720p != 1080p
April 29, 2010Back when we were moving frm SD to HD, one of the more fashionable arguments was that if you have normal vision then you can’t tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. Every once in a while this argument comes up, so I thought I’d address it because it sheds light on a common misconception about aliasing and how our eyes work.
The argument goes something like this. The human eye can not distinguish between unique features that are below a certain size on your retina. If you have a 720p display that is 12 feet away from you, and you have average vision, then you can not distinguish individual pixels. That’s how eye doctors test your vision. So 720p is enough and 1080p displays are a waste of money. Case closed! Right?
Here is an image showing this point.
There are 16 crosses. 8 of them are solid lines, and the other 8 are formed by dots. If you stand a few feet back from your monitor, you probably can’t tell the difference between them. At this distance, if you had a monitor with 2x the resolution, it wouldn’t matter, and the 1080p haters would be correct.
Pretty good argument. So why is it wrong? Well, your ability to distinguish unique features has much less precision than your ability to distinguish different types of edges. You can see that effect in this next image.
This image has 4 jagged lines, and 4 smooth lines. More than likely, you can distinguish between both types at a much farther distance from your screen than you could with the crosses, at least for the longer jaggies. That’s because even though you can’t identify unique features at that distance, you can still tell the difference between a smooth line and a jagged line.
If you had a higher precision display, you could get a better image even if you were standing pretty far away. By the way, you could exacerbate this effect by slowly rotating this image because crawling jaggies are even more noticeable than static jaggies.
So, what resolution is “enough”? In my opinion, it’s the resolution at which you don’t need any anti-aliasing. To test this theory, try playing some 720p games. You can find a list here: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46241. If you ever see a jagged edge anywhere in any 720p game on that list, then you did not waste your money on your 1080p display.
What if I play a 1080p game and I see jagged edges? And what if I play a 720p game with anti-aliasing and don’t see any jagged edges? I don’t think that paying the extra cost can be justified so easily at the moment. The argument gets even more difficult to make when you consider that you don’t get to choose which games will be 1080p and which ones 720p.
Hi Daniel. In general, the cost of hitting 1080p on the consoles is not worth it. Occasionally, I get into an argument/see an article where someone claims that 720p isn’t so good that your eye can’t tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. That’s what I’m referring to.
14 croses? I must be missing something, I see 16 croses.
crosses*
I play a lot of TF2 on PC and the difference between 720p and 1080p is astronomical.
I don’t see how this is argument for 1080p. If anything, it’s against it. In 1080p you will see jaggies which aren’t visible in 720p. And if there aren’t jaggies in 1080p, you won’t see them in 720p either, if downscaling is done correct. Yes, it’s true, that you need bigger resolution for bigger distance to the monitor. But as you noted you won’t see small details at big distances, so you’ll have to increase detail size and as such the jaggies will increase in size too.
Yep. I have a 2560×1600 display and jaggies are still noticeable from an average viewing distance, assuming no anti-aliasing is applied. The perfect resolution is a long way out.
Granted, pixel pitch of the display is also a big factor. If you had 2560×1600 on a 24″ or 22″, that would equate to a much smaller dot pixel pitch, and it would be difficult to see any jaggies.
@Zombie: That might be due to the fact that you play PC games on a computer monitor, in which case the sitting and viewing distance is a lot closer (hence, more resolution required).
It’s a good point you make, but in reality it comes down to other factors too. I have a 40″ Bravia 1080p and even after calibrating many other peoples tv’s none of them come close to mine with Sky HD, PS3, PC or WD Live Media player running on them. Samsungs too bright and bloomy, Toshiba’s too many jaggies etc so i argue that you CAN tell the difference between 720 and 1080. Well in my case, very easily. Love to all
@The One: You’re right. I can’t count. (-: Fixing now.
JackDadd
Bravias are excellent TVs – I have a 46″ and looks great.
I think even 720p on a Bravia or any other good TV would look sweet
You’re definitely speaking nonsense. The top LCD is the Samsung UN55B8500. LG models are the closest competition after that
Yeah no. Too bad the UN55B is last years led. It was ok at best. Sony hasn’t put out a good Bravia in 3 years. Best panel in the market right now is the pn50 or pn58c8000 plasma. Sorry but Led and LCD still don’t compare. I sell them and see them everyday
thats not exactly true.
you can easily tell the difference between a 1080P and a 720P screen.
im doing a game development course at tafe this year and the class im doing now is animation using maya and photoshop.
we have all the same computers at tafe, all dell D600, i needed a new laptop so i got one through tafe exactly the same only difference is my screen is 1080P in comparison to tafes 720P.
i only got the 1080P because i do allot of travailing and i like watching movies on the go.
now sit my laptop and a laptop down at tafe open up photoshop and look at the 2 exact same images you can tell the difference between mine and tafes machine.
but this argument is pointless,. all TVs these days are 1080P TVs you cant buy 720P TVs anymore.
same goes for PC monitors, only laptop screens are still in 720P and even those are being phased out.
come years end i wont be surprised if 720P screens are no longer available no matter which device.
back when LCDs just came out than you could argue this because the price difference was quite high.
like 2 years ago i bought my first LCD TV for 1600 bucks it was a 32 inch 720P and 3 weeks after i went in to buy a few cables and they had same brand TV same size but in 1080P for same price i paid for mine.
when i bought my TV a 32 inch in 1080P would of cost me 500 bucks more so i thought it was not worth it, but if i was to wait 3 weeks i could of got 1080P for the same price.
but now there is almost no difference in price and its been that way for a while now.
true about bravia’s from 3 years ago, but then again ive had mine nearly that long lol. still can’t see anything worth upgrading to tbh.
lol…this guy is right! big difference when you look at those examples close and far away.
