32" LCDs: Why 1366x728

B

benwong

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Another one guys.

This issue has been brought up before, but I can't recall reading a definitive answer.

Why do all new 32" LCD screens have the native resolution of 1366x768, when 720P is 1280x720??! I realise you'll get a slightly higher res picture when connecting to a PC, but surely these screens are aimed more at the 720P standard sources? :confused:

The 1366x768 screens are already struggling with SD broadcasts of present due to scaling issues, but then, wouldn't there will be scaling issues when HD broadcasts become a common thing too? :rolleyes:

Wouldn't a 1280x720 screen fair better for this purpose?

Another point is; why 1366x768? It's not a resolution used in computing (to my knowledge) and it certainly doesn't conform to the HD standard resolutions..

Makes me wander.. should I really spend cash on a screen that will never (in the foreseeable future) be used at native res when used as a TV? :rolleyes:

Ben
 
Its actually 1366x768 and is basically 16:9 wide screen of the 4:3 1024x768 XGA format, hence W-XGA. Nothing more sinister than a hangover from PC use, its just that PC's have problems with this resolution too!

-Ian
 
Ah, I see.. sorry, have edited the above post accordingly... but that doesn't solve the fact that 720P's going to be 1280x720.. there's going to some sort of scaling going on there which usually means reduced PQ...

Just seems like a funny resolution for manufacterers to make their screens at, that's all..

Ben
 
So 720p will actually be displayed natively in 15:9 format?

So I summize if you are going to watch lots of HDTV (720p) or view WMV-HD 9 (720p) Films via a HTPC, then 15:9 panels would be the way to go, on the other hand if you view mainly standard Widescreen DVD's then 16:9 would be more appropriate.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but thats the way it seems to me currently.
 
Xelon said:
So 720p will actually be displayed natively in 15:9 format?

So I summize if you are going to watch lots of HDTV (720p) or view WMV-HD 9 (720p) Films via a HTPC, then 15:9 panels would be the way to go, on the other hand if you view mainly standard Widescreen DVD's then 16:9 would be more appropriate.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but thats the way it seems to me currently.
You are completely wrong. 1280x720 is 16:9, (1280 x 768 is 15:9) but just a more logical resolution for TV use.

I've griped about this before too, and it does seem like a pretty silly situation. I had mentioned before, that what we really need is 768p broadcasts!That would do nicely....

Jimmy
 
just to throw a another spanner in the works, my dad AE700 projector detects a 720p input from a pc as 750p @ 60hz???
 
That would be including the blank lines. Quite a few manufacturers display inputs that include the non visible portion of the picture - ie 625 instead of 576. Its the same thing.

It really does confuse some people including manufacturers. My DVD manufacturer still is adament that 1366x768 is the same as 1280x720, its just that the 768 lines includes the blank lines and overscan which is not the case.

-Ian
 
jimsan said:
I've griped about this before too, and it does seem like a pretty silly situation. I had mentioned before, that what we really need is 768p broadcasts!That would do nicely....
Exactly.

So theoretically, a 1280x720 screen will be better for HD broadcasts, and other HD sources (future games consoles, and HD DVD players).

And 1366x768 screens are good for.... any suggestions guys? :rolleyes:

Ben
 
benwong said:
And 1366x768 screens are good for.... any suggestions guys? :rolleyes:

Marketing purposes! Higher resolution, so it's gotta be better right? ;)
 
On that subject I have to say full marks to Samsung for having the common sense to put a 768p upscaling mode on their DVD players - wish others would do the same.
 
I think its a compromise on price. It was probably cheaper and easier to stretch a 1024x768 panel to 1366x768 and write a decent scaling algorithm than to build a 1280x720 panel from scratch that would still need a to scale 480, 576 and 1080 lines. A decently scaled image from 720p to 768p is not perfect, but it can be done well enough for most people to not to notice the difference.

