Plasma Resolution query.

[Dano]

So I was out at a local competitor today and happened to wander into their Tv display area and they had a LG 42PC55 (42" Plasma) on display running what I can only assume was a HD feed from a HTPC underneath it.

Now the specs listed were showing a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 and the LG website says the same, however even stood within two feet of the thing it still looked way higher than that.

This is probably the first time I've seen a screen and thought, yeh now that looks better than my old widescreen CRT.

Is it just something to do with the way plasma's work or something else?

 

[chaparral]

42" & 43" 1024x768 Plasma's use Non-Square pixels............(All 50" plasma's have square pixels)

You might have noticed that some displays, like most 42" Plasma's, have a 4:3 resolution like 1024x768 while still being 16:9. This is because the pixels of these displays are not square, but rectangular/oblong.

 

[Corasik]

This is probably the first time I've seen a screen and thought, yeh now that looks better than my old widescreen CRT.

Is it just something to do with the way plasma's work or something else?

It should look better than your widescreen CRT, as a standard def CRT is approximatly 720 x 576, while the Plasma you looked at is 1024x768.

If your sitting more than 8 feet from a 42inch screen then that is sufficient resolution, however if you sit closer look for a new model such as the panasonic TH42PZ70B which is a 1920x1080 TrueHD plasma screen.

 

[badbob]

1024x768 is a 4:3 resolution, so I wonder how in video player/games/ffdshow what you need to do make sure everything is working ok.

 

[Corasik]

ffdshow can rescale to any size/aspect ratio, and gives a very good picture quality, that said my Panasonic (9th generation 1024x768 panel) has very good internal scalers, so I just feed it a 1366x768 resolution and let the TV scale it. Works just fine for games and movies, and text is clear enough for web browsing etc..(IE fairly small fonts are still readable)