Toggle sidebar

Did no one ever make 720p TVs?

  • Thread starter Thread starter namename11
  • Start date Start date
  • Views Views 2,861
  • Replies Replies 32
  • Likes Likes 1
N

namename11

Well-Known Member
Member
Level 5
Joined
Dec 25, 2025
Messages
290
Reaction score
166
Trophies
1
XP
658
Country
United States
I got a PS3 today but I can't find a 720p TV for it. Or a monitor. Everything is 1366x768 and not 1280x720 like what a PS3 would look good on according to online sources since most games are 720p. It looks really bad on my 4K C2 OLED.


I don't want to spend $750 on a RetroTwink 4K unless I have to,, are there any other scalers that do the job? Or just 720p TV/monitors?
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Earthshine
There used to be a ton of 720p TVs back when that was the TV standard. Since then they've all moved to higher resolutions.
1366x768 is a standard computer monitor resolution, so nowadays you get a ton of TVs that use outdated monitor matrices because they were cheap.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Blythe93 and Segger
namename11 said:
I got a PS3 today but I can't find a 720p TV for it. Or a monitor. Everything is 1366x768 and not 1280x720 like what a PS3 would look good on according to online sources since most games are 720p. It looks really bad on my 4K C2 OLED.


I don't want to spend $750 on a RetroTwink 4K unless I have to,, are there any other scalers that do the job? Or just 720p TV/monitors?
Click to expand...
"HD ready" TVs were typically 720p (and supported 1080i, hence the "ready" but why not get a 1080p TV or monitor? Not all PS3 games support 1080p but many do and it's not that much of an upscale. Even if you have a higher resolution monitor, if it's not too big, might not look back, so if you already have a monitor laying around you can plug it and see how it looks.
Post automatically merged:

Jayro said:
PS3 can do 1080p natively, and the 4K TV can scale that up at a perfect 2x integer... So 720p isn't even needed here.

As for scalers, get the Morph 4K, it's less than half the price of that RetroTwink.
Click to expand...
Integer scaling on 3D games doesn't look very good, I'll give him that. But the problem is mostly when you have a big screen.
 
As already pointed out, 720p looks fine on 1080p. Yes, it looks a bit worse than 1080p, but is that even surprising? Generally, monitor/TV inputs don't get blurry with scaling at only a 2x increment as far as I know, the blurry mess really starts when you use a 4K screen with its original scaling.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Blythe93
720p is what "HD" was, 1080p was "Full HD", could help with finding a TV but most modern TV's should have a good enough upscaler that it wont matter

IDK if the PS3 does this but the 360 uses a built in upscaler when set to 1080p in its settings, that old upscaler is pretty bad by todays standards and if using a UHD TV it'll go through another upscaler from the TV itself.
so uh make sure to set the console itself to use 720p and disable any "fancy" picture settings the TV might try and apply.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Blythe93
You guys are missing his question (I think) which I always wondered about too.. where were the 1360x720 resolution panels? I still thought PS3 and 360 looked great on it though. Never cared much. Looks sharp.
 
namename11 said:
I got a PS3 today but I can't find a 720p TV for it. Or a monitor. Everything is 1366x768 and not 1280x720 like what a PS3 would look good on according to online sources since most games are 720p. It looks really bad on my 4K C2 OLED.


I don't want to spend $750 on a RetroTwink 4K unless I have to,, are there any other scalers that do the job? Or just 720p TV/monitors?
Click to expand...
Early LCDs were crap... The OLED can't possibly look worse than that. Are you sure that's not just how the PS3 looks? :P

Every "HD Ready" TV I've ever seen was some weird native resolution and had to scale 720p up to its native resolution. I'm sure that native 720p TVs probably existed, but like you, I've never found one. My old LCD TV back in the day could only do its native resolution over VGA, and VGA is not exactly sharp. HDMI would only accept 480p/720p/1080i and all of them had ugly scaling. It really was the dark days. It almost seems as if they were just repurposing panels meant for monitors, except for the fact that you'd be hard pressed to find a 32" (or larger) monitor at the time, those sizes were pretty much reserved for TVs only.

1280x720 was never a common monitor resolution but you should be able to find a 1280x800 monitor and deal with the minor black bars, as that was a fairly common resolution.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Blythe93
namename11 said:
I got a PS3 today but I can't find a 720p TV for it. Or a monitor. Everything is 1366x768 and not 1280x720 like what a PS3 would look good on according to online sources since most games are 720p. It looks really bad on my 4K C2 OLED.


I don't want to spend $750 on a RetroTwink 4K unless I have to,, are there any other scalers that do the job? Or just 720p TV/monitors?
Click to expand...
You can't? There's so many still being made today. They're called HD Ready.
 
Plasmas had a lot of 720p models. Shame about their burn in, they were basically OLED lite on the higher end.
 
I've checked hundreds of listings for "720p" TVs, both new and old, not a single one is 1280x720. They are ALL 1366x768p and advertised as "HD" or "HD Ready".

My OLED looks bad because it can't do integer scaling and does some sort of weird algorithmic sharpening which can't be disabled.
 
My main TV is still a 2010 Samsung 720p Plasma. The PS3 looks fine on there...
BUT! Most PS3 games, especially later ones don't really even run at 720p! Always lower, so it still often looks kind of blurry. Games like Ridge Racer 7 and Wipeout HD look insane though.
 
Winduss said:
My main TV is still a 2010 Samsung 720p Plasma. The PS3 looks fine on there...
BUT! Most PS3 games, especially later ones don't really even run at 720p! Always lower, so it still often looks kind of blurry. Games like Ridge Racer 7 and Wipeout HD look insane though.
Click to expand...
It's actually 1280x720? That's kinda neat.
 
Marc_LFD said:
It's actually 1280x720? That's kinda neat.
Click to expand...
I don't think many TVs actually were. IIRC mine was more like 1366x768 last time I've connected a computer to it, which is of course slightly higher than that. But for all intents and purposes it's 720p (I keep it for component input!)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Marc_LFD

Site & Scene News

Go to forum More news

Popular threads in this forum

Hardware  The ideal PS3 model?

Hardware  Screws to buy for a fat ps3 ?

Hardware  PS3 Super Slim random black screens

Hardware  PS3 Repair Troubleshooting - PS3 No longer accepts discs, but will read and eject them.

Need more PSN friends :)