1080p or 720p if video quality is indistinguishable on a 19" monitor?

[JeremyBrown]

Let's say you make 2 Blu-ray encodes. A 1080p and a 720p that's looks exactly the same when viewed on a 19" LCD widescreen monitor (1440x900).


If space was not an issue, wouldn't it be better go the 1080p route because once you upgrade to a 27" inch monitor or 10 years from now when TV's are the size of living room walls, the 720p wont be as sharp as the 1080p on those larger displays? I tend to sit about 20 inches away from my monitor.


I presume the 1080p will always be better even if they appear the same but just want someone more knowledgeable to confirm.


Thanks

[gll99]

I'd go 1080p all the time if my source material is at that resolution but then I'm using a 32" 1080p TV as a monitor and 720p LED projector at 92" diag. as a TV and that's still not big enough for me.


btw) Unless your the type that concentrates on the fine details while watching a movie, video is more forgiving than text. Just don't get fooled into thinking that resolution (frame size) is the only thing that matters about video.

[hello_hello]

I re-encode most 1080p Bluray video at 720p because it usually doesn't have 1080p worth of picture detail, so you loose very little quality you can see, if any. You are a little at the mercy of the upscaling on playback when you downscale while encoding. If a player/TV has softer upscaling the 720p version might look a little blurred compared to the original at 1080p, but sometimes it can go the other way..... I've seen 720p encodes look a tad sharper than the original 1080p due to sharper upscaling.

I have a 51" Plasma next to my desk and the 720p encodes generally look a tad blurred compared to the original because I use a softer upscaler with MPC-HC, but I still often encode them that way because I can use sharper upscaling if I choose in which case the difference tends to be fairly insignificant most of the time.
It can make a difference if you put some work into the process though. Here's a screenshot of a 1080p video followed by the same video de-noised, downscaled to 720p, sharpened just a tad, re-encoded, then upscaled to 1080p again. The re-encoded version looks better to me (compare them full-size), but some of it's personal preference.

There's also compression artefacts to consider. More compression (lower bitrates) increases artefacts and can destroy picture detail. I'd rather look at a high bitrate 720p encode than a 1080p encode at too low a bitrate. There's lots of variables.

Edit: Threads like these make me laugh because different people can compare video and come to opposite conclusions...... One guy said he deleted all his 720p itunes video and downloaded 1080p versions because they're sharper..... I've compared the two lots of times and there's usually almost no difference. Sometimes the 1080p version has more noise filtering applied so it'll compress easier, which means it can have a tiny bit less detail, sometimes the 1080p version has a tad more detail, but mostly it's pretty hard to tell them apart. The placebo effect is pretty strong. Or maybe it's the quality of the upscaling.
One guy said the 1080p versions are bitrate starved because the bitrates aren't much higher than the 720p versions and that's why he thinks the 720p versions tend to look sharper. I assume he hasn't noticed itunes 720p video is encoded with CABAC disabled, while it's enabled for 1080p, which means the 1080p video can be compressed more efficiently..... or maybe it's the upscaling on playback again.