Need a little assistance with buying an HDTV

To start off here are my preferred Specs:
720P
Widescreen
PC compatible(not required)
8ms responce time or less
20+ inches
Wide viewing angle
P.I.P. (not required)
Lighwieght

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What I have:
$700+/- a few extra
Discounts at: Ultimate Electronics(%varied), Circuit City(%Varied), Target(%10)
Tax here is .065

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What Ive found:
Syntax Olevia 26inch LCD @Compusa for $550
Samsung 23inch LCD @ Circuit City for $611

reviews on each of those TVs are very favorable,

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I will be using this mostly with my Xbox360 and as a PC moniter. Modify my specs all you want if there' s better out there.

VX has that Samsung, -- it' s also Microsoft' s choice of model for 360 display units (although every one i' ve seen was set up incorrectly).

Saying that, i know jack about HDTV' s. I do know that 720P gaming is awesome though, i play with a monitOr and have been very happy with the results!

After I posted that I ended just biting the bullet and went and got the Syntax (cheaper larger and just about equal specs as the samsung one)...I back at work and awaiting to see how it looks.
I did preview it by looking at the dashboard. I freaked out thinking the TV was crap at first then I realized in needed to changed the console settings to 720p...my eyes have never felt better...the dashboard alone looked so smooth and oooo so lovly. Just a few more hours of work and I get to expeirence my very first HD game...

Later on Im gonna go pick up these :headphones. and be in top notch budget gaming heaven :)

GRAW in 720p is glorious!

The native resolution is 1366 x 768, and 360 has a setting for exactly that. It' s probably the best setting the console supports too! Welcome to the fold brother!

those headhpones look sweet. It really sucks trying to use regular headphones and a headset at the same time. Let us know how they are.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

The native resolution is 1366 x 768, and that' s " true" 720P

No it isn' t. True 720p is 1280x720. That' s 768p which is not any kind of HDTV standard at all. It' s a PC resolution. Weirdly most LCD HDTVs have oddball resolutions like 1366x768 for some odd reason, probably due to the LCD manufacturers themselves. This is their native resolutions and everything without exception is either up or downscaled to that mode.

Ok, but aren' t 1366 x 768 and 1360 x 768 WXGA and used in widescreen LCD HDTV' s to achieve a 720p in 16:9?!

The samsung screens are really great, in both HD gaming and watching TV on them, i have the 40 inch model of the one you wrote about!


I havent heard about Syntax, but you decide to return it, get the samsung!

Ok, but aren' t 1366 x 768 and 1360 x 768 WXGA and used in widescreen LCD HDTV' s to achieve a 720p in 16:9?!

Real 720p is scaled to those resolutions, so you don' t get a 1:1 pixel resolution and therefore not as sharp as real 720p could be. Set your Xbox360 for those weird-ass resolutions if it lets you and hook it up with a VGA connection if it lets you. Or else do not buy an LCD TV. Wait until real HDTV LCD TVs come out.

Ah!

See, this is why i said to ask you...

EDIT: Actually Joe, i have a 5:4 CRT with a native resolution of 1280 x 1024, i guess selecting that resolution from 360' s display menu (as i have done) is the correct thing to do. But, -- does it scale down to, 720p?!

For that kind of budget and screen size the best option would be CRT TV - you won' t encounter lag issues when playing Wii :)

I think they make them in 768 as native resolution to make them look more HD than 720p - people think that higher resolutions can support everything below but it' s not true - like Joe said it would hurt the image.At the same time scaling up or down causes lag.

Look for native 720p TV for 360.And be sure to set the right resolution in your 360 (to match the native res of your TV)

Also be sure to check it at your local shop with some games you know - even the smallest lag can ruin gameplay.


The best way to plug your 360 to a native 1366x768 is through VGA cable cause it' s a PC resolution.

CRTs don' t need to scale. They put out multiple resolutions, it isn' t really a native resolution, it is the maximum resolution. And 1280x1024 would be upscaling not downscaling from 1280x720 (720p).

And I don' t know what kinda crap equipment you use gangsta but I' ve never used any that " lags" when scaling the resolution.

And lag is supposed to be used for network connections only, if you use it any other way you are a nub and my respect for you goes down to 0.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

All monitors have a native resolution. My monitor' s native resolution is 1280 x 1024, but i can set it to 1920 x 1200 if i want/need.

