Which resolution to use? (720p or 1366x768)

[jondecker76]

I'm getting ready to set up my LCD TV to display correctly (I have to start fiddling with the modeline to center and scale the screen properly)

The thing I have noticed is that I set it up for 720p (1280x720), but my TV's native resolution is 1366x768.

Should I leave it as is? (set up for 720p), or would I actually gain anything by running at 1366x768?

[cirion]

Personally I prefere 1366x768 since that is pixel perfect.

What you gain, is no scaling on the TV. Your GFX card does a better job and the picture is sharper.

[colinjones]

You should always choose the native resolution if possible for the reasons Cirion gives - however, for exactly the same reasons, you should try to choose a TV that has a native resolution that matches the source video otherwise you end up with scaling anyway. So best to choose TV standards as that will come closest to most video sources. 1080 for most matches, or 720 worst case for HD.

[Randykc]

I have a Sony 1080p LCD TV connected to my diskless MD with a Pentium 4 1.8 cpu and a Nvidia 5200 video card.  I'm not sure if the system/video card would be able to handle 1080p, so I set it up to use 720p. The TV says it will support a range of resolutions and convert the signal to the native resolution of 1920x1080.  The image quality is very good, but not stunning when playing a DVD from the core. Should I try and set this up at 1080p or leave it at 720p?

[royw]

I'd say give 1080p a try.  On my Hitachi 1080p plasma, upscaling the dvd is almost as good as blueray.  I intentionally bought The Fifth Element in blueray so I could compare against the dvd version.  The blueray shows a little more color range and a little more fine details, but we had to switch back and forth on paused frames to really see the difference.  There were a lot less difference than I was expecting when just watching the movie.  Yes, blueray is better, but the LMCE upscaling of dvd is awesome.  On the other hand, going from my old 53" 480i line doubled crt rear projection to the 60" 1080p plasma was like going from VHS to DVD, night and day....

HTH,
Roy

[Randykc]

I see another weekend project in my future.  If I was still using my 61" crt rear projection that my wife burned the screen while watching CNBC all day I wouldn't have noticed any difference. With these new plasma and LCD TV's though, a little change can make a noticeable difference.  I can always go back to 720p if the graphics card or cpu can't keep up.  Should be a fun test though

[Emiku]

So what do you do about the aspect-ratio on lets say a Plasma (42", 16:9) with native 1024x768 resolution, the aspect-ratio is way off here.

Setting the aspect-ratio to 4:3 fixes this but i don't like the way it is done.
 

[finsdown]

I have a Vizio 1080p 42" LCD with 1920x1080p native support. I have a Nvidia 6500 graphics card and an Intel DualCore Pentium 1.8 CPU with 2GB RAM in my Hybrid/Core system. I have a HDHomeRun to receive OTR ATSC HD content. I have tried using both the 1080p and 720p settings for LCME and have come to the conclusion that the 720p setting is the better choice. I would notice during the March Madness basketball games that at 1080p the players' movement would be jittery. Switching it to 720p resulted in a more natural,smoother motion.  I can only assume then that my video card or cpu aren't up to the task of displaying 1080p well.  I'm using the "UseEvents" "true" setting in my xorg.conf also and turned on vsync in the nvidia-settings utility. So I guess I'm "stuck" with 720p unless I upgrade my system. 

[Randykc]

That's good information.  I did try to make the 1080p settings change on the 5200 card last night but it looks like the card can't support that resolution.  Maybe if I find a 6200 or 6500 at a good price, I'll upgrade but for now, 720p is pretty good.

Besides the stuttering in 1080p mode, did you observe a noticeable picture quality difference?

[tkmedia]

Best results have been with the 169.12 nvidia driver

[finsdown]

To my eyes I don't see much of an image quality difference. I think I am using the 169.07 nvidia driver so I will try the 169.12 version and set the resolution back to 1080p and see if that looks better...maybe tonight.

[Randykc]

Tonight, I tried again to set up the 5200 card with 1080p resolution.  Using the AVWizard, the TV would display Unsupported Signal after selecting 1080p.  I figure I would try 1 last time but this time, I manually edit the xorg.conf file of the diskless MD. Used the resolution and other settings found in another post, rebooted my MD, and success!  1080p resolution.  I didn't have much time to do any quality comparisons or if the video was choppy but it was supported by the card.  I'll run some comparisons tomorrow since I still have the 720p config file saved and maybe update to the 16.12 driver.  Thanks for the suggestions.

[finsdown]

Randy -
I upgraded my driver to 169.12 and tried the 1080p resolution again. Results are the same - choppy motion - actually seems worse.  I reset it back to 720p and all is back as before. If you get the choppy motion problem licked I'd like to hear about it. 

Thanks-

Dave

[Randykc]

Dave,
Doesn't look like I'm going to be of much help.  I played a movie last night on my diskless MD with the 1080p configuration and I didn't notice any choppy video at all. To make it even more impressive, I ripped the movie on a Windows XP box that the core sees as a shared device so the movie went from the XP box to the core and finally to the diskless MD.  One difference in my configuration is that I don't have a TV card on my setup yet.  Maybe that is adding just enough strain on your hardware to cause the 1080p video choppiness?

Randy