720p VS 1080p

High Definition TV’s are a wonderful thing but what is the difference here? They are both high def right? No they are so far from being equal the whole VS part of my title is pointless. Let’s break them down to get a better understanding of what is going on. I stated in an earlier post that a pixel is a single dot on your screen. Hundreds of dots all put together makes up the image on your TV but how many are there is the question?

The resolution of 720p in a matrix/grid format is 1366x768. You could think of it as rows and columns "1366 columns and 768 rows" which comes out to 1,049,088 little dots on your TV all working together to make the image that you see.

The resolution of 1080p is 1920x1080 which comes out to 2,073,600 happy little dots. As you can see 1080p has twice as many dots to create your picture so naturally we have a very “clear” winner.

However is the extra cost worth it?

In my experience it would depend on how big the TV is that you are going to be purchasing. As a TV gets larger… So do the little dots. With a 65 inch TV the dots are almost twice the size of a 37 inch TV’s dots. When you get down to 32 inch or smaller the dots are so small that you may never really see the quality difference enough to care. You might be able to see it in a side by side comparison but not enough to justify the extra cost. It’s when you get into the 65 inch TV’s or 125 inch projected images that the difference is extremely noticeable.

In the end it will be completely up to you to make the decision but I’ve always been one to say go big or go home when it comes to TV's. In conclusion I wouldn’t suggest going with 1080p for anything under 40 inch. A 37 inch might be a bit of a toss up but I'll have to leave the decision up to you!

Note: It's important that I make it clear that 1080p and 1080i are not the same thing and to always make sure that whatever TV you're looking at is "NATIVE" 1080p. Native means the TV naturally does 1080p without using any special electronics that simply accept a 1080p signal but then reworks it to fit the TV. This happens a lot with 720p TV's that sales reps try to spin off as 1080 high def because they are 1080i capable. The "Native" would still be 720p "1366x768" so make sure you check and make sure that the "Native = true amount of active dots" matches what you are actually looking for.