720p or 1080i for a 15ft viewing distance w/a 50in rear projector LCD Sony Wega?

Question

I think 1080i is native on it, but I keep reading that 720p has a longer viewing distance due to the limits of human visual acuity, that even 1080p would be a waste at the distance. I'm not moving the TV any closer, it's a room that is 16 ft x 10 ft, perfectly set for a theater type room(cant explain how it looks on here very well, but if you saw it you'd know waht i'm talking about) anyways.... I want people who KNOW what they are talking about and can give specific information not just opinions. I have noticed that even though 1080i seems sharper I can pick up on visual acuity better playing Xbox on 720p it seems, dont know if it's in my head or if its based on some human visual acuity thing, especially on those quick paced online games. anyways... just seeing if anybody can give me some educated answers about it... thanks...

Answer 1

720p doesn't have a longer viewing distance, however from 15ft away you're not going to tell the difference between 1080 lines of resolution and 720 lines of resolution.

Your TV will automatically upscale or downscale the image to the native resolution anyway.

Unless you've got a CRT set, it will not display 1080i properly, it merely handshakes with it. If you find 720p is giving you a better picture then your television probably does not handle deinterlacing very well. It may be discarding the even lines and so you get 540 lines doubled, then it scales it to the panel's native resolution, which is probably 1366x768.

Poor deinterlacing would result in the following, shown by using the first 8 lines of a 1080i frame.

1

_2

3

_4

5

_6

7

_8

Correct deinterlacing would yield the following frame

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Incorrect deinterlacing will yield the following

1

1

3

3

5

5

7

7

Set it to 720p if you find that looks better.

Answer 2

780 broadens pixelation so if you are just talking about gaming, this may be better at further distances as you want to see what is coming at you when you are that far away.

1080 gives higher resolution thus finer lines which are harder to distinguish from further distances when it comes to gaming.

For TV viewing you want the higher resolution as you are not trying to duck and cover.