HDTV or Not?

[Donkey_Kong]

Hello!! This is my 1st post in Monitor section. You guys seem like Einstein type people and i'm kinda dumb like that ya know! I watch TV's, I know NOTHING about what is inside of them. I'm going to ask one simple question...Well maybe two questions tops. Feel free to get all high tech in your answers and stuff but I will warn you now, I probably won't be able to make sense of most of it...

I'm going to build a Virtual Pinball machine in the near future. I want to use a larger wide screen monitor/TV. Somewhere in the 36-42" range. I will run virtual pinball software on the screen as well as MAME etc.

So the question...HD or not HD? Prices are dropping and I'm thinking why not! Can you give me a good reason to NOT use HD?

Thanks!

[tranq]

I'd think, generally, the higher the resolution the better.

[richms]

With how close you are to the screen, if you get a cheap nasty 480 line plasma it will be like looking at a tile mosaic thru a chainlink fence - you _need_ the highest res panel you can get in there to avoid it looking really bad from those distances.

480 line plasmas are not suitable for home use IMO, they are too blocky from any normal viewing distance, and if you can get far enough away not to see it, a 42"  is just too damn small

[tranq]

I didn't think they made plasmas in anything less than 1080i - or p, even.   And, that size could be plasma, or LCD, or LDP.

As for 480i, in general, all these people are getting CRT TV's with that resolution.....1) the pictures they've shown seem to be pretty decent, but they're not that close, 2) we don't know the resolution of the cameras they're using....so I'm skeptical.

[Donkey_Kong]

Thanks for the help...Baaaah. This project is just a $$dream$$

Maybe someday though!

[richms]

I didn't think they made plasmas in anything less than 1080i - or p, even.   And, that size could be plasma, or LCD, or LDP.

As for 480i, in general, all these people are getting CRT TV's with that resolution.....1) the pictures they've shown seem to be pretty decent, but they're not that close, 2) we don't know the resolution of the cameras they're using....so I'm skeptical.

On a tv or arcade monitor there are several rgb triads being hit by any given picture pixel in 480 line res's, so the physical structure of the image isnt as obvious, and there is the blur at the edge of the beam as it isnt a perfect circle. Also most crt's going into arcade cabinets are not 42"

A cheap plasma has 3 giant pixels for each pixel of the image. They are really visable at most normmal viewing distances. Even tho most will take 1080i or in some cases 1080p, theres no point since its displaying it as SD, on big-ass pixels.