720p @1024x768?

[jalbr8]

I find the grey areas the LCD and Plasma have claiming to be HDTV 720P when their resolution is only 1024X768 to be misleading.

So where are the missing pixels when 720P is 1280X720P!  How can they claim to be HDTV when shaving pixels?

[gparris]

It is my understanding that 1024 horizontal for a 42" plasma should be the norm.
768p is good as 720p for vertical resolution and HDTV can be 720p, 768p or 1080i/p for vertical...so that should define it as a HDTV display.

Hope that this helps you...correct me anyone (or add to this, if necessary). :blush:

The LCD model...which one is it?

[kevbeck122]

That's a 4:3 resolution.... most widescreen 720p HD LCDs/plamas have a resolution near 1368x768 I believe.  I don't know if plasmas are fixed resolutions like LCDs are though.

[Bebop]

That's why I'll never buy any 42"  or less plasma until they are at least 1280X720P. There are few 42" 1024X1024 plasmas and Hitachi just came out with a 1024X1080.

Only plasmas 50" or over have resolutions greater than 1280X720 as of now.

[TPK]

I had to deal once with creating a slideshow with a samsung 40" plasma that had a 1024x768 resolution..

Even though its a 4:3 resolution, the pixes are elongated horizontally and stretched out to make a 16:9 resolution....

This still works out okay when displaying a 1080i or 720p signal via its component or HDMI port, as the TV knows how to scale the image properly so it shows up with the proper aspect ratio wiuthout stretching...   However when hooked up to a laptop PC via its VGA port, I had all sorts of problems when making a slideshow....

The main problem was that the PC recognized the display as a 1024x768 (4:3) display, but the TV thought the same resolution was a 16:9 display...  I had the option of side-boxing the 4:3 image to make the image not stretch, but this sort of negated the nice wide-screen aspect of the display and would prevent me from displaying the slides with the full screen..   What I wanted to do was make a slideshow with properly cropped 16:9 pictures and have those picutres actually use the whole display (imagine that!)...  So the result of this was that the display would (at full screen) stretch the PC's native 4:3 image into a 16:9 image, and everything would appear to be stretched on the screen, which I just wasn't happy with when making a professional slideshow..

What I ended up doing was first cropping all the images to a 16:9 ratio to make the images full screen at 16:9 (which I would have done anyway no matter what type of 16:9 display), then I had to take the extra step of STRETCHING the images vertically 33 percent to turn the 16:9 image back into a 4:3 image (stretched)...

When the images were displayed on the screen with a slideshow, the TV recieved a vertically stretched 4:3 image which it then horizontally stretched out to a 16:9 image and the image would then show up perfectly on the plasma display and look non-stretched and fill up the entire screen....   And wow did it look amazing...

The funny thing was that on the laptop's LCD screen (which was set to mirror the external display) the images would show up on the screen as full screen (the laptop had a 4:3 display) but images would look like they were stretched vertically..

... Its just too bad that I had to go through all of that just to make the images look normal on the display....  It would have been better if the plasma would identify itself to the PC as a 16:9 display, and then scale the image properly to keep the aspect ratio, but instead the plasma identifies itself with its native resolution, which is what is causing all the problems..

[jalbr8]

So they cheat,  1024 X768 displays 720P lines so they can call it HDTV?  Their  "Elongated pixels" appear as 16:9 and they "Scale" the 1280 down to 1024?

It is a ripoff.  Who knows what detail they lost when they squeezed 1280 into 1024.

found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdtv has 720p as 1280X720.

I am finding the higher quality plasma and lcd panels are in fact 1280X720.  

I suppose it is no different then 1080i on 720p.   From what I read, some deinterlace the 1080i and then scale it to 720p as well others stretch the first 540 out to 720 lines and skip the second set of lines entirely.  Guess anything goes.

Of course Time Warner is upping 720P to 1080i only for LCD's and Plasmas to return it to 720p.   But I look forward to 1080P when I replace my Panasonic 53"  Rear CRT that is now doing 1080i so I am glad Time Warner Aligned itself with the better standard.

I await 1080p for true HDTV 1920X1080.

[kevbeck122]

Time Warner boxes can output both 720p and 1080i.

[TPK]

Time Warner boxes can output both 720p and 1080i.

But they come configured to output only 1080i on the component ports by default, and their technicians are not trained to switch that (in fact, they are told specifically not to change it according to one tech I talked to)...  

Most people don't know how to go into those advanced menus and change the settings...

Then again, most people would probably complain about the long switch-over that their TV would take as it tries to re-sync from one resoution to the other, if the box was properly configured to output both resolutions...  This is probably why they are set up to only output 1080i by default.

There are probably tons of 720p televisions out there set up with component cables and a 1080i signal (So really they are only getting 720 interlaced instead of progressive?)

I guess thats still a lot better than a HD box hooked up to a HD set with a standard-def RCA composite cable (which I have seen on occasion)