[mythtv-users] Re: Resolution, screen size, and other related 'size' question

[Michael T. Dean]

Michael T. Dean wrote:

> Chad wrote:
>
>> On 4/28/05, Chad <masterclc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> What resolution should I have in my xorg.conf?
>>
> Ideally, since your TV has a native resolution of 1280x720, you would 
> use that resolution.  Then, your TV doesn't have to scale the video 
> and you get a pixel-for-pixel representation of the output, giving you 
> the highest quality possible.  (Note that although some 
> (older/cheaper) TV's have a native resolution of 1280x720, they may 
> not be able to accept input at that resolution from a computer.  If 
> that's the case for yours, you would probably get the best results 
> using the maximum resolution allowed.  However, this is most likely 
> not the case with your Samsung.)

I knew this section of my reply was too small.  (Yeah, I'm the first to 
admit my replies can be^H^H^H^H^Hare usually a bit wordy. :)

I forgot to mention that the above holds true when talking about the 
quality of the GUI.  If you render the GUI at the resolution at which it 
is displayed, you'll  get the best picture quality.

However, when it comes to TV, you might actually get better results 
sending a different signal to the TV and allowing its built-in scaler to 
do the scaling for you.  This may be the case if all you have is SDTV.  
Also, if you have HDTV, you might actually get better quality for your 
1080i broadcasts by outputting 1080i.  Probably the only way to know for 
sure is to try it out.

IIRC, Myth can be set up to use XRandR to dynamically change the output 
resolution based on the source resolution.  To get the best of all 
possible worlds--assuming the TV's scaler works better than the computer 
based scaling mechanism, you would want to set up your xorg.conf to 
allow 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i resolutions (assuming your TV accepts 
all these resolutions as input) and set up Myth to use XRandR.

Mike