While I'm not very technical, I have been following this forum for over 5 months and pretty much understand the 1080P vs. 720P resolution issues. But I do have a question relative to scaling in my particular situation that I would appreciate comments on.

Given # 1: Dark room, seating distance 13.5 feet.
Given # 2: I want to go with a 58" Panasonic or 60" Pioneer.
Given # 3: I will also be purchasing a new receiver that will be 1080P capable as well as a new HD DVD player that will output 1080P.

Reasoning for choosing 1080P: All along I have been thinking that I would be better off going 1080P with the TV because most of what I watch will be coming 1080P to the TV and that way I will avoid all scaling.

Question: I am very tempted to purchase the Pioneer 6070 as the price is so favorable but doing that will negate the reasoning outlined above. Any opinions on how much benefit there will be to going all 1080P vs. having to have the 6070 downscale 1080P to 768P or 720P (whatever the native resolution is)?

Thanks!

Sound&Vision did a feature (http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hitech/1137/maxing-out-resolution.html) on seating distance and resolution. According to that article you won't notice any difference between 1080p and 720p at your seating distance.

Thank you. I have basically concluded that. But I am wondering if there is an advantage of some significance to avoiding any scaling. I am thinking that if I go 768 on the display then one of the components (player, receiver or display) will have to do some scaling. By going 1080 I can avoid any scaling.
I guess since no one has mentioned it, the benefit of avoiding scaling must be minimal.

In theory, avoiding scaling is worthwhile. In practice, the benefit is minimal. That is because, for the most part, the engineers have done a great job with current generation plasma's built-in scaling. All HD TV's are designed to handle both 720p and 1080i well, no matter what their native resolution is.

Many models, especially lower priced ones, fare less well with 480i (some even with 480p), because they are trying to compensate for so much missing information, which requires sophisticated processing to do even semi-satisfactorily.

A growing number of newer sets, of course, can now accept 1080p as well, and 720 (768) sets may still benefit by avoiding interlacing, which can be even more problematic than scaling (although, in general, plasmas are very good at converting 1080i to their native progressive formats). In addition, scaling down tends to be more successful than scaling up. It's easier for a processor to discard some information than to create it. Of course, 1080p content is going to be limited to games and BD/HD discs for the foreseeable future. It is part of the ATSC HD format, but is unlikely to be used anytime soon (if ever!) because of the bandwidth required.

Pioneer has excellent internal processing, and Panasonic is very good. I wouldn't worry too much about any theoretical advantages to avoiding scaling if your eye doesn't detect them.

If you were going to go with a 70+ inch micro display you may see some advantage with 1080p. At 60" and your distance many here as well as technical reviewers will say 1080p is a waste of money if you are going with a quality display with excellent scaling capabilities. Considering the huge cost penalty with the newley released 1080p 58" and 60" I would go with the 720p displays. If Sound&Vision says they cannot tell the difference then I choose to believe that I would also fall into that catagory. And I really hate to waste money.

I just installed the 58" panny 700U on an articulating arm mount which sits roughly 11.5ft from my viewpoint. I also purchased the Pioneer 84Txsi 1080p receiver and the Samsung BD-P1200 1080p bluer player. The first blueray disc I put in was the "Planet Earth" series. All I have to say is "WOW!!!!" It looks amazing, my jaw is actually hurting today from being gaped open all day yesterday. This series is a must have. The picture clarity on this TV is perfect from as far back as 15 feet all the way up to 2 feet.

I just checked out Pioneer's website and it appears the new models are coming out in 12 days. I would probably wait to see what the prices are on the new models and how much they will change the older models. My personal opinion is that if your gonna spend the money, you minds well buy the best. I would either buy the 1080p Panny's or wait and buy one of the new 1080p Pioneer's. You don't want to be second guessing yourself after the installation at least that's how I felt.

While I'm not very technical, I have been following this forum for over 5 months and pretty much understand the 1080P vs. 720P resolution issues. But I do have a question relative to scaling in my particular situation that I would appreciate comments on.