My question was; if i set it to the native resolution of my monitor, would it scale to 720p or to something else?! loco, you' re saying it scales it down to 720p?!

At the same time scaling up or down causes lag.

You' re talking about slight framerate issues when playing in 1080i?!

I don' t know your monitor' s specs. If it is a computer monitor and CRT, then it is likely multiscan, which means it does not have a native resolution... just a maximum and a minimum (usually 640x480) resolution. If the monitor can display a certain resolution, you won' t see an image. No scaling up or down is going on (and thus no lag whatsoever). It displays what you input to it.

EDIT: Lag is the term used to describe the time between when you press a button on your controller and when the consequential action happens onscreen. LCDs and the like must process the image up or down to their native resolution and this takes time. Try plugging an NES into an LCD HDTV and playing Megaman 2. Now try jumping across the falling platforms near the beginning of Bubbleman' s stage. VERY difficult to do because of the lag. This can even affect CRT HDTVs. I tried playing Megaman 2 via an emulator on my Dreamcast which was hooked up via S-video. My Sony HDTV has three native resolutions: 1080i, 960i and 480p. My Dreamcast was running in 480i so even though it looked like an interlaced screen, it was actually doing some processing (actually upscaling to 960i), causing my jumps to be difficult. I then hooked my DC up via component and it runs in 480p. No more lag issues at all, jumps work great! This lag will be even worse on LCDs.

Never had any " lag" using my DC in 640x480 with VGA or S-video, or an xbox 1 with component 480p and 480i or 360 using 720p on my roomates LCD TV.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

But 360 games are formatted for 480p, 720p and 1080i. You' re saying that because i selected 1280 x 1024 from the menu because my monitor supports it, that the games are displaying in that resolution?!

I figured the machine just scaled it.

Oh! I often have to manually re-size vertically. So even if it' s putting out 1024, when i correct the vertical stretching it ends up being something like 720p anyway?

1366 x 768 or higher is what you want, there is no 1240X720 HD tv. Whatever you do don' t try and save money by getting those fucking cheap ED TVs, which is basically standard TV in Widescreen. Actually screw LCDs entirely, I hate LCDs, they' re full of bullshit and in my opinion besides being in HD are a severe downgrade from even CRTs, a HD crt is king, with a HD crt you' ll never have dead pixels, ghosting or bad black levels. The only problem is that they can weigh almost 300 pounds. A healthy alternative to both although I would still choose a good HD CRT even if I have to bring it in my room upstairs, is DLP. DLP is somewhere in between LCD and CRT, they are halfway between LCDS and CRT in terms of weight and size. They have no dead pixels, no ghosting on newer models (even on the cheap). The only thing with DLP is that they have a unique problem called the rainbow effect, basically the colours bleed. Although the newer models don' t even have this problem. A new DLP is close to CRT in terms of visual quality.



Incase you don' t want to read what I' ve written, HD CRT>DLP>LCD. I would look into DLP since you want something light. Price wise they' re comparable to LCDs. Just do your research to make sure it doesn' t have the " rainbow effect" , DLPs have a " color wheel" and the newer ones spin faster to prevent the rainbow effect.

Ok Ive ran my TV thru a gauntlet of things. First off thanks for the help and please continue the discussion as I may find a reason to take back the TV I now have.

Now to chat up the TV (Syntax Olevia 26 HVX). First I turned it on which was quick and painless. Then I proceeded to probing the living hell out of it with various wires and what not. Throw the laptop here, plug that there insert the 360 elsewhere. I setup the laptop first as then i coudl look for oddities by throwing up immobile objects. That stuff was easy. Took a bit to get the right settings for my small laptop screen to display properly on the widescreen.

I looked at a few things picked out a new background and did various pointless things. Looks nice so far I cant spot a single deformity in the screen. Realizing Im wasting my cheap TVs potential I imediatly switched the source for the one my 360 was on and turned the console on as well.

The very first reaction to my first steps into HD gaming were..." WHERE THE FUCK IS THE PICTURE?!" Panic ensued i flipped the tv off then on tried different sources when it finally struck me. FLip the lil switch from TV to HDTV..duh I turned the 360 off flipped the switch and promptly turned the 360 back on.

