Native vs DownSampled Resolution?

[therock003]

I'm looking to buy a new Laptop the following days and i'm looking at 15". One of them has 1366x768 (almost 720p) and the other has 1920x1080 fullHD. My question is, where will 720p content look better? On the first that is almost native 720p so pixels have near to 1:1 mapping, or on the second one that has greater pixel density in same area, but pixels will have to be mathematically interpolated to fit to the greater resolution? Is there a definitive answer to this, or are there both practical and theoretical responses?

[jagabo]

The 1920x1080 display will look better unless you set the player to use 1:1 mapping (ie display the 1280x720 image in the center of the 1366x768 screen). Though for most video it won't be too big a difference.

Download the 1280x720 Belle Nuit test pattern from here:

http://www.belle-nuit.com/testchart.html

Use VirtualDub to resize to 1366x760 and 1920x1080 -- use whichever resizing filter you want. Keep an eye on the areas with the thin horizontal and vertical lines -- around the "1" and "2".

[budwzr]

That's a great question that I had when I bought my laptop too. Should I go for full HD, or put the money difference toward performance.

In this new era of RGB everywhere, I find myself authoring exclusively to 720p. 720p is the most versatile for home bigscreen and YT because the bandwidth is much lower but the resolution is still 4X SD.

In the case of 1080 (Full HD), you don't get much more bang for the extra bandwidth buck.

So in my case I chose a laptop with 1680 X 945 screen (cheaper), and a secondary monitor with 1920 X 1080 ($100). That's about the same as the price difference but I get a lot more screen real estate at my desk.

AFA your specific question goes jagabo already answered it exactly, but as you can see, there are other considerations too.

[therock003]

Well actually i am not considering the extra resolution (not my decision to go for 1080p in such small scren), it is just that the laptop with the specs that I like comes with the FullHD display, and since i will be playing computer games, it is possible that it can not handle graphics at 1080p so most likely i will be downsizing to 720p. And i was just wondering if it will look as good at this screen as if i had a screen that natively supported 720p? Catch my drift?

[budwzr]

"Downsizing" is too general a term.

A denser pixel count on the screen allows the maximum flexibility, and maintains quality.

On a 720p screen, 1080 would degrade.
On a 1080 screen, 720 would not.

You need to differentiate dpi from spi, to better understand.

Scanners use spi to measure resolution because they have no pixels. SPI is the native resolution of a graphic. Most monitors have 96 dpi, or 72 dpi on older ones, or something around that number. So if you scan something at 150 spi almost half the resolution is lost on a 72 dpi monitor.

That's why a 300spi scanner is way more than adequate for photography and desktop publishing, because there are no 300dpi monitors, for consumer use.

Same thing for video. If your video spi is higher than the monitor, the image will degrade. Spi is a constant, dpi is variable.

Kapeesh?

[jagabo]

since i will be playing computer games, it is possible that it can not handle graphics at 1080p so most likely i will be downsizing to 720p. And i was just wondering if it will look as good at this screen as if i had a screen that natively supported 720p? Catch my drift?

So you're asking will a game rendered at 1280x720 and displayed full screen on a 1920x1080 LCD look better or worse than a game rendered at 1366x768 and displayed on a 1366x768 LCD?

[therock003]

since i will be playing computer games, it is possible that it can not handle graphics at 1080p so most likely i will be downsizing to 720p. And i was just wondering if it will look as good at this screen as if i had a screen that natively supported 720p? Catch my drift?

So you're asking will a game rendered at 1280x720 and displayed full screen on a 1920x1080 LCD look better or worse than a game rendered at 1366x768 and displayed on a 1366x768 LCD?

Exactly!

[mammo1789]

So you're asking will a game rendered at 1280x720 and displayed full screen on a 1920x1080 LCD look better or worse than a game rendered at 1366x768 and displayed on a 1366x768 LCD?

Exactly!

Simple answer the game put on 1280x720 ( or other resolution games have many different resolutions including 1366x768 depending of the monitor that they detect ) will look much worse on 1920x1080 monitor than on native 1366x768 lcd for games its always good to go with native monitor resolution ( from personal experience i have 1680x1050 and all games I run in that resolution if I put them in smaller resolution for instance 1280x720 it looks worse than on my HD ready tv 1366 768 ). Probably the quality of the scaling of graphics card and monitor also has to do with your question

[jagabo]

That's too unpredictable to answer for certain. It will depend on how much antialiasing the game does, how the display upscales, and what you prefer. I think most people would prefer the 1366x768 render on the 1366x768 screen though.

[therock003]

That's what i was afraid though...

[budwzr]

I thought when the OP mentioned "content" that it was actually content, not generated graphics.

That's like asking what kind of TV gives the best picture from a cable box.