her34

i was at a friend's place. he had a ~60" rear projection crt. a computer was hooked up to it through dvi. the computer was set to 1080 resolution. he played trailers from msft/apple that were in both 720 & 1080 format. he played both versions of a trailer and didn't tell me which one was which resolution. i couldn't tell a difference.

can you tell a difference between 720 and 1080? what was the setup (display, source material)?

eedoon

Well I don't have any HD display, but I've compared a few 720p and 1080p trailers, and the only thing that gave it up is because my PC doesn't have enough horsepower to run 1080. Other than that, it's probably my display limitation that make me can't tell which one is which.

I have a tube monitor on VGA connection btw.

chipmac

His TV has only one display resolution so no matter which signal it was fed the TV would only display 1080i or perhaps 540p but not 720p. So the 720p signal that the PC was feeding it never got displayed without conversion. If the PC was converting the 720p to 1080i before sending it to the TV the conversion might be so good that you would be hard pressed to tell them apart. If you compare a display that has a native res of 720p vs one with a native res of 1080i some people can see the interlacing in the 1080i due to flickering on some material, otherwise most can't see a difference.

HiFiLux

can you tell a difference between 720 and 1080?

...yes

darkside

I have always stuck with 1080i out on my OTA HD receiver and I'm not even sure which networks use 720p. I can't imagine the difference would be enough for me to want to switch the box all the time.

Josh Z

ABC, Fox, and ESPN-HD use 720p. Pretty much the rest are all 1080i.

Ranger

You probably could have seen the difference if he was NOT playing the video in full-screen mode from the computer and you knew the monitor resolution.

Spiky

There are far more variables than simple resolution. Many HD cams have been 1440x1080, not 1920x1080. Many providers give us poor quality HD, which we like to call HDLite. Some shows aren't great from the studio itself, witness season 5 of 24. BD is coming out with some poor discs at first, so is Warner Bros. And then people don't bother setting up their TVs all that well.

Add all this up and you have a big 'ol mess. Sometimes you can tell the difference, esp if you have a 1080 TV. If you have a 720 TV, it is much harder, although their are differences if you compare. Probably couldn't just look at a signal cold and tell somebody which it is.

Nazgul

ESPN is 720p? Wow, ESPN-HD always looks great.

Josh Z

720p tends to be better for fast motion. The interlacing of 1080i can make some sports coverage look juddery.