Difference between 720p and 1080p projectors?


I've had an Optoma H79 projector for 5 years and it still works great, but I'm wondering how much video quality difference is there between it's 720p resolution and newer projectors offering 1080p. And is there a very noticable visual difference/improvement or essentially the same?
rxlarry99

Showing 1 response by johnnyb53

720p looks about like a good 35 mm print in a movie theater. 1080p sourced from Blu-ray to a 1080p display looks like a clean window onto the real thing.

720p IS NOT the same thing as 1080i. 1080i actually has 1080 discrete lines of resolution; it's just that it takes two 60Hz cycles to see them all. Still, you're getting a display of 2,076,300 pixels. A 1080p display upconverts 1080i to 1080p and you really get 1080 lines of resolution. Although a native 720p LCD/DLP/Plasma display can accept 1080i input, it downconverts it to 720p, which gives you 921,600 pixels.

In the case of a front projector, I would think that a 7 foot screen would show a dramatic increase in sharpness with a 1080p projector over 720p, especially when sourced from either 1080i broadcast or especially 1080p Blu-ray. Once you experience 1080p from source to display, you'll never want to return to anything less.