I don't understand how this phenomenon works on TVs.

[Trenton_Net]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could tell me why video at 352x240 (Which is native TV Resolution) looks poor compared to something at a very high resolution on a TV. At first it sounds silly, but isn't the TV only capable of displaying a native 352x240 picture anyways? Why does the extra resolution still make it look sharper, expecialy when the TV can't display all of it anyways? I thought if you simply encoded at 352x240 at the max bitrate it needed, it would look the same, but im puzzled why the TV which can output at only one resolution gives diffrent results at video stored in diffrent resolutions.

Thanks, I really appreciate any help I can get.

[Hateslife]

352x240 is not native tv resolution. 352x240 is stretched to fit your TV because it's the right aspect ratio: 4:3.

[mfalx]

A good question...with a very big answer.

hence...
http://developer.msntv.com/Designing/tvsrnres.asp

Have fun

[mpack]

As someone else said, 352x240 is NOT the native resolution of an NTSC TV, in fact it's only a quarter of it - real NTSC resolution is closer to 704x480 (ignoring black border lines), updated about 60 times per second.

However the confusing part is that the 60Hz "update" does not repaint the whole screen - only every second line gets updated; so it takes two 60Hz "fields" to repaint the whole frame: this is interlaced video. So, NTSC has a field rate of 60Hz but a frame rate of 30Hz.

240 is the height of one NTSC field.