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How Sharp Does Your TV Need to Be?

Posted by JD on April 22, 2009

Nikada (LG) 42″ Full HD LCD TV

$525.50

25′ ft HDMI Cable for FULL HD TV HDTV LCD Plasma 1080p

$12.99

720p vs 1080p

Television has been changing rapidly in the past couple of years, and it seems like the pace of change is accelerating. From pulling electrical waves out of the air to processing digital signals from space, watching televised entertainment continues to improve. Where is it going, and will you be ready for it?

Of course there’s no need to enlighten you about large flat-screens. Advertisements abound and you see someone loading one into the back of their vehicle almost every time you go to a store. There are big surges of buying before major sporting events and around Christmas. Maybe you’re thinking that you’d like to upgrade your own TV. But there are a lot of different terms being thrown around and you might find the cloud of jargon a little confusing. Maybe we can clear up one decision you’ll face when you go shopping-whether to buy 720p or 1080p.

One of the first things we heard in connection with high definition TVs was 720p. What the heck does that mean? The 720 stands for how many horizontal scan lines there are from the top to the bottom of the screen. The “p” stands for progressive scan.

Along came 1080p. Means the same thing, it’s just a bigger number. So think about it for a minute. If one TV has 720 lines and another has 1,080 horizontal scan lines on the same size screen, which one is higher resolution? If you said 1080p, then you’ve figured it out. TVs designated 1080p are higher resolution TVs, meaning they will have a more sharply defined picture. Any TV that is 1080p is also referred to as being “full HD” or full high definition.

If you’re in the market to purchase a large screen TV now, you really ought to go for 1080p. This is especially true if you want to buy and watch Blu-ray DVDs. However, if your budget is tight, you can find some real bargains among the 720p models. Depending on the size and age of your current set, you may find 720p totally amazing and plenty sharp enough.