Hey everyone my question is this.. I've been reading up on resolutions and what resolutions for certain media (DVD, HD 720p, HD 1080p, etc) and I cannot find the answer to this question. So say you have a movie file that is 720p which is 1280 x 720 (I believe) If I play that file on my 22" computer monitor compared to playing it on my 50" plasma tv (both digital, one is DVI one is HDMI) it seems as though the TV has the BETTER quality even though it is LARGER. How is it that this works? I have been curious about this for some time and I would appreciate it if someone could explain this to me or if they could point me in the right direction as to an explanation for it. Whats going on in my mind right now is I think 1280 x 720 so I think 1280 pixels across and 720 up but for a TV that is much larger in size than a monitor wouldnt that DECREASE quality? Im stumped. 500W PS Radeon HD X2600 Gigabyte P35-DS3L 2gb Ballistix 4-4-4-12 DDR2

I should add that the "native" resolution my my 22" monitor is 1680 x 1050 and the 50" plasma tv is 720 p (1280 x 720 native) so how does that also play into the scheme of things? For example say I am playing a video file in DVD quality (720 x 480 I believe), is it because the tv does not have to downscale as much as the computer monitor that it seems to look better? Also how is it that screens can get bigger but have smaller resolution and still look good? 500W PS Radeon HD X2600 Gigabyte P35-DS3L 2gb Ballistix 4-4-4-12 DDR2

Plasmas are better for video than LCDs (especially LCD PC monitors, which typically use cheap panels). Plasmas have great colour accuracy, high contrast ratios, and fast video response time. You're probably watching the 50" TV from quite a ways away, which makes compression artifacts hard to discern. Video on your monitor (especially SD DVD content) has two things against it: (1) The monitor's high resolution makes the macroblocking of a 480p MPEG-2 stream quite obvious, and (2) you're sitting very close to your monitor, which makes macroblocking, well, even more obvious. Nearly every imperfection in the video stream becomes visible. As for the 720p HD file: It will definitely look good on your TV because it doesn't have to be scaled to fit your 720p TV. In most cases, scaling reduces image quality (especially at "weird" resolutions like 1680x1050). "For example say I am playing a video file in DVD quality (720 x 480 I believe), is it because the tv does not have to downscale as much as the computer monitor that it seems to look better?" If the TV is hooked up to an HDMI DVD player, then you're getting a 720p video signal from the DVD player. This results in a sharper image than a PC-based player. A PC-based DVD player simply blows up the 480p image--without any further processing--to fill an HD screen. This results in visible blockiness, just as the magnification of a photo in Photoshop would. A decent HDMI DVD player, however, does some number crunching to produce decent 720p - 1080i/p output from a 480p DVD. It's not as good as real HD, and cheap players don't do nearly as well as expensive players, but it's always an improvement over the non-processed 480p delivered over YPbPr component. Clear as mud? Replacing Super P3: Pentium M Dothan @ 2.82GHz (166x17) 3GB PC2-6400 @ 667MHz 9600GT Blu-Ray Modified PowerMac G4 Quicksilver case Homebuilt 1920x1200 projector Vista x86

Thanks a lot, the post did provide some useful information. I should add that the "DVD" file I was playing was a file I had downloaded onto my computer and I watched it both on the computer monitor and the tv (video card has two output DVI ports, one I use a DVI to HDMI dongle to hook it up to the tv) Sitting far away from both the computer and tv it looks like the tv is more "lively" compared to the computer monitor. As for blockiness the tv might win by a short margin. So if I am playing this dvd quality file on my computer on the tv it should still look better, I assume, because of the tvs features in bringing out the best of a picture. I did try use the Catalyst Control Center (ATI's) to make the monitor Vivid in color and it helped a bit. Thanks for the information! 500W PS Radeon HD X2600 Gigabyte P35-DS3L 2gb Ballistix 4-4-4-12 DDR2

One last question (i hope) Though my monitor is 1680 x 1050 native resolution, would changing the resolution to something like 1024 x 768 make it look better when i play certain resolution video files? I dont think this is the case but I was curious. 500W PS Radeon HD X2600 Gigabyte P35-DS3L 2gb Ballistix 4-4-4-12 DDR2