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Resolution question

OptimumSlinky

OptimumSlinky

Senior member
I have a 32" Samsung LCD TV that I bought about a year and a half ago when Circuit City was going under. It's been great and I've had no problems. However, I am almost 100% certain it's max resolution is 720p or just higher (it will also do 1366x768 if you ask it to, but then the colors look slightly washed out). Either way, I am certain it is not 1080p capable. Yet when I go to options on my Xbox 360, the choice of 1080p is right there. Even more interestingly, when I select it, the screen flickers then pops back up and says its in 1080p. I don't know exactly which model TV it is (I'd have to go find the manual somewhere), but it seems weird that it would allow me to pick 1080p, and even weirder that the Xbox thinks its in 1080p when again I am almost certain the TV shouldn't be able to do it. Has anyone else ever had anything like this happen to them?
 
A lot of 720p TVs can accept a 1080 signal and then downscale it.

You're better off using 720p though, otherwise the xbox renders (to 640 or 720p for most games), upscales, then your monitor downscales.
 
OptimumSlinky said:
I have a 32" Samsung LCD TV that I bought about a year and a half ago when Circuit City was going under. It's been great and I've had no problems. However, I am almost 100% certain it's max resolution is 720p or just higher (it will also do 1366x768 if you ask it to, but then the colors look slightly washed out). Either way, I am certain it is not 1080p capable. Yet when I go to options on my Xbox 360, the choice of 1080p is right there. Even more interestingly, when I select it, the screen flickers then pops back up and says its in 1080p. I don't know exactly which model TV it is (I'd have to go find the manual somewhere), but it seems weird that it would allow me to pick 1080p, and even weirder that the Xbox thinks its in 1080p when again I am almost certain the TV shouldn't be able to do it. Has anyone else ever had anything like this happen to them?
Click to expand...

It means your TV can accept a 1080p signal. It will still display it at 720p though (through the scaler) so there's no point, really.

The Xbox renders most games at 720p. If you select 1080p, it will upscale it to that resolution and send through HDMI to the TV. The TV will understand this signal and accept it. Then it will downscale it to 720p. So there's no point 🙂


EDIT: Drat, beat by 2 minutes 😛
 
First thing to do: check the model of the TV. Either the manual or print on the rear side of the TV should do it. Then google for panel resolution for that model.

If the TV is 720p native (unlikely), then output 720p and thank the home electronics deities for smiling on you.

If the panel on the TV is 1366x768, both 720p and 1080p get scaled. Then the choice of whether you should be outputting 720p or 1080p from the 360 to get optimum picture quality is not so simple. A good rule of thumb would be to output 720p from the games which are 720p native (most games), and 1080p from the games which are anything but 720p. List here, jump to the end for 360 and XBLA: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46241

(Note that though the majority of games are 720p, some very notable ones like Halo and COD are not.)
 
Last edited:
Pia said:
First thing to do: check the model of the TV. Either the manual or print on the rear side of the TV should do it. Then google for panel resolution for that model.

If the TV is 720p native (unlikely), then output 720p and thank the home electronics deities for smiling on you.

If the panel on the TV is 1366x768, both 720p and 1080p get scaled. Then the choice of whether you should be outputting 720p or 1080p from the 360 to get optimum picture quality is not so simple. A good rule of thumb would be to output 720p from the games which are 720p native (most games), and 1080p from the games which are anything but 720p. List here, jump to the end for 360 and XBLA: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46241

(Note that though the majority of games are 720p, some very notable ones like Halo and COD are not.)
Click to expand...

I will check when I get home, but I am pretty positive the native resolution is probably 1366x768. It was not a particularly expensive TV when I purchased it, partly why it was purchased. Why wouldn't I simply want to go with 720p?
 
Okay, so according to Samsung's website:

LN32A450
Screen Size 31.5" (1)
Resolution 1366 x 768
Dynamic Contrast Ratio 10,000:1
Viewing Angle 178º / 178º
Response Time 6 ms
DNIe™ Yes
Native Resolution 720p
 
I see no reason to go with 1080p for the XBOX 360. The vast majority of games are 720p or even lower resolution upscaled to 720p. If you play one of those games in 1080p, then the XBOX 360 is going to upscale it to 1080p, and then your TV is going to downscale it to 1366x768 resolution (I'll refer to this at 768p to make it easier). Scaling once is better than scaling twice, so just leave your XBOX 360 set to 720p and let your TV very slightly upscale it from that.

Blu-ray discs (BDs) would be an example of a source that you would want to output in 1080p. The reason for that is that the source is actually 1080p rather than the XBOX 360 which just upscales a lower-resolution source to 1080p. If you output a BD in 720p, then you're going to (a) scale it twice (downscale with the BD player and upscale with the TV) and (b) lose some of the resolution. Your TV is 768p, so it will benefit from some of the higher resolution of 1080p rather than just setting a BD to output at 720p. If your TV had a native resolution of 1280x720, then there would likely be no difference between a BD played at 1080p or 720p.

Hopefully that clarifies things rather than just confusing them. Basically if a source is truly 1080p, then you want to output it as such. If a source is a lower resolution that's being upscaled to 1080p, then you want to output it as 720p (or its source resolution if that's an option, which I don't think it is with the XBOX360).
 
This is all so stupid. Why does it give one resolution, and then a different native resolution? There was a nice 42" Pioneer plasma (1080p-native) on sale at the PX at Ramstein this weekend. I think if it's still there when I get back from this field rotation I'm going to pick it up and solve this problem.
 
I have the same TV in 26" form for my master bedroom. Just set all output to 720p for it.

The problem with 720p is that pretty much no TV on sale actually conforms to exactly 720 resolution, 1280 x720.
 
kalrith said:
If a source is a lower resolution that's being upscaled to 1080p, then you want to output it as 720p (or its source resolution if that's an option, which I don't think it is with the XBOX360).
Click to expand...
I agree with everything else in your post but not this.

When game is anything but 720p or 1080p native, two scalings happen no matter what (game native resolution -> transport resolution -> 768p). We have a choice of either 720p or 1080p transport resolution. Which will best preserve the signal?

Let's make a thought experiment where the XBox and the TV support an ultra-high resolution output and input, respectively - say, 100000p. Clearly such a transport resolution will completely or almost completely preserve the original signal, whether it's 640p (Halo) or 1024p (Virtua Fighter). And if so, the results should very nearly equal scaling directly from original resolution to screen resolution, which is as good as we can possibly hope for. We can see that the higher the transport resolution, the better. 1080p should be used unless the game is precisely 720p native.
 
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