The Clicker on 1080p
engadget has an opinion piece every week called The Clicker, by Stephen Speicher. This week’s topic is 1080p, and, like the HDTVexpert, he points out that nobody is broadcasting 1080p and probably won’t. Also, a point that he mentions that is really important, so I mention here again, is that most 1080p sets don’t accept a 1080p signal:
Until recently HDMI chips were unable to process 1080p/60 and while they’ve broken through those limitations, few (if any) sets actually include these new chips. It’s been rumored that Sony’s Qualia 1080p front-projector will start to include 1080p/60 HDMI technology. However, for those of us looking to spend less than thirty thousand dollars, this isn’t a great help.
But what about the PS3? It will be offering 1080p output maybe as early as Spring 2006?
Games, at their heart, are rendered and vector-based. Once you get to the point where lines are drawn without stair-stepping, added resolution is of marginal benefit. Yes, it’s possible that game developers could incorporate high-quality 1080p textures. Will they? It’s unlikely. They too are weighing all the options. Texture memory is a precious resource, and with 1080p customers so few and far between, it’s a smarter choice for game developers to use more medium-resolution textures than a smaller number of 1080p textures. The result? The difference in your viewing experience is likely to be slim.
I’m not sure what he means about stair-stepping, because there will always be stair-stepping if you’re displaying something on a raster display, but the rest of it may turn out true.
Personally, if I had a choice between a 1080p set versus a 1080p or 720p set, I’d take the 1080p set anyday (everything else being equal). Especially if it’s a really big screen. Before the days of HD, the video industry spent a lot of effort de-interlacing 480i signals to get 480p. The same benefits will apply to deinterlacing a 1080i signal to get 1080p, though it might take a large screen to notice. But who doesn’t want a large screen, even if they can’t have it? The industry has to move forward.
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September 3rd, 2005 at 7:28 am
You make the statement, “Personally, if I had a choice between a 1080p set versus a 1080[i] or 720p set, I’d take the 1080p set anyday (everything else being equal). Especially if it’s a really big screen.” My question is, how big do you think the screen needs to be, below which you (or consumers in general) will not require 1080p? Thanks.
September 3rd, 2005 at 8:54 am
My guess is that you’d probably have to get into front-projection sizes to really notice the difference. (Like 80″ or so.)
September 3rd, 2005 at 10:21 am
I disagree. I’ve seen a 65″ RPTV running 720p, and then the same RPTV design only upgraded (prototype) to have native 1920×1080 resolution (though undoubtedly being driven by a 1080i signal), and there was a noticeable improvement. Now I would assume that the interlace vs progressive question would depend more on content than on diagonal. That is, fast moving video will always benefit from progressive instead of interlaced, while still images will not. So if you can see a difference between a native 1280×720 set and a native 1920×1080 set at a given diagonal, then the 1080 resolution should be preferred at that diagonal and above. And, at any resolution, progressive should be preferred over interlaced (because we all want to be able to watch fast moving video for TV and movies). I would put the diagonal cut-off in the mid 50″ range in terms of noticeable visual benefit from 1080 vs 720. But even then, I think consumers will want 1080 for smaller diagonals (maybe down to 40″) even though it might not show any visual benefit (only psychological). For example, JVC is introducing a 40″ TFT-LCD at 1080p this fall (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000783050121/). A good analogy in terms of “how much resolution is enough” is digital still cameras. The image seen from a 6Mpixel camera is usually rendered at far lower resolution (either limited by the monitor or DPI on the printer). So why not buy a cheaper camera with less pixels? People want more resolution! Bit of a ramble here, but an important issue to me. Thanks again.
September 3rd, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Were you baiting me?
September 4th, 2005 at 3:35 am
The guy appears to have no concept of 3d gaming.
His comments apply to a 1080p 2d game or a menu with non-horizontal/vertical lines - game developers might want to add a new texture set to accomodate the 1080 resolution, but 3d gamers have craved absurdly high resolutions since texture compression was first applied in hardware with the Unreal/Q3 engines.
PC gaming has has this kind of resolution for a long time.