HD ready or full HD ?

I am thinking of buying a 50" plasma, is there much difference in the quality of the picture between HD ready and full HD? I currently have a 42" 1080p which is a great picture, will i notice the difference if i drop down to HD ready?
Thanks

yes quite a lot. yes you will notice if you have the right connections. if you connect a blu ray player, via hdmi on 720p will look good. but get your player to output 1080p. you will notice a big difference. also it depends on the films some like dvd are sharper and clearer than others.

Thanks for that, it has been a big help.

whats the difference between 1080i & 1080p ?

Not a lot.

Tech heads will baffle you with numerous reasons as to why 1080p is superior, but at the end of the day you've got to trust your eyes. I've seen a couple of things in 1080i and to me, you can't tell the difference.

Thanx for the reply, just I am viewing on a Panasonic Plasma with 1080i output its 4 years old. (still spot on) but I was going to get a new Viera Neo Plasma with 1080p output. Think I'll just wait till I do need a new 1 now !

I think you *would* notice a significant difference.

Even if you couldn't see much of a change bvecause of moving from 1080i to 1080p, the improvements in technology over the last 4 years would mean the contrast with deep blacks would be significantly improved over your present model (even compared to when it was new) as well as the fact that all plasmas get slightly brighter (so black becomes more grey) over time because the TV set automatically increases the voltage to the screen over the years to stop potentially losing small spots of screen all together.
There are other technological changes too (though some of these should probably be turned off if you really want to see the picture as originally intended rather than digitally treated to make it *seem* better!)

There is a big difference between 1080p and 1080i. Its not a gimick!

1080p is progressive scan, 1080i is interlaced. Its a completely different way of displaying the picture, just google it to find out more. Progressive gives you a more filmic effect as each image is full resolution (like film).

As for 720p. Still very good but if you are watching on a particularly large screen with bluray then you want 1080p ideally. Tough to find a screen that isn't these days :)

"1080p is progressive scan, 1080i is interlaced. Its a completely different way of displaying the picture, just google it to find out more."

You can Googled it all you want, but the fact remains that modern flat panel TVs take the interlaced signal and deinterlace it back to progressive. So if you've got a 1080i BluRay, chances are you are watching it in 1080p!

Thanks for the help chaps, i have just bought a PANASONIC 46" FULL 3D HD PLASMA with FULL 3D HD BLU PLAYER,, what can i say its the dogs bollocks !

Good choice! You can't really go wrong with a Panny Plasma.

Your viewing distance to the screen and the size of the screen in relation to your viewing distance will make a huge difference to what you are watching, sit too far back and your eyes cannot really perceive full 1080p detail, heres a guide that you can use to check out how far back you should sit.

http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/

For a typical 42inch full HD tv you should sit no more than 5 feet back to see all the detail.

Anyways to answer the original question, buy a full 1080p set, shops are flogging the HD Ready sets which are usually 1280x720p or 1024x738 and these sets can sometimes be two or three years old ( or more ) now as a spare bedroom set they might be fine but if you are heavily into watching blu ray content then you should go with 1920x1080 typically referred to as full hd ( just wait till 4K comes and a new label is born - maybe ultra hd although 35mm and some digitally shot films are already around 4K, well really 35mm due to shooting conditions can be anywhere between 2.5K and 3.8K and the new Red cameras give about 4.9K of detail )

TV technology continues to improve though and if you are fussy and watch a lot of films then i recommend full HD plasma sets ( not LG as their Plasmas currently suffer in the deep blacks department and in a few other areas too - either Samsung and especially this years 2012 Panasonic models ) LCD, including LED backlit LCD's at the lower price points can sometimes only produce around 300 vertical lines when motion is onscreen, thats something they conveniently fail to mention in the advertising blurbs, some makers such as Sony have picture processing which can restore it to a full 1080 lines but some sets do not, Plasma typically shows 900 to the full 1080 lines depending on the set and which mode it is in.

Having said all that i will add that if you are heavily into blu ray movie content then buy a projector, get a screen, lets say at least 92inches in size although bigger is even better, you will have your own home cinema and enjoy it so much more than a television, mind you if you do that you will then want to invest in a good quality AV Receiver and maybe 5 or 7 speakers and a capable subwoofer and before you know it you have blown all the money you were saving for that holiday, if you're married then your other half will get annoyed at you, hey it's worth it. :o)

" 1080p is progressive scan, 1080i is interlaced. Its a completely different way of displaying the picture, just google it to find out more. Progressive gives you a more filmic effect as each image is full resolution (like film). "

Englishbloke,

There is a difference but it's minor,I have a 1080p projector and 110 inch screen and I sit at the correct viewing distance,I set my blu-ray player to source output for the test and watched a 1080i blu-ray and then a more common 1080p the picture quality looked the same to me.

It should as it's the same ammount of resoulution it's just two different methods of delivering it,now if you can't notice much difference on a calibrated 110 inch screen then I fail to see how you will notice much difference on screen sizes 60 inches and less.

Hi John,

Thanks for the comment. It's not the same resolution though I'm afraid. 1080i means an interlaced picture, so mixing two frames, effectively halving the horizontal resolution (540). You should be able to spot the difference but many can't, although a projector probably isn't the best way to check it.

