Would you buy a $800, 1080p HDTV if they said it’s a whopping 2 mega pixels?
Let me ask you this: Would you buy a $800, 1080p HDTV if they said it’s a whopping 2 mega pixels? Probably not. But the funny thing is, yes, your HDTV is only 2 mega pixels. Why? We’ll get to that.
So I’m walking around my electronic stores, looking at all the damn choices they have. I just want something that will display a crisp, high-res video. But then they throw in 60mhz, plasma, 720, 1080, 52″…. I think they do it on purpose. When you’re so confused, your reptilian brain kicks in and goes “get the biggest! …it’ll look really good in the living room”… Then your logical brain justifies it, “oh, well, it is a better image quality…. we have the $$… OK, let’s get it”.
Except, the only thing you bought was their marketing.
When it comes to screen resolution on TV’s there’s very little difference between all the choices. Let’s look at it in a very simple way:
First, what is HD anyway? Well, remember your old square TVs? They use to be 480p. Here, I’ll show you:
See, it’s simple if you look it that way. They had 480 pixels in width, and 704 pixels in height. Then, bam… here came the 720 TV. Basically, you’re just fitting more pixels per inch, therefore more info, more detail. See:
Why did they go up? Remember your old 52″ TV that weighed a ton? They might of been 52″ except they still showed a resolution of 704×420. They were crap. So to improve the quality, they jammed more pixels per inch, and you got 1280×720. Then they thought, “hey, lets fudge in MORE pixels and charge more!!”. Then you got the 1080 HDTV that solved all the worlds problems:
Awesome. So, just like how the 720 improved the old 52″ big screen TV’s that were 480, the 1080 improved the 720. But, wait one minute. Ok, maybe a 720 will look bad if it’s a 52″ HDTV… but a 42″? Nope. Your eye can’t tell the difference between a 42″, 720 HDTV and a 42″, 1080 HDTV. Why? Because technically the only reason you need more pixels is when you get a larger screen size to make up the pixels per inch. Of course there’s plasma TVs, faster mhz, proprietary technology, but down to the basics, if you’re watching a 42″ HDTV, it doesn’t matter if it’s 720 or 1080.
But what’s funny in all this, even the largest TV in the market is only 2 mega pixels. Here’s how you get mp’s:
Multiply the resolution (h x w): 1080 x 1920 = 2million, or 2 mega pixels. It’s funny how marketing, fancy numbers, technical jargon influence your decisions, even though they mean nothing in the end.
