High confusion over display resolution.

Hi, Ive, been trying to understand display resolutions and im highly confused.

This is whats confusing me. From what i understand the appropriate screen resolution is dependent on the number of pixels in a display.

This is were i get confused, why is that that say, a forty inch lcd display (im talking mostly about televisions here) and fifty inch display can both run the same resolution. For examples sake ill just say 1080i. Is the image simply scaled to the actual display size? It would seem obvious that the fifty inch display would have more pixels than the forty inch display.

Ive tried looking some information up via google, and have read some stuff on wikipedia. Ive given up on ever understanding how it works. I just thought i would ask here.

Thanks for any information, or newb friendly links.

-lucius

Well, 1024*768 is 1024 pixels from left to right and 768 is pixels top to bottom. Now, different monitors, same res? That's all in the aspect ratio.

The pixels are bigger on bigger screens, it's as simple as that. A pixel is only a square after all, assuming they're all uniform, they can be whatever size they want.

hope that answers your question!

-Dave

That makes sense. It's like when you buy a camera. I usually go for the average joe camera's with the higher pixels. More pixels means more squares, More squares means better picture quality right? Would you call better picture quality better resolution?

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Originally Posted by SnowFire

That makes sense. It's like when you buy a camera. I usually go for the average joe camera's with the higher pixels. More pixels means more squares, More squares means better picture quality right? Would you call better picture quality better resolution?

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Yeah Dave is right..on a nother note (I'm famous for off topic babble)
Unfortunately people think more megapixels= better picture...very untrue. A superior LENSE on a 3 megapixel camera is going to take a superior picture over a 8 MP camera with a so-so lense. :think:

Not to mention that unless your going to blow up your picture to the size of a billboard, you don't necessarily need more mega pixels. I agree with Crimson, it is much wiser to invest in a camera with good optics over mega pixels.

Ok back on topic.. :)

Back off topic ;)

I think the topic at hand has been answered well enough, so no harm no foul?

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Originally Posted by Crimson Sky

Yeah Dave is right..on a nother note (I'm famous for off topic babble)
Unfortunately people think more megapixels= better picture...very untrue. A superior LENSE on a 3 megapixel camera is going to take a superior picture over a 8 MP camera with a so-so lense. :think:

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LOL

That is really funny. I was hoping you were going to post a reply because I knew you were going to say something on those lines. You said it before somewhere, but I have since forgotten what you said about megapixels not being everything. This only works on photographer cameras right? I have a $80 Kodak "easy share" 3MP camera and I am pretty sure you can't put a lens on that! lol

So why does a good lens make a camera take better pictures? How/why does that work?

Going even more off topic, check THESE out! lol

-SnowFire

I'm not sure about this, but doesn't this also have to do with pixel pitch. You already mentioned the size of the pixel, but doesn't the distance between each vary too? So the smaller the pixel pitch, the smaller the distance, which means a sharper image? Is this right?

Thanks for the responses guys. I didn't think of the possibilty of the pixels themselves being larger. I feel dumb now lol. As far as off-topic ... go for it, i don't mind, if something useful could come out of one of my threads for once in my life... i would be honored.

Thanks for the help

- lucius

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Unfortunately people think more megapixels= better picture...very untrue. A superior LENSE on a 3 megapixel camera is going to take a superior picture over a 8 MP camera with a so-so lense.

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Thanks for pointing that out! My dad is a 'traditional' photographer who hasn't looked into digital cameras much. Using his knowledge mixed with mine i bought a 3megapixel camera with a Leica lens. At first, my dad wa
s like "What, you should have got an 8megapixel" but after a few minutes playing with the camera, i showed him the error of his ways.

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I'm not sure about this, but doesn't this also have to do with pixel pitch. You already mentioned the size of the pixel, but doesn't the distance between each vary too? So the smaller the pixel pitch, the smaller the distance, which means a sharper image? Is this right?

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You're right there-HDTV's use some sort of tiny mirror array to make the pixels appear closer together. Which is why the picture looks so much clearer than your PC screen does, despite having roughly the same resolution.

-Dave