Product description on bestbuy website says my TV is 720p but the ps3 says..

Question

after an automatic detection on display settings my ps3 says the maximum resolution my tv can get is 1080p. so, who tells the truth? ps3 or bestbuy website?

Answer 1

It could just be 1080i. Many 720p tv's are capable of 1080i but not 720p. It's easier to add columns than to add lines, which makes true 1080-line screens expensive.

OR, you may have a 720p tv that just happens to be able to accept 1080p input. That doesn't mean it is displaying 1080p on the screen. TV's that do this have downscaling protocols built in to their operating systems, it's just taking 1080p video and downscaling it to 720p before displaying it.

It probably won't look any better than the original 720p video then, so you might as well leave it on 720p.

Get a blu-ray movie with both 720p and 1080p versions. There are previews in the playstation store where you can choose between 720p and 1080p versions. Find one and download both versions, then set your ps3 to "1080p" and play them both. If it's really 1080p, the 1080 versions will look dramatically better than the 720 version. It's more than twice the resolution (2.25 times as many pixels)

Answer 2

Check the owner's manual or manufacturer's website for the resolution specifications. It seems odd that Best Buy would have an error on the maximum resolution. It's also possible, although unlikely, that the specs have changed if you updated the firmware on the TV.

The other thing you can try is set the display setting on the PS3 to 1080p. If your TV is 1080p compliant, then everything will look fine (well it should look better). If the screen goes black, flickers, or there's a sync problem, then the TV is not 1080p compliant, and you'll have to manually set it to a different resolution - the PS3 will reset itself if there is a display problem after 30 seconds.

If the TV is an LCD, and it can run at a 1080 resolution, the i or p designation is pretty much irrelevant. LCDs typically run in progressive mode. If the signal source is interlaced, it will automatically be converted to progressive by the TV's processor.

Answer 3

Are you sure it said "P" on the PS3?  My HDTV's resolution is 720p, but can display up to 1080i.