TV vs Computer Monitor for 720p

[ibex333]

I noticed an odd thing. When gaming at 720p on a 1080p monitor, the visuals are washed out, and kind of overall "ugly" because a 1080p monitor is designed to be ran at 1080p.


However, a TV "doesn't care" it looks equally "acceptable" at both resolutions and scales well to both. Sure, a higher resolution will look nicer, sharper, but a lower one will still be "ok" unlike on a computer monitor.


Why is that?

 

[nathanddrews]

Different displays have different scalers, so they will all look different to some extent. By and large, TV scalers are built for video and video only, so their scaling methods often go beyond basic and efficient (fast) "nearest neighbor" methods that PC monitors use. The downside - typically - is increased lag when using a TV. But like I said, it's going to be a case-by-case, model-by-model basis as to which does what best.

Likewise, videophiles will usually create calibration profiles for specific sources/inputs in order to compensate for scaler deficiencies. This might mean adjusting brightness/contrast/color depending upon watching sports, SD, HD, games, or Blu-ray movies. It's a dangerous rabbit hole to go down...

In your case, it's simply that the scaler in your TV handles 720p better than your monitor.

 

[ibex333]

Alright, if that's the case, how do people handle gaming at 720p these days on coputer monitors? Most of them are wide-screen format 1080p, so trying to run them at 720p is not pretty. Enabling "scale mode" basically puts a tiny square image in the middle of the screen with black all around it, so you are losing out on the rest of your display space.

What to do? Buy an old 720p monitor?

 

[Pantalaimon]

Did they even have 720p desktop monitors? I think there used to be 1680x1050 then 1280x1054 then 1024x768, but I don't remember there been 720p.

 

[Bacon1]

Did they even have 720p desktop monitors? I think there used to be 1680x1050 then 1280x1054 then 1024x768, but I don't remember there been 720p.

Laptops maybe? But yeah yeah 1024x768 was most common low end.

16:9 wasn't popular in low end monitors. 5:4 and 4:3.

 

[nathanddrews]

720p monitors never took off because 720p was lower resolution than standard XGA (1024x768) which was common when LCD came out. To compete with widescreen TVs, monitors instead went to 1366x768 so as to not lose resolution. I think most people handle the situation buy running resolutions at the native resolution (1080p) and changing settings to get a good frame rate.

@ibex333 Is the problem that the image is washed out? Or is the problem that the pixels scale poorly? Do you connect to your monitor using HDMI?

I have a hunch that this is related to 720p output from the GPU defaulting to 4:2:0 chroma or most likely - using Limited RGB (16-235) output rather than Full RGB (0-255).

 

[crisium]

Alright, if that's the case, how do people handle gaming at 720p these days on coputer monitors? Most of them are wide-screen format 1080p, so trying to run them at 720p is not pretty. Enabling "scale mode" basically puts a tiny square image in the middle of the screen with black all around it, so you are losing out on the rest of your display space.

What to do? Buy an old 720p monitor?

720p gaming? You must mean consoles then.

I actually went from a 26-inch 720p TV (1360x768 native) to a 27-inch 1080p monitor and 720p games actually look better on the monitor simply because it has less motion blur. Side-by-side comparisons, I didn't notice any scaling issues especially because 720p is so low resolution anyway. So it depends on your monitor.