HD For Indies

1080p Does Matter - Here's When (Screen Size vs. Viewing Distance vs. Resolution)

LOVE this - this is probably my favorite propeller beanie twirler of the week. Just my kind of geekery I always wanted to know - OK, so based on 20/20 vision, just how far back from an HDTV screen of a given size do you have to be before you can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p? Between 480p (SD) and 720p (bottom rung HD)?

Turns out not as far as I thought - read the article and study the two charts in it - this makes me suspect that HD isn't going to really take off until BIG screens get CHEAP - because you need something more akin to theater-like field of view (that screen covers a lot of your eyeball viewing) before the advantages really shine.

For instance - got a 40 inch set? Sitting 10 feet away? Even with 20/20 vision, you can't make out all the detail of even a 720p signal.

According to their math, with a 40 inch set, you'd have to be 5 feet away to make out all the detail (each and every pixel) of a 1080p set. And who is going to do that?

NOW...that is presuming the math here is right. Anybody willing to call shenanigans on their math? I haven't double checked it, but it makes a compelling argument.

If you want high res viewing, and want ACTUAL benefit from it rather than just bragging rights, a projector starts to make a whooooole lot of sense.

And maybe I DON'T need a 1080p set in my living room - my couch is 10+ feet away. According to this chart, I'd need about a 75" set to get maximum advantage of 1080p, and a 50" set to see all of 720p (although anything over 50" I could see the difference, in theory, between a 720p and 1080p resolution image).

So I interpret this as HDTV pre-recorded movies won't make a dent until we can SEE the damn difference - and that'll take BIG screens, which are still expensive as hell, and that'll take a while.

The flip side? Use these charts to figure out your typical viewing distances - maybe you DON'T need a super high res set after all - if you study the chart, oftentimes in terms of being able to "see more" you'd be better off with a bigger, lower res HDTV screen rather than a smaller, higher resolution one.

This chart may end up being proof of the postponement of the viability of the HDTV and HD disc market - if people can't afford a big enough, high enough res screen to tell substantial difference between it and standard TV, why would they buy high def gear? Put another way - if DVDs look GREAT on my 720p res TV I sit "too far" back from, and the high def disc doesn't look substantially, demonstrably, "you can see the difference without them side by side" BETTER, and regular DVD players are $40, and high def players are $500 to $1500, why on EARTH would anybody buy one? I mean, anyone other than you and me, like Joe/Jane Consumer?

At the current pace of price drops, (which are great and all, but finite) it'll be YEARS before most folks can afford a big enough, high enough resolution set to really show off the advantages of HD discs. And even if they were cheap - how many average consumers have the space, AND are willing to dedicate that much space to TV/movie watching? And again, I'm talkin' civilians, not you and me here.

As much as I REALLY want high def to catch on in the home, ESPECIALLY for high def movie playback, since that is a way for indies to get into the game (broadcast & pay-per-view being limited mostly to the studios' fare), I fear for the time being, between these issues as well as the stupid format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, we're still looking at the feared Laserdisc 2.0 Syndrome, where only the hardcore video fanatics go to the trouble and expense of having the full HD setup. I hope not, but that is a SERIOUS risk at this point.

(EDIT - I fear I'll also make even worse run-on compound sentences, too)

After reading this article, I decided that holding out for a 1080p set probably isn't actually worth it in the near term- since at my viewing distance, I probably couldn't tell anyway. I started seriously considering mounting a projector in my laundry room with a glass port into the bedroom with a BIG pulldown screen that would block a three window wide space - THAT is what it would take to REALLY get the benefit of HD discs - and I'd STILL be 15+ feet back from the screen, which isn't all that far in theatrical movie viewing distance context.

And then whoever wants to watch better be comfy watching movies from my bed.

But maybe that's a conversation for an entirely different, and different kind, of blog.

; )

-mike