Given how people clamour for 1080 sets over 720 sets, I'm wondering if there is actually any footage capable of really making use of 1920x1080 resolution yet? I've been taking stills from 1080 films, downsizing to 720, then resizing back to 1080, and can rarely see any quality loss. When I can, it's some tiny detail, like the edges of some buttons on a shirt, and that's it for the entire scene. I thought Avatar would be the best possible example, yet in a close up of Neytiri's face, you'd think being CG there's no optical limitation of the camera involved the difference would be obvious, but even then it seems limited to one of two freckles on her face.

If I use the same technique and go to a lower, say DVD, resolution, then there's a pronounced lack of clarity over the whole image, so this seems a reasonable test. Clearly things have progressed, I tried on some 1930s footage and I had to get down to about 400 pixels across the width before I lost sharpness, but it seems 1280x720 is adequate for even recent, high budget releases.

Just wondering what other people's thoughts are on this.

I wondered about this myself. Maybe on a really big monitor/ it would make a difference when playing movies.

Depends on the size of your screen I think?

I have to agree though, I also compared 720p with 1080p, but the difference (if any) was neglectable (like you see it while watching a movie).

After getting this 30" dell, I've noticed 1080p isn't enough. Bring on 1440p thankyouverymuch.

Quote from Bose321 :

Depends on the size of your screen I think?

I have to agree though, I also compared 720p with 1080p, but the difference (if any) was neglectable (like you see it while watching a movie).

This. There is an awesome difference between 720p and PAL DVD rips which I can notice even on my laptop's 17" screen. I cannot see that much of a difference between 720 and 1080 though. 1080 is meant for large cinema screens and HQ editing, not computer displays.

720 is plenty on our 48" 1080p TV. No real improvement is visible when using a 1080p source.

Try watching Avatar or The Dark Knight (bluray/bluray remux, not 5GB "1080p" rip with bitrate of crappy 720p) on a 46+" LED-LCD (preferably Samsung or Sony BRAVIA). If you still can't see the HUGE difference - there's something weird with your eyes

Edit: tristan, are you sure your 1080p's are from legit sources, or at least high quality unlegit sources? "Home video" made by your average $200 point-and-shoot isn't something that should be used for comparison.

for example RED cameras produce images in size like this:
http://gregfoto.com/portfolio/ ... D_ExampleHiResExample.jpg

HD is great, fullHD is even better. if you have small display, you won't notice any difference. film scans before getting on blu-ray go through lots of processing after compression, so fullHD film is always sharper and has more details than HD film.

Quote from E.Reiljans :

Try watching Avatar or The Dark Knight (bluray/bluray remux, not 5GB "1080p" rip with bitrate of crappy 720p) on a 46+" LED-LCD (preferably Samsung or Sony BRAVIA). If you still can't see the HUGE difference - there's something weird with your eyes

Edit: tristan, are you sure your 1080p's are from legit sources, or at least high quality unlegit sources? "Home video" made by your average $200 point-and-shoot isn't something that should be used for comparison.

I don't have any non-legit 720/1080 videos, except my onboard racing footage, which I'm not considering here (as it's too wobbly and shit at the moment. I hate GoPro HDs!!!)

You can see the difference watching 1080p Blu-Ray (or I can) vs. 720p HDTV, but you need to get pretty close to tell unless you've got a huge screen. I have a 40" 1080p set and I sit about 15ft from the TV. Most of my content is 720p, including PS3 games, etc. For PC gaming 1080p is barely enough, but in that case you're right up against the monitor.

Quote from majod :

for example RED cameras produce images in size like this:
http://gregfoto.com/portfolio/ ... D_ExampleHiResExample.jpg

That's an excellent example of what I'm talking about. Massive resolution overkill. View that image at 1:1 and there's not a remotely sharp feature in it, which would be made far more obvious if the image was denoised. I did the same trick, downsized (to 1080) then upsized that image, and the only difference afterwards (with 1:1 viewing) was the noise got a little softer, so overall it looked better, IMO.

Quote from E.Reiljans :

not 5GB "1080p" rip with bitrate of crappy 720p

Bit rate is irrelevant by itself. I re-encode films using x264 at constant quality (level 23) and have found most 1080p films compress to under 5GB, and I've even had one come out under 2GB before, without noticeable artifacting.

Quote from Bose321 :

Depends on the size of your screen I think?

Only if you sit too far back from it, so the pixels become too small for your eye to distinguish (see this). Given that I'm sat about a foot from my screen (maybe less if really concentrating on finding differences in images), despite this monitor only being 20" viewable, I shouldn't be suffering from any such issues.

its funny but i was talking with troy about this earlier today.

Last year i was having the same question at that time i would have said. its over kill.

but since 3 months i got a new Sony Vaio 16" Laptop. its having a premium HD screen. (i7 and more) this screen opent my eyes. if i watch an 720p it looks good but a proper blue ray 1080p is just Soo sharp its very very good. you can really see it. even at a longer distance*

So to go with your though bob: a good screen will show the difference. at my 22" samsung LCD screen i wont see the difference!



