[mythtv-users] resolution discussion

[Jarod C. Wilson]

On Sunday, Sep 7, 2003, at 08:47 US/Pacific, Derek Anderson wrote:

> if you're in NTSC land, i'm interested in what justifications you have 
> for going with an 800x600 xfree config.  your regular TV (and even 
> many plasmas - like the 42" gateway i'm considering) have only 480 
> lines of resolution.

Uh, the 42" Gateway plasma TV I'm seeing is a full-blown HDTV, and can 
do up to 1080 lines...

> it would seem upsampling your 480 line input to 600 lines, and then 
> downsampling that again (w/ your TV-OUT driver) would give you a loss.

Don't forget the other aspect. If you capture at full NTSC resolution 
(720x480), you're going to lose some clarity if you only run 640x480. 
It's kind of a crap-shoot. Try a few different routes, and pick what 
looks best to you. I currently always capture at 720x480, and I see 
very little difference in playback quality even if I run 1024x768.

> i mean, am i off my rocker here?  is there something i'm missing?

TV isn't the only thing people use their MythTV boxes for. The 
resolution of a high-quality widescreen Divx rip is often something in 
the ballpark of 768x432, so you'll lose some clarity there if you go 
640x480. Some people also browse the web on their MythTV box, which to 
me, is painful at 640x480. I can think of many reasons to run higher 
than 640x480...

One other reason is HDTV captures. You'll want quite a bit higher 
resolution for those (my pcHDTV card should arrive sometime this week). 
I'm actually going to be running 1920x1080 at that point, with my 
MythTV box hooked to my 47" HDTV via component video, rather than the 
current S-Video hookup.

--Jarod

-- 
Jarod C. Wilson, RHCE

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