-Ian
 
No No,

These resolutions are extensions to the VESA (i.e. PC display standards - e.g VGA (600X480), SVGA (800X600), XGA (1024X768) etc.) standard as these screens (Plasma & LCD) were originally intended for the PC market - then filtered through to the consumer market.

As for why LCD screens have such similar resolutions, simple - there are only a handful of panel manufacturers who produce the LCD panels used by all these manufacturers - LG/Philips (who supply their parent companies and some others, such as Apple and Dell), Samsung (who supply Sony), Sharp (who supply Panasonic, Loewe, Toshiba & JVC among others) etc. All these panels are similar because they all come from standardised volume production facilities.

As for what 1366X768 is good for when the broadcasting standard is 1280X720, it actually is higher in resolution - so a 720p signal would have to be scaled up on a 768p display. Where this might be problematic is if the display's internal scaler is inferior, it might introduce noise, emphasise artefacts or soften the picture, reducing the perceived resolution. A quality scaler would ensure this does not happen, however, and in the end you would not be losing any picture information. The combination of a properly calibrated 768p display fed 720p with a digital signal at native rate from a good scaler can easily equal or beat the performance from a similar setup with a 1280X720 screen. Further, when scaling down, say from a 1080i (or p) signal, the higher resolution of the 768p screen would ensure a sharper picture, due to better pixel mapping, than could be achieved with a similar quality 720p screen.

HTH

Moory :)
 
YellowCows said:
These resolutions are extensions to the VESA (i.e. PC display standards - e.g VGA (600X480), SVGA (800X600), XGA (1024X768) etc.) standard as these screens (Plasma & LCD) were originally intended for the PC market - then filtered through to the consumer market.

I see.. but surely most of these manufacturers have cottoned on to the fact that the majority of these screens are now used for home tv sets? I don't see how a 32" tv set with a resolution of 1366x768 is at all useful as a main PC screen. The resolution is just too low for such a large area (unless you're sitting about 6+ foot away, about the same distance as most sofas are from home tv sets?).

This also begs the question; if their originally meant for PC use, why do so many have such poor support for running the screen via DVI or DSUB at native resolutions? :confused:

YellowCows said:
The combination of a properly calibrated 768p display fed 720p with a digital signal at native rate from a good scaler can easily equal or beat the performance from a similar setup with a 1280X720 screen.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how that's possible. :nono:

I don't see ANY hi res LCD screens (including the 9986) 'beat' the performance of a top of the range CRT with a SD input. Why? Because the CRT is running at native resolution.

The 1366x768 screen cannot possibly show a better image than a 1280x720 screen when fed a 720P signal, due to the fact that it's not displaying each pixel as it should be displayed. The 1280x720 screen is showing all the information the signal has, at 1:1 pixel mapping, whereas the 1366x768 screen will be using something like 1.07 pixels to show 1 pixel information from the feed.

There's no denying that a good scaler can produce performance that comes close to a good screen running at native res, but I don't see how it can 'beat' the performance.

Am I missing something here?

Ben
(P.S. apologies if this post sounds at all aggressive Moory, my aggression is actually aimed towards the LCD manufacturers) :smashin:
 
benwong said:
... I don't see how a 32" tv set with a resolution of 1366x768 is at all useful as a main PC screen. The resolution is just too low for such a large area (unless you're sitting about 6+ foot away, about the same distance as most sofas are from home tv sets?).
I totally agree with you there. I run 1600x1024 on a 17" monitor and its a bit small for my liking, a few more inches would probably do it so the wife said. But when I tried my 32" display at 1366x768 it was so weird. I had no extra vertical resolution than my 14" laptop and little extra in the horizontal plane yet I had to sit so far back it was uncomfortable.

benwong said:
This also begs the question; if their originally meant for PC use, why do so many have such poor support for running the screen via DVI or DSUB at native resolutions? :confused:
The physical panel design was an extension of PC technology, but the electronics and the rest is very different. The lack of support for DVI and D-Sub is mostly as a result of the internals being for video rather than PC use.