Reaction numero 2: " That fucking repulsive!" for the image was stretched out and resolution look none a bit better then my old Sony Trinitron 19 inch flatscreen peice of shit. But again a moment of realization. I jumped to the console settings section and adjusted everything accordenly. HDTV, 720p, so on and so forth and viola! My eyes melted at the sight (insert joke about my avatar here). Everything was so clear and smooth and oo god ya ooooo oo sweet jesus give me more! So me that legible text o fuck ya give me some easy to distinguish icons fuck ya!!!

I didnt wanna kill over so i started off slowly by throwing in a few DVDs checking out the once black bar zone is no longer. A few moments later and I was ready to throw in my first game...but now a hard choice insued...which one first?

Elder Scrolls Oblivion? PGR3? Fight Night R3? GRAW? CoD2?!?!? Which o which should it be...

I ended up closing my eyes and throwing my hand out at random. Hitman Blood Money was to go in first. Not the best visually but a good start to things to come. A few missions later and it was time to bump it up a notch to COD2. Much better visuals then came elder scrolls then graw and finally Fight Night. OMG FN looked fuckn amazing. I new there was gonna be some differences between TVS but for fuck sake I honestly wasnt expecting nothing liek this. SO many missed details no o so clear....

fuck ill have to continue this later as my girlfriends calling...

1366 x 768 or higher is what you want, there is no 1240X720 HD tv

But if 1240 x 720 IS 720p, then what does that make 1366 x 768?!

the time between when you press a button on your controller and when the consequential action happens onscreen

...isn' t that specifically referred to as " latency" ???

Lag is the same thing. The 768 resolution is simply a computer resolution. Unless accompanies by a small black border, 720p (1280x720) will not be as sharp as it normally is when displayed at 1366x768.

You won' t notice much if any lag when playing normal DC and Xbox games on an LCD HDTV when hooked up via simple s-video because the games are mostly 3D polygonal games. Those games aren' t super precise like Mega Man 2 is. Mega Man 2 jumps immediately when you pres the button. 3D games have to go through their animation cycles first. Plus 3D games tend to be slower and less action paced than games of yore... they don' t require the same kind of arcade skill, period.

We played Sonic 3 with my DC and there was no lag. Perhaps its because the equipment is just better.

btw you should look into getting the VGA adapter for xbox 360 so you can set the resolution to 1366x768. It looks a lot better than just using the component and having the TV scale it.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

I don' t think you' d notice too much lag on a game like Sonic unless it was really severe. But yes, depending on the brand the lag will be different. But with LCD it will always be there if you are not feeding it its native resolution, period. Though it may be inperceivable to you. If you don' t feel it, don' t worry about it.

btw you should look into getting the VGA adapter for xbox 360 so you can set the resolution to 1366x768. It looks a lot better than just using the component and having the TV scale it.

I DID have mine set to 1280 x 1024, but i' ve changed to to 1360×768 now (or possibly 1024 x 768) and it looks sooooo much sharper.

That seems to mean that i was right about the machine scaling from 1280 x 1024 to something else. What though?

If you just use composit cables you only run 1280*720?

The VGA AV adapter supports 640×480, 848×480, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×768, 1280×1024, and 1360×768, but the component cables support up to 1920 x 1080 (1080i).

On another note the machine also acts as a progressive scan, 480p DVD player when displayed on an HDTV using either component and VGA cables.

Vx Chemical, composite cables can only do 480i.

The thing comes with component cables so my guess is he means those.

1080i is inferior to 720p. Since it is interlaced it actually displays way less pixels per second than 720p does. It would be the same pixels per second as 540p would be. 720p looks a lot smoother, and less flickery if you are using a CRT. It still looks really nice though.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

" 1080i is inferior to 720p. Since it is interlaced it actually displays way less pixels per second than 720p does. It would be the same pixels per second as 540p would be. 720p looks a lot smoother, and less flickery if you are using a CRT. It still looks really nice though."

Actually no one can seem to agree on this. Some will argue to death that 1080i is better but just as many will say the opposite. One thing is for sure they both blow 480i out of the water. Remember that interlaced becomes less of a hinderance when you add more lines to the television. However with gaming I happen to agree with you.

Also incase some of you don' t know the difference with interlaced and progressive... some people including some writers for PC Gamer seem to think it has to do with FPS, it does not. Interlaced which is still used for television, displays only every odd or even horizontal line (alternating with each frame), the frame that it does not render is mearly displaying what was on the previous frame. Progressive is having the entire screen rendered every frame instead of only half of it. Computer moniters have always done progressive to my knowledge, infact the whole progressive and interlaced buisness only conserns televisions.