Anyway the guy is from Naughty Dawg, so of course he’ll know what he’s talking because they made Uncharted 2
What is the op saying? That a higher resolution display is better? Well yeah sure everyone would probably agree. It’s common sense. Unless of course the output from whatever device that is sending the image is lower?
It just isn’t worth upgrading 720p to 1080p for most people.
Sky HD is 1080i. All my films are 720p and my WD TV Live and 360 are set to that resolution. Most console games are 720p (or below).
The difference between 720p and 1080p does not appear unless you are sitting within certain distances of the display (much closer than most people sit in their front rooms) and have devices that can output a 1080p image i.e. a PS3 playing a bluray or a PC with the correct 1920 x 1080 output set.
In my opinion it’s just not worth it for me to upgrade my Panasonic Viera to a 1080p display – I’ll just wait until resolution jumps to something noticeable – probably 4k.
And anyway what is this magical resolution referred to that doesn’t require anti aliasing and when do we get there?
i think most people understand that it all depends on the size of the display and how far away you are. the one that people often dont get is the difference between 30 fps and 60, after spending time tweaking crysis the two are night and day for me
It goes like this to me.
I buy my TV very close to release date.
1- I had a 2 year old bravia (don’t recall the model number now)
2. I also have a 1-year old samsung.
3- I bought last month the samsung UN55B8500 and let me tell you, I was BLOWN AWAY by the difference.
I don’t get all this pixel resolution mumble-jumble, but I get results.
So you can say anything about crosses, jagged lines, etc. I DO see the difference.
This conversation is so 2005. The real question now is 3D tv worth it…and all content there will be 720p in each eye…
[...] at least we now have a, ahem, resolution to the great 720p vs. 1080p debate2: Back when we were moving frm SD to HD, one of the more [...]
Hey John. Just wondering about your thoughts of targeting a sub 720p res with good AA like what is being used in Alan Wake. Do you think that was a good tradeoff? Would they have been better off aiming for 720p with no AA?
@Spriggers:
Alan Wake is not Sub 720p…
It’s 720p with no AA…
Nevermind, just noticed someone said this person is from Naughty Dog. The company that reckons “this gen lets us have anatomically correct figures” and “we’ve got a very realistic water effect”.
Based on that, I find it very hard to take any aspect of this discussion seriously. Especially as he is trying to prove his point with static, black and white images… because of course, we all know that games are made solely of black and white, perfectly straight objects. *sigh*
i can always see the difference between 720p and 1080p ….. on my 55″ lcd
@the one
….that’s because you need a 1080p tv
Hopefully come next gen consoles, we’ll finally see either native 1080p running at 60fps or 720p with atleast 4xAA. PC gamers can appreciate this.
You should get your eyes tested man.
Alan Wake is sub-hd, it runs at the Wii-like resolution of 540p.
Well… i don’t know exactly what the hell should that mean after all… but i tested Modern Warfare 2 in both resolutions (2x AA), playing in the same distance and i saw a big difference… But i guess it’s relative, cause i know some that people tells me that there are no diference between 480i and other higher resolutions…
If the game looks nice and the graphics do the job of immersing the player into the game world – who cares about graphics being 720p or 1080p? A properly designed game with good graphics and I never notice the edges anyway. Only a completely anal person cares about such an argument.
Hey John. Just wondering about your thoughts of targeting a sub 720p res with good AA like what is being used in Alan Wake. Do you think that was a good tradeoff? Would they have been better off aiming for 720p with no AA?
Alan Wake is sub-hd, it runs at the Wii-like resolution of 540p.
540p with 4x MSAA on 360 will give you much better edges than 720p with no MSAA. Btw, 2x MSAA is the same on both PS3 and 360, but 4x MSAA on the 360 is much better than 4x MSAA on PS3 because the 360 4x MSAA pattern uses a rotated grid. So it looks good to me. In particular, when you look at the grass, it has a crisp, non-aliased edge to it. Edit: Changed 576p to 540p.
I have a 60″ Pioneer Elite and I remodeled a room in my house for it to enjoy gaming and HD movie content. Viewing distance away from the screen is the primary factor in being able to detect the additional lines of resolution that 1080p offers.
60″ – Your eyes would need to be about 7.5 feet away, at the most, to get the full benefit of 1080p. After that you can go out to about 11 feet to still detect some benefit. After 11 feet away 1080p means nothing, human eyes cannot detect the additional lines of resolution.
50″ = same as above, but with 6.5 feet and 8.75 feet distances.
40″ = same as above, but with 5.0 feet and 7.00 feet
For more info, do a searc for “1080p viewing distance”.
Game on.
Hi Armand,
Most of those charts are wrong because they focus on detecting individual objects instead of features. So are you really saying that if you are sitting more than 7 feet away from a 40″ TV at 1080p, that it is impossible detect any difference in any image?
So here are a few questions for you:
1. How big is your computer screen?
2. What resolution is your computer screen?
3. Try standing up and looking at your computer screen from far away. At what distance can you not tell the difference between the sharp vertical line and the jagged vertical line?