Try watching SKY HD (720p/1080i) and then a 1080p Bluray on a top quality screen and you should notice a big difference.

Cheers.

Englishbloke,

I am aware of how interlacing works,but the refresh rate is far quicker than your eyes.

Btw there is no diference in checking on a t.v or projector,as long as they show the native ratios,in fact a decent 1080p projector will show up more of a difference due to the screen size.

Hi John,

Actually, it is now thought that our eyes 'see' at about '48fps' (hence shooting the new Hobbit Movie at that rate) so we will notice a difference, even if it is subconscious. Having said that, I am sure some people don't perceive or appreciate the same level of detail or quality of motion etc as others. We are all different :)

Englishbloke,

I will say you may notice issues with fast moving images on 1080p while you will have no issues with 1080p,also on blu-ray menus you will notice little artifacts apearing when you scroll up and down menu buttons.

"It's not the same resolution though I'm afraid. 1080i means an interlaced picture, so mixing two frames, effectively halving the horizontal resolution (540). You should be able to spot the difference but many can't, although a projector probably isn't the best way to check it."

Many can't spot the difference because they are pratically the same. You're not halving the resolution. It's true to say that 540 lines are in a frame. But then the other 540 lines are piped down. So you do have 1080 lines. And all this usually happens twice as fast as progressive HD. So the same amount of detail is there.

"Try watching SKY HD (720p/1080i) and then a 1080p Bluray on a top quality screen and you should notice a big difference."

Sky is transmitted at a much lower bitrate. Which is to say, it is more compressed. So yes, there is a difference, but not for the reasons you state. Really, have you ever seen a 1080i BluRay? King's Speech was the last one I saw. Couldn't see any difference from a regular 1080p BluRay. Half the resolution indeed!

"Actually, it is now thought that our eyes 'see' at about '48fps' (hence shooting the new Hobbit Movie at that rate) so we will notice a difference, even if it is subconscious.'"

Sorry. Just noticed this little gem! It is now "thought"? By who? Eyes don't see in frames per second. Images persist in the brain for varying amounts of time.

24 fps is fine as long as the frames have been exposed for 1/24 second. Of course, exposure for this amount of time introduces blurring. If you expose frames for less than 1/24 second, everything is sharper, but it all looks stop motion (think Wallace and Gromit) - especially noticeable during pan shots. Modern BluRays have to draw a fine line between blurring (which defeats the object of HD) and the appearance of stuttering.

Which is where 48 fps comes in. Chosen not because the human eyes sees at this rate, but because it's twice 24, thus easier to implement from a technical point of view. 48fps will be a big leap forward. You will notice a difference (not just subconsciously). Films will have greater clarity and smoothness.

LOL, JY I think we are going to have to agree to disagree ;)

You make a good point about the Sky content being heavily compressed, it was a bad example.

There clearly is a difference in resolution but the same amount of data. How your eyes perceive the different way the image is displayed is important. Most may not notice the difference but most are watching 1080p anyway as their TV has converted it. The bigger the TV the more you will notice and a lot comes down to the processing in the devices you are using. Some people prefer 24p because it gives more of a film effect and an interlaced signal more of a video feel. At the end of the day it is down to personal preference.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/28/editorial-48-fps-hobbit-preview-high-frame-rates/

Thanks for the discussion :) Can you even buy a TV that isn't 1080p now anyway!?

"The bigger the TV the more you will notice and a lot comes down to the processing in the devices you are using."

Agreed. Modern TVs have so much pre-processing built in. Not only do they de-interlace an "i" signal, but there's also intelligence frame creation (inserting extra frames) to reduce filcker, and god knows what else.

"Can you even buy a TV that isn't 1080p now anyway"

There's still quite a few new HDReady TVs that are 768p (or thereabouts).

if I had the money I would upgrade from 1080p 47" to a 50+" 4k tv ultra hd screen (think these are like 5000 pounds plus at moment)

The "plus" part is accurate. Try £10,000+. I think LG have one that's $23,000 and Hitachi have one around the same kind of price range I think.

4K is rather pointless unless you have a MASSIVE screen. To put this into context, cinemas use digital 4K projectors and you really can't tell me that looks bad, and most screens are 50ft+ wide in even smaller cinemas, and around 200ft or so in the bigger ones, never mind IMAX, which is still 4K in most instances too. Having said that though IMAX is still generally shown via 70mm prints so there's no real "resolution" per-sé.

MM: "4K is rather pointless unless you have a MASSIVE screen. To put this into context, cinemas use digital 4K projectors and you really can't tell me that looks bad, and most screens are 50ft+ wide in even smaller cinemas..."

I don't think 4K is pointless. To take your cinema example, if you sit ten times closer, say 5ft instead of 50ft away, and also divide the screen size by ten, it's the equivalent of looking at a 5ft screen (ie. 60").

Going the other way - new handheld devices often have over 1000 pixels on the horizontal (eg Kindle Fire HD 7" screen). So scaling up, a 28" screen would have a 4K display at exactly the same pixel density.

4K is inevitable. Even if you do have to get closer to see the benefit!

4k OLED sounds good to me!