720p vs 1080p on 2560x1440 display

[Meyvn]

So I'm getting a 27" iMac tomorrow, and something has occurred to me:

720p video on a 2560x1440 screen is just exactly "pixel-doubled," a much cleaner & easier scaling operation than 1080p - 2560x1440. Has anyone compared 720p video versus 1080p video on this screen? Does 720p look close, even better, due to superior scaling? Or does the higher res of 1080p prevail?

 

[Xenc]

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1080p definitely looks better.

 

[TMRaven]

Nah the pixel doubling thing doesn't really matter. 1080p has over twice the information that 720p has, so it's going to upscale much much better. They both will look subpar, but 1080p will look better.

 

[Meyvn]

Okey doke; I figured as much, since modern day GPUs are pretty decent at upscaling, but I thought I'd ask.

Also, I know this *shouldn't* be true, but does scaling the monitor itself to 1080p while watching video help?

 

[TMRaven]

No.

 

[gatortpk]

"No." Simple and funny.

No.

I like that answer and it's correct. Keeping the native resolution is always better. And with video, scaling doesn't hurt the image quality unless you scale down to a lower resolution (i.e. 1080p to 768p (1366x768) or 720p (1280x720).)

In video, there is motion, the image is always changing and 1:1 pixel mapping isn't even very common, also, the pixels "blur" together unlike static computer images, especially text like this. Many HDTV overscan anyway, so you're really not seeing 1:1 pixel mapping, most HDTV already scale to overscan and it's actually scaling downward (showing maybe 1036p of a 1080p source).