*sofa distance 3 / 5 meter

In fairness, this 22" CRT is 11 years old now, so probably no longer at it's best. I've three of them and they've all got different issues, though none of them serious. I'm about to plug my widescreen LCD in, will go back through the screenshots and see if the differences become any clearer.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Bit rate is irrelevant by itself. I re-encode films using x264 at constant quality (level 23) and have found most 1080p films compress to under 5GB, and I've even had one come out under 2GB before, without noticeable artifacting.

Here crf=23 produces noticeable lack of detail. I personally set movies to encode with crf=20 and preset=slow, and they usually are encoded by the time I wake up.

So we are talking about TVs or computer monitors or something you can use for both? I think it is waste of money to buy anything else (less) than 1080p if you are buying a tv. My tv is 1080p and 42" but I haven't really done any comparisons. I doubt though I could spot the difference between 720p and 1080p on movies. On fullscreen on youtube videos there is a difference but that's kind of different (bitrates).

Anyways on a 42" tv the pixel size with 720p is about 0.726 mm and at 1080 0.484 mm (link) so that difference should be really hard to see unless you sit close. I bought a 1080p tv just a year ago (LG something cheap) and when playing on ps3 I sit really close and that's fine. If I change from 1080p to 720p from the ps3 settings the image does go worse I think. I have vagues memories of trying it to see if I get more fps but the resolution dropped too much.

Of course another thing to consider is your av receiver. Is it full hd ready?

And if you plan to use the tv for computer gaming too I'd consider 120Hz and 3d. Nvidia has their own 3d which needs 120Hz screen for example.

I think the real question is whether to get 3d and 120Hz or not. Not about whether to get 720p or 1080p. The price difference is non-existent. And the source material quality is far more important than the resolution.

However for desktops personally I think the situation changes. I personally absolutely dislike the 1080p vertical resolution. Just 1080 pixels isn't enough. I have 1600x1200 display for my computer use and I wouldn't take anything else.

Does 1080p make films and TV shows be less shit?

I can imagine it makes them look a bit less shit, but they are still just as shit as they are on any TV.

The last TV I bought, I got it for £15 from the British Heart Foundation shop.

Are you sure it is not a heart monitor?

E.Reiljans, it's been a couple of years since I did a comparison myself, I'll have to try again and see if I should be using something higher. After reading a few h264 guides, the general concensus online seems to be use crf=22 for high def footage, so I'm only out by one.

I think switching to my LCD has made the differences a little clearer, I didn't notice the differences in the eyelashes before. If anyone wants to try the same test I'm doing on their monitor, I've uploaded the screens here.

Quote from Hyperactive :

Not about whether to get 720p or 1080p. The price difference is non-existent.

I wasn't debating that it wasn't worth getting 1080p capable displays, or that the format itself is pointless. Clearly as technology improves, it makes sense to be future proof. I just wonder how much benefit it provides at the moment, given camera technology.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Does 1080p make films and TV shows be less shit?

I can imagine it makes them look a bit less shit, but they are still just as shit as they are on any TV.

The last TV I bought, I got it for £15 from the British Heart Foundation shop.

Yep, everything is shit.

Quote from Bob Smith :

That's an excellent example of what I'm talking about. Massive resolution overkill. View that image at 1:1 and there's not a remotely sharp feature in it, which would be made far more obvious if the image was denoised. I did the same trick, downsized (to 1080) then upsized that image, and the only difference afterwards (with 1:1 viewing) was the noise got a little softer, so overall it looked better, IMO.

sure but it's always better to have much bigger original image to work with than smaller...high quality digital raw images and high quality film scans allows you to work with huge resolution, large colour range, light (dynamic) range, you have much more space for cropping if needed...post processing large video is much easier than small videos, that's why resulting fullHD image is so sharp and looks much better than HD image...but you need very good source - great example is Planet Earth series, imho fullHD looks just awful - that's because of poor source image - it misses sharpness and there's lots of aberration on the image, on the other hand Life series has excellent image quality in fullHD, clear and very sharp image, really worth watching in fullHD...

I thought fullHD just referred to explicitly 1080p footage, whereas HD can refer to either 1080p or 720p?

Quote from majod :

post processing large video is much easier than small videos

Curious as to why this is?

your screens are simply too small
http://www.gadgetell.com/images/2007/03/resolution_chart.png
on anything less than a projector setup with a fairly massive screen theres hardly any point in anything more than 720

Or you're simply too far away. I'm sat 18 inches from a 32" display; at 1366x768, these pixels look massive!

Larger screens sat further away achieve the same thing but are easier on the eyes and more people can watch. We're all used to being sat close to high def displays with our computers, why should changing the media suddenly make us change this?

Needs to be a 1600p.

2560x1600 resolution here.

I second the 42" 1080p as a TV. I dont find the file size difference worth the quality difference but yes , i do find 1080p to be sharper than 720p, i mean,
that's what it does. Best i found was blue-ray player at 1080p and some proper movie, Avatar for example, to showcase. I used Wall-E .

Most of the time, 720p is more than enough. Thing is, when people say better resolution doesnt make a bad movie better, i found that sometimes it can
make them more bareable, some scenes have so much stuff going on in the background to distract you that you actually SEE it now :P.

As for playing games on it, i admit i never tried, too far for wires, blah blah, maybe one day. I would probably say the same though.

*note to self: Buy wireless mouse+keyboard+gamepad to play games on TV