benwong said:
I don't see ANY hi res LCD screens (including the 9986) 'beat' the performance of a top of the range CRT with a SD input. Why? Because the CRT is running at native resolution.
LCD's and plasmas are fixed pitch devices, CRT are not. So there is no 'native' resolution for a CRT as such. Apart from the size of the mask and size of the phosphors which have no bearing on the available resolutions, a CRT is equally happy at whatever resolution it will accept.

benwong said:
The 1366x768 screen cannot possibly show a better image than a 1280x720 screen when fed a 720P signal, due to the fact that it's not displaying each pixel as it should be displayed. The 1280x720 screen is showing all the information the signal has, at 1:1 pixel mapping, whereas the 1366x768 screen will be using something like 1.07 pixels to show 1 pixel information from the feed.

There's no denying that a good scaler can produce performance that comes close to a good screen running at native res, but I don't see how it can 'beat' the performance.
Agreed. At the very least a scaled image will be less sharp, but with some input, this may not be a bad thing.

I think we are paying the price for having more affordable screens in the first place. In a world where joe public is happy with compressed music, I suspect the manufacturers thought it was the same with video.

-Ian
 
YellowCows said:
As for what 1366X768 is good for when the broadcasting standard is 1280X720, it actually is higher in resolution - so a 720p signal would have to be scaled up on a 768p display. Where this might be problematic is if the display's internal scaler is inferior, it might introduce noise, emphasise artefacts or soften the picture, reducing the perceived resolution. A quality scaler would ensure this does not happen, however, and in the end you would not be losing any picture information.

How does one determine the quality of an LCD TV's scaler before purchase? Any giveaways in the specs?

Any obvious differences between manufacturers or is it down to particular models?

Currently considering the Samsung LExxR41BD (or at a push, the Panasonic TXxxLX500). Any comments on these LCD's?
 
I have a Sharp LC26GA4 with 1366*768 resolution and when using 720p in AV mode there is some overscan. So surely 720p into a 1280*720 display would either have no overscan, and map 1 to 1, or have overscan and still have to scale.

would not having an overscan a problem or an advantage?
 
ianh64 said:
The physical panel design was an extension of PC technology, but the electronics and the rest is very different. The lack of support for DVI and D-Sub is mostly as a result of the internals being for video rather than PC use.

Agreed. My point is, since the main use of these screens is NO LONGER for PC use, why use 1366x768 as a native resolution? Surely the panel factories know this by now?! :confused:

Plus, why are the set manufacturers continuing to buy and use these screens from the factories when they know full well the end product is going to be used for mainly video inputs?

ianh64 said:
LCD's and plasmas are fixed pitch devices, CRT are not. So there is no 'native' resolution for a CRT as such. Apart from the size of the mask and size of the phosphors which have no bearing on the available resolutions, a CRT is equally happy at whatever resolution it will accept.

Sorry mate, what I was supposed to say was 'because the SD signal is being displayed at native resolution' and therefore no scaling is needed. :)

Ben
 
Crickey, does it really matter?

I have been watching some 720p files on my terribly terribly 1366x768 32ld7200, and do you know what? The picture is awesome.

I'm honestly not bothered that there is some scaling going on. I sure as hell can't see any signs of artifacts or other such horribleness. No-one has perfect vision. Once you're settled on your sofa watching a movie, are you really going to be sat there thinking "Goddamn resolution scaling! You're ruining my picture!"? Of course not.

I bought my tv to watch some great quality images, and that's what it provides. If I wanted to sit and count loads of tiny dots, I'd buy an ant farm.
 
Matt,

the point is, some of us are shelling out £1000+ of our hard earned cash to buy a piece of kit that will never be used to it's full potential due to the fact that it will never receive it's 'optimum' feed on normal video sources.

I don't know about you, but for the amount of money I'm planning to spend on an LCD screen, I want to make pretty damn sure it's gonna be the best.

