Can You Tell the Difference Between 720p and 1080p?

[Rob Williams]

About five years ago, the term "1080p" was almost an unknown. Only the highest-end television sets supported it, and virtually no commercial media did. But today, that's completely changed, with even budget TV's and computer monitors offering support for the high resolution. But here's a good question. When comparing 1080p to something like 720p, can most people even notice a difference?

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[Kougar]

Better question might be if you know of any TV service that offers 1080P. Seriously, no cable or satellite provider currently offers 1080P broadcasting, and one of the few companies that does is Verizon through their fiber channel network. Even Verizon does not offer 1080P through their non-fibre networks.

I can easily see the difference between 720P and 1080i, but most people can as 1080i is the equivalent of 540p. I am actually keen to find out if I can actually notice the difference with 1080P, but to do that I'd need to buy a Blu-ray player first. And that'll only happen after I'm actually hired.

 

[Optix]

Haha! I'm still using a 27" CRT and can hardly count to 720.

This is marketing fluff to someone like me!

 

[Psi*]

@Optix ... you shouldn't be using that 27" CRT. It is an antique and has value! Not!

I would like to think that I could tell the difference between 720p & 1020P, but I wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't. I think that a lot depends on someone's eyes and hope that a person with 20/20 & needing no correction of any kind, hopefully will be able to tell more easily that someone with astigmatism ... even with eyes correctable to 20/20 ought to be able to tell. But, there are a lot of conditions that do not require routine 24x7 correction & people are able to function normally. They might fail the screen resolution test tho. Meh.

It still comes down to content. Is what is being displayed worth looking at? Maybe comparable to having a quality 5.1 sound system versus 2 built in speakers, but if you are watching chick flicks ... who cares what the sound quality is? When you're interested in getting laid!

 

[Doomsday]

on a 23" LCD, not much, but still, the clarity is definitely differentiable!

 

[crowTrobot]

I can't really tell most of the time. yeah I'd say 24" or lower its harder to notice.

 

[killem2]

I can't tell when watching tv shows but I can tell when playing pc games ;D

 

[Optix]

@Optix ... you shouldn't be using that 27" CRT. It is an antique and has value! Not!

Hey now, it's working just fine along with my VHS recorder. Hehehehe.

My wife and I live a very simple life. The only thing that we have that is frivilous is my PC and I'm hoping to make it a bit more frivilous in the spring.

 

[slugbug]

My 34" Toshiba CRT only supports 480P and 1080i. No 720P support at all.

 

[Rob Williams]

Better question might be if you know of any TV service that offers 1080P.

That wasn't the question ;-)

No one expects true 1080p from cable providers at this point in time, and even then, the content is going to be rather scarce. Even on a lot of my HD channels, SD content plays most of the time, so it will be a while before we see 1080p truly supported. Plus, I am not sure if the tech is in place to deliver the bandwidth required for this (it would be like three times as bandwidth-heavy as 720p).

In general, Blu-ray is about 30 - 40Mbit/s... and I'm not sure we'd ever see that from a cable provider. If we did, it would probably be with an even higher resolution. Again, it's hard to say, and I may be way off base here.

I would like to think that I could tell the difference between 720p & 1020P, but I wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't. I think that a lot depends on someone's eyes and hope that a person with 20/20 & needing no correction of any kind, hopefully will be able to tell more easily that someone with astigmatism

I don't think that really matters. I don't have 20/20 but I still think I could tell a difference. It's really hard without actually having a 720p and 1080p display side-by-side, because 720p would still look really good, given it's essentially a down-scaled 1080p image. Maybe THAT'S why some people couldn't really tell the difference. The movie being played in the original article there wasn't 720p, but a down-scaled 1080p.