Playing 1080p video on a higher res monitor

[Long Hot Summer]

Hello everyone!

I've been wondering about this for a while, but now that I'm going to buy a new monitor it's about time I find out. Besides 1920x1080 there are monitors with a slightly higher resolution. I often play video with a resolution of exactly 1920x1080 and since a 1920x1080 monitor is a perfect fit, I'm worried that one of those slightly higher res monitors wouldn't be as good, because it can't translate the pixels 1:1. Is that right?

Is a higher res monitor worth the upgrade in this case?

Thank you.

[me-eyes]

No - they can do a 1:1 depiction of the resolution if you choose that setting in your media software player (100%). All that will happen is you'll have black bars on all 4 sides on the film.

If you play the film to fit the full resolution of the monitor, then the picture quality will be slightly downgraded. You can get an impression of what it will look like by playing a film now on your current monitor and zooming in slightly.

I bought my mum a 23" Dell monitor last Xmas - it has a 2048 x 1152 resolution (or something of this ilk) and is very good for films. Slightly less so for Youtube clips at fullscreen

[Long Hot Summer]

Thanks for the answer! Still 1 final question, just to be sure:

In the case of full screen playing a video that's lower res than your monitor, would lowering the desktop res to the video's res look better? Or would it look exactly the same as going to full screen in the monitor's max res?

[jagabo]

Real world video is rarely so sharp that you'll notice the difference between pixel-for-pixel mapping and scaling to a higher resolution (at the same screen size). The computer desktop is different. It often has very sharp text and details that will look blurred when scaled.

[me-eyes]

would lowering the desktop res to the video's res look better?

No - it will look worse. Due to the set number of pixels they contain, LCD monitors have a 'natural' resolution that they are supposed to display at - if you lower this to match your video's resolution the outcome will look horribly scaled and fuzzy. My laptop screen has a 1920*1200 resolution and occasionally the graphics have a glitch and get set to 1024*768 - it looks horrific! Try lowering the resolution of your current monitor and you'll see why you should avoid this...

[AlanHK]

In the case of full screen playing a video that's lower res than your monitor, would lowering the desktop res to the video's res look better? Or would it look exactly the same as going to full screen in the monitor's max res?

You'll get the same (blurry) result; the physical number of pixels (in an LCD monitor) is the same.
Might work for a CRT monitor, which doesn't have fixed pixels.

Zooming by exactly 200%, 300% etc., will give sharper results than some random factor to fill the screen.

[Long Hot Summer]

thx for the replies, I understand now