My worries are that LCDs have a well know issue with displaying feeds that are not of it's native resolution. It's well documented that all large hi res LCD screens struggle to deal with SD feeds as well as CRTs. Even though the 720P feed is near the resolution of these screens, it's not the same and I'm worried this will show when a 1280x720 screen is compared directly to a 1366x768 screen which will in turn make me wish I looked for a different screen!

Just out of curiosity Matt, what source is your 720P feed?

Ben
 
matt_p said:
Once you're settled on your sofa watching a movie, are you really going to be sat there thinking "Goddamn resolution scaling! You're ruining my picture!"? Of course not.

unfortunatley i do.... :suicide:
 
matt_p said:
Once you're settled on your sofa watching a movie, are you really going to be sat there thinking "Goddamn resolution scaling! You're ruining my picture!"?

You'd be surprised at just how big the market is out there for after market good quality scalers due to the Hi Res LCDs and Plasma screens making a meal of the scaling..

And I stick to my original point, if these screens were made at the correct resolution, it would save the Set Manufacturer a lot of time and money as they would not need to write any coding to do any scaling for 720P signals, and it would save the end user money as A) they would get cheaper sets, and B) they don't need to spend money on scalers.

Having said that, whether the difference justifies the need for a scaler is another point entirely.



Ben
 
benwong said:
You'd be surprised at just how big the market is out there for after market good quality scalers due to the Hi Res LCDs and Plasma screens making a meal of the scaling..

And I stick to my original point, if these screens were made at the correct resolution, it would save the Set Manufacturer a lot of time and money as they would not need to write any coding to do any scaling for 720P signals, and it would save the end user money as A) they would get cheaper sets, and B) they don't need to spend money on scalers.


The scalers are mainly for scaling standard def sources to LCD/plasma resolutions, I thought? It's surely a much harder task to scale 480p/576p to 768p than it is to go from 720p to 768p. If that makes sense??

I doubt anyone would bother buy a scaler to scale their 720p source up to their 768p screen.

As for your other point, if it was cheaper for the manufacturer to produce 'true' 720p sets, that gave noticably better PQ, there wouldn't be any 1366x768 sets. They'd all be 1280x720.

To turn it around the other way, why would a manufacturer spend more money to make an 'inferior' product? My guess is that:

a) 1366x768 screens are cheaper

and b) the pic difference in scaling 720p up to 1366x768 is negligible.
 
benwong said:
Just out of curiosity Matt, what source is your 720P feed?

Ben

Sorry, I replied to your last post but didn't see this one a couple of posts above it!

I've got some HD Divx trailers and a couple of WMV HD movies (national geographic type) that are 720p.
 
Apologies if someone has already mentioned this...

The problem with displays that have a native resolution of 1366x768 and which scale a 720p signal up to 1366x768 comes when connecting a PC to the HDMI port for example.

When you use powerstrip and send a 720p signal via the HDMI port to some displays, as it's scaled up you don't get dot for dot and PC input looks crap.

This scaling issue is what probably stops some panels displaying a 1366x768 signal properly from PCs via the HDMI port.

1280x720 is the way forward.
 
matt_p said:
To turn it around the other way, why would a manufacturer spend more money to make an 'inferior' product? My guess is that:

a) 1366x768 screens are cheaper

Well, the reason why these screens are cheaper, is probably because the panel manufacturers produce a lot more of these screens than standard 1280x720 screens. Which is why I made the following point:

benwong said:
since the main use of these screens is NO LONGER for PC use, why use 1366x768 as a native resolution? Surely the panel factories know this by now?!

There doesn't seem any good reason why these factories continue to pump out 1366x768 screens if they're being used as TV sets. If factories stop/reduce producing these panels, and increase the production of standard 1280x720 panels, it would be cheaper! Wouldn't that benefit all of us? :smashin:

Forest Fan said:
When you use powerstrip and send a 720p signal via the HDMI port to some displays, as it's scaled up you don't get dot for dot and PC input looks crap.

This scaling issue is what probably stops some panels displaying a 1366x768 signal properly from PCs via the HDMI port.

That's the exact thing I'm afraid of.. :rolleyes:

Ben
 

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