newbie question, native res is not actually 720p

[mono]

might be overthinking this

- my source material is like 60/40 720p vs standard def
- my budget / typical viewing distance / capacity of the human eye stuff that i've read has led me to believe a 720p native resolution tv is sufficient for me
- will be hooked into a late 2009 mac mini, currently running a 1920 x 1200 computer display without issue


so what is up with native resolutions on tvs? take for example this "720p" samsung tv:

http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/PN43D450A2DXZA-specs#
says it's native res is 1,024 x 768, 16:9 aspect ratio. in USA math i learned that would be a 4:3 aspect ratio. so i read around and find that even though 720p is actually 1280 x 720, the tv has rectangular pixels to make it 16:9

btw newegg has the native res listed as 1280 x 720, and amazon as 1366 x 768, which isn't helping the situation
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16889102581
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-PN43D450-43-Inch-600Hz-Plasma/dp/B004MKNQGO/ref=sr_1_1?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1309012441&sr=1-1

so is this going to cause problems when i hook everything up? will i have to go through all this Switch ResX nonsense? should i look for a native res that is actually 720p with square pixels? i'm basically wanting the same no fuss experience of the computer display just on a bigger screen.

thanks.

[Smithcraft]

There is more than one kind of aspect ratio. If I recall correctly there are three, but I can only think of Display Aspect Ratio, and Pixel Aspect Ratio.

That display that you listed most likely is 1024 by 768. This is typical of Plasma displays. So the display stretches the pixels, just like how a DVD player stretches the pixels on an anamorphic DVD.

What the panel displays is considered 1280 by 720 because of scalers built in to the display. Most consumers would be confused if they were told it was a 768p display, so the scaler scales the image to a lower resolution while it spreads the pixels.

I've heard, but not recently, that OS X doesn't like PARs that aren't 1:1 so widescreen 1024 by 768 displays look exactly like a 1024 by 768 display would look.

I'm not sure SRX can deal with odd PARs either.

SC

ps - I would never use Amazon as a source of technical information.
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[swordsandtequila]

I had an older Samsung, 720p. The native resolution for PC connection was 1366 X 768 (VGA). Connected this way (I have the same mini), picture was perfect, no overscan etc. Through HDMI (with a converter) some calibration was required (I use Plex for movies, etc.). My advice, go with the native connection; there's virtually no difference between 1080p and 720p on sets smaller than 40", and I saw no difference between VGA and HDMI. Hope this helps.
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[tamarok]

As long as you have more pixels than the 1080 specification requires then you are fine. There are probably engineering or manufacturing reasons for these other formats. One other thing to take into account is that HDTVs are essentially flat screen displays with a built in computer - check the manual and you may just find your TV running Linux, though not in a form intended for you to hack it.