How does the Pana TH-37PX70 scale to 720p?

[admin_exported]

OK, this will hopefully be a very simple question for someone to answer, but it's something I can't quite get my head around. Plus I couldn't fond a demo set in a store to actually get the answers I needed at the weekend.

The native resolution of the TH-37PX70 is 1024x720, which is neither native PC nor HDTV resolution. I'm about to buy a plasma and I need it to do all of the following; receive a 720p signal from my Media Center PC for XVid's and recorded TV, receive a 720p signal from my XBox 360, display SDTV and of course DVD's.

What I can't get my head around is how all of these inputs will be scaled correctly without any stretching or squashing of the image.

Does this panel simply "letterbox" 720p signals or does it chop off either end?

I can cope with letterboxing, but if the image is actually deformed in some way it'll force me to go for a different panel.

Many thanks.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi there, yes a damn good question, I too wish to know the answer to this as i am considering purchasing this tv shortly.

Paul

 

[Andy TW]

The TH-37PX70 has 7 aspect modes, auto, 16:9, 14:9 4:3 and Zoom 1,2 & 3 which in my experience covers most situations.For example an SD 4:3 input will have side bars in 4:3 mode but isn't stretched, wheras in 16:9 mode the same picture will be stretched sideways. You simply select the best mode for the incoming picture.For HD pictures which are all 16:9 widescreen ratios you can simply leave the TH-37PX70 in 16:9 mode and it will rescale the picture correctly.Actually the 1024x720 panel on the TH-37PX70, while of lower resolution than many other HD TVs has a few advantages when it comes to scaling HD signals.It's 720 lines exactly matches a 720p signal vertcally so no scaling is needed here. It's1024 rows is exactly 4/5 of 720p's 1280 rows, so the scaling will rescale 5 horizontal signal pixels into 4 on the display.With a full HD (1920x1080) signal it's a similar story with the verticle resolution being a rescale from 4 pixels into 3 and the horizontal from 15 into 8.While a screen with 1:1 pixel ratio would be the ideal size, the TH-37PX70's 1024x720 resolution is in many ways a better fit to 720p HD pictures than the 1366x768 found on many LCD's.edited to addI'm not sure how it would handle a non standard picture size via the PC input but a HTPC should be able to output the HD signal at 1280x720 (or 1920x1080) which shouldn't cause any problems.I've just broken with the habit of a lifetime and looked at the tech specs. in the manual.The PC input will accept VGA, SVGA, XGA & SXGA. In addition it will also accept 1366x768@60hz and a few more strange (non-HD) resolutions. If you are using a HTPC I'd use either the DVI/HDMI output to an HDMI input of component out to component in which should display HD resolutions correctly.2nd editThe PC input is restricted to the 4:3 and 16:9 aspect modes so if you try and input 1280x1024 (a 5:4 ratio) or 1680x1050 (16:10) or similar they will be stretched/squashed. using this connection.