Given # 1: Dark room, seating distance 13.5 feet.
Given # 2: I want to go with a 58" Panasonic or 60" Pioneer.
Given # 3: I will also be purchasing a new receiver that will be 1080P capable as well as a new HD DVD player that will output 1080P.

Reasoning for choosing 1080P: All along I have been thinking that I would be better off going 1080P with the TV because most of what I watch will be coming 1080P to the TV and that way I will avoid all scaling.

Question: I am very tempted to purchase the Pioneer 6070 as the price is so favorable but doing that will negate the reasoning outlined above. Any opinions on how much benefit there will be to going all 1080P vs. having to have the 6070 downscale 1080P to 768P or 720P (whatever the native resolution is)?

Thanks!
I have been thinking the same for some time now. From all that I have read over the past few years, a significant jump in PQ can be obtained by minimizing certain processing. This occurs best when a combination of a display and its source together allow the signal to be displayed 1:1 thus avoiding additional processing within the display that can degrade a picture. So you need to determine whether this particular display in combination with your receiver or player can yield 1:1. 1080p alone is not sufficient to provide this. At a minimum you display must also accept the temporal resolution of the signal e.g. the 24 or 60 portion of a 1080p/24 or 1080p/60 signal. This is the frame rate of the signal. Further the display must allow for no overscan of the incomming signal or else additional scaling will be performed as a portion of the signal is croped from display.

If these conditions can be met, then you have a chance of 1:1 signal mapping and an exceptional jump in PQ over other approaches. Of course, this also requires that your external devices do a better job of processing than would be done in the dsplay. Recievers with the SI ReonVX chip should perform on a level quite a bit above the display's processing.

In the case of HD disks, these originate on disk as 1080p/24 in digital YCbCr format. Ideally you want the player to send this signal as is. That would require the display to accept 1080p/24. I don't know whether the 700 series displays do this. If the player must convert the signal to 1080p/60, then it needs to do this well with proper 3:2 pull down though this introduces judder. Just a natural consequence of synching 24 with 60 since they are not whole multiples of one another.

I have recently seen the Panny with remote in hand and it is a great display. I personally think your analysis and reasoning is right on target. Its not just the relationship among physical resolution, viewing distance, and visual acuity but also and importantly the underlying PQ resulting from processing that contributes to what you see on screen. Too many people on this forum have failed to take this aspect into account when considering the 768 vs 1080 question. Congratulations for seeing this and taking it into account.

If you still want to pursue 1080 displays but if for some reason the Panny does not pan out, then I would consider the new 8G Pioneer as they will accept both 1080p/24 and 1080p/60 and in addition display 1080p/24 content at 72Hz via 3:3 pulldown thus allowing a picture without judder. They also this year are supposed to have droped the black level significantly through a redesign of the entire cell technology. The drawback for this is price. The 1080p Pioneer will not be out until Sept and they will be more expensive that the Panny.

Cheers, :)

Gary

Thank you itigap. Thanks to this forum I have gained an appreciation of 1080/24. I can't say I understand all of the details but in general I know what it is about and I will certainly factor that into my decision making process. But the overscan issue that you mention I have seen many times but I don't quite understand what that is. Can you or someone else briefly explain what it is and how a person goes about determining of a display does overscan or not? Thanks

With "briefly" being the operative word, overscan is the area beyond the edges of a video image that is not normally intended to be seen. It was introduced primarily to offset deficiencies in CRTs. A somewhat more complete explanation can be found here. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overscan#See_also) It's still built into consumer TVs, largely because of video program production practices. ("Safe area.") (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area) However, many people believe that elimination of overscan results in a clearer, sharper picture, albeit occasionally with artifacts at the edges.

BTW, the Panasonic 700/750 series has an alternate HDMI setting that effectively eliminates overscan. They don't accept 1080p/24 input though. Chances are good that the 1080p Pioneers will have both, but they are not out yet.

Whether a given set is capable of 1:1 mapping is not always easy to determine. Usually it will be mentioned in product literature or the manual. Otherwise, you must rely on published lab tests. Various calibration discs let you see how much overscan your particular set has.