" I DID have mine set to 1280 x 1024, but i' ve changed to to 1360×768 now (or possibly 1024 x 768) and it looks sooooo much sharper."

That' s because 1280x1024 is a 4:3 resolution not 16:9, MS through it in there incase you want to use your computer moniter with a VGA cable. So you were seeing a squarish image being stretched.

1080i is inferior to 720p. Since it is interlaced it actually displays way less pixels per second than 720p does.

Incorrect. 1080i = 1920x540x60 (when running at 60 frames per second) = 62,208,000 pixels per second. 720p = 1280x720x60 = 55,296,000 pixels per second. That' s almost 7 million more pixels per second provided by 1080i. The " 720p is smoother" argument is usually supported by those who own TVs that cannot display resolutions above 720p. 720p does have the advantage of being progressive, but tons of people can' t even tell the difference between 480i and 480p. One thing is for sure is that 1080i has much more horizontal resolution, interlaced or not. 1080i is slightly flickery, but the lines are so thin that it can be tough to notice, and only CRTs interlace. Other display formats are incapable of interlacing due to how slow they are.

It should also be noted that both 720p and 1080i can run at multiple frame rates. Either 60fps, 30 (or 29.97) or 24fps. When running at 30 or 24, 1080i clearly wins as the interlacing becomes irrelevant since the whole 1920x1080 is used for a single frame. 1080p would look just as good, but without the flicker. Can' t wait for real 1080p TVs which accept a 1080p source. Also can' t wait for devices that actually generate a true 1080p signal (PS3 games so far are 720p).

PS - I don' t think ANY CRTs display 720p as true 720p.

That' s because 1280x1024 is a 4:3 resolution not 16:9, MS through it in there incase you want to use your computer moniter with a VGA cable. So you were seeing a squarish image being stretched.

Ok, so when i selected 1280 x 1024, what did the machine scale it to?

My monitor has an aspect ratio of 5:4 (as most 18+" CRT' s do) and 1360 x 768 looks better than any of the other settings AND the picture doen' t need manually re-sizing anymore, it displays widescreen formatted games in widescreen and without the small black borders (the only borders are the ones from the widescreen picture).

lets just get the hdtv that Joe has/is getting.

His knowledge on the subject is a tad un-godly.

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

UN-godly?

Meaning above God. :)

I have the Sony KV-34XBR960. Not sure if they are still on the market.

but to get the true hd experiance dont you need like a 60 inch set for 1080p and onwards?? thats only 30!

But nevermind me, if i want something, i' d probably steal it.

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

Sorry but Joe is wrong. Since 1080i is interlaced it only displays half the pixels every frame. Which is way less than 720p.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

ORIGINAL: locopuyo

Sorry but Joe is wrong. Since 1080i is interlaced it only displays half the pixels every frame. Which is way less than 720p.

That' s how i understood it.

I' m confused now though and i still want to know was resolution my 360 was scaling my image to when i selected 1280 x 1024. The games don' t even support that resolution so it must have been scaled. Surely?

Ok, so when i selected 1280 x 1024, what did the machine scale it to?

My monitor has an aspect ratio of 5:4 (as most 18+" CRT' s do) and 1360 x 768 looks better than any of the other settings AND the picture doen' t need manually re-sizing anymore, it displays widescreen formatted games in widescreen and without the small black borders (the only borders are the ones from the widescreen picture).


I didn' t realize some computer monitors were 5:4, it thought the non wide screen ones were all 4:3. I guess you' re shit out of luck because the 360 doesn' t scale well at 5:4. I' m sure it doesn' t look too bad though, better then using a SD television.



1080i=1920x1080/2= 1 036 800
720p=1280x720=921 600

Locopuyo if you were any good at math (and perhaps reading comprehension), you' d see that I multiplied 1920x540 (which equals 1,036,800 pixels 60 times a second), not 1920x1080. It is always 1920 pixels across, interlaced or not. 720p = 1280x720 (which equals 921,600 pixels 60 times a second). Only someone who has less than a second grade education in math can' t see that. Am I the only one on this board older than 7? Seriously.

Prove me wrong. You can' t. But I' ve just proved you wrong TWICE.

EDIT: I see Gamejunkie did the math correctly.