. I had no frame of reference for comparison because I only have Sky fed into my lounge, no Freeview.

Sweet.

 

[Anonymous]

I have just ordered a hd tv and the only other thing a have an upscaler in is my xbox 360 which I will be using to watch dvds and downloads. How do I go about experimenting with upscaling in that scenario. Is it just a case of chaning the xbox 360's out put or is ther likely to be a setting on the tv as well? its a samsung 686. Thanks

 

[professorhat]

You just need to change the output on the Xbox - the TV will automatically upscale anything which is a lower resolution. Obviously, when playing games though, you want to make sure the Xbox output matches the game's resolution to get the best out of it.