Am I nuts? Missing Something? I like 480p ...

[cdorval]

I have an older, 4:3 43" Sony projection TV, (KP-43HT20). I just recently got the H10, and I seem to prefer 480p viewing. This allows the SD programs to fill the 4:3, and the letterbox with HD is tollerable. The higher resolutions seem to leave too much unused real estate due to the large letterbox bars.

Am I missing out on a lot of sharpness? My eyes can't seem to tell the difference. The 480p HD stuff looks very sharp, and quite frankly I'm very satisfied with it, I just feel there is something I am missing. Am I the only one who enjoys 480p on a 4:3 TV? Should I be "upping the resoultion"? Thanks for any info you can provide.

[newsposter]

One thing I've learned. forget what the settings are...if your eyes think it's great...what we all think is wrong :)

though you make me want to test this out now....

[keith021773]

I have watched different channels at 1080I and some look better than others.. I LOVE watching PBSHD. It's like a free discovery channel. If you can get it, I suggest watching it.. Some of the scenes (especially cooking and underwater stuff) look simply amazing.

[SpankyInChicago]

Stick with what looks best to you, though I must admit that I need at least a 50" 16:9 screen before I can really ever get the HD "wow" factor, so it might just be that your screen is too small to notice the difference, which is good as it saves you some money.

[durl]

I also own a older Sony 4:3 set, but 480i looks better than 480p on SD programs. 480p looks "muddy" to me. Guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.

[TyroneShoes]

If the TV is not a HD set (IOW if it does not have a native rez of at least 720) I would guess that 480p will look as good as any other setting, regardless of the content. Probably better than anything else, in fact.

[tgibbs]

I also own a older Sony 4:3 set, but 480i looks better than 480p on SD programs. 480p looks "muddy" to me. Guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.

Most TV sets capable of showing 480p aren't actually capable of showing 480i as a true interlaced signal--they do some sort of interpolation to synthesize a 480p display from a 480i input. The HDTivo does the same thing when it gets a SD signal and is told to output 480p. So it is really a question of which device does a better job of filling in the missing scan lines. If it is done by averaging the scan lines above and below (which is what I think the HDTiVo does), the picture generally looks a bit blurry. Some TVs have fancier signal processing that uses information from other frames to synthesize a sharper image from SD input.