Why would 720p look better than 1080p on my pc?

Question

I am connected to a 1080p samsung 61' dlp i have the dvi to hdmi hook up but no matter what i do the 720 looks better. Why would this happen I need help.

Answer 1

I normally don't answer to questions that have so many answers already but most of the answer are either partially wrong or don't cover everything you need to know.  Yes you do need to make sure that your card is set to 1920x1080 to even display 1080p resolution.  The ram in your machine shouldn't be much of an issue assuming you have enough to break the threshold required to run the video decoder you are using which in most cases is more processor intensive then ram intensive.  Contrary to popular belief you do not need Blu-Ray to display 1080p resolution, Blu-Ray is a format that supports 1080p but is is not even NEARLY the only one.  Matroska video files encoded using x.264 can easily display 1080p resolution with DIVX like compression and support multiple audio streams for multiple languages as well as subtitles.  Also you need to understand a little about aspect ratios, both 1080 and 720p are 16:9 widescreen aspect ratios and therefore if your graphics card is set to expand to fit, it will degrade the quality of the image you are displaying.  In you graphics card setting you need to select keep aspect ratio.  Please also understand, even if you have a 1080p television, because it is DLP the differentiation between black outlines and black text will be degraded because DLP uses primary colors to display black, this usually causes text to look fuzzy and in lower resolutions it would naturally look clearer as the text you are viewing is larger, this is why LCD is superior because blacks can easily be created by simply shutting off pixels.

Answer 2

What's the video card resolution set to?  If the card's resolution isn't set to 1920 by 1080, the 720P will look better.

Answer 3

for playing hd content a lot of pc resources are used up.

u need to have a good graphic card and lots of ram.

your 720p is looking better mostly because your computer has the capacity to play it.

And as for the 1080p, your computer is too slow for it and you may feel the video is playing slowly and with a lot of jitters.

So, 720p is looking better than 1080p.

Answer 4

It also depends on what your output is.  Just because your television is 1080p doesn't mean it's displaying 1080p.  The only way to watch movies in 1080p is Blu-Ray, so if your computer doesn't have a Blu-Ray player then it's not likely your getting 1080p output.  What are you playing on your PC?