What is resolution?

A projector's resolution (or more precisely, its "native resolution") is simply the number of pixels that it has available to create an image. The higher the resolution of a projector, the more pixels it has.

Projector resolution is designated with two numbers, such as "1280x720." The first number indicates how many pixels there are in each horizontal row, and the second number is how many pixels make up each vertical column. If you were to multiply the two numbers, you would end up with the total number of pixels on the display device.

Generally speaking, the higher the resolution, the more the projector will cost. The advantages of higher resolutions are that (a) they can display more detail in the picture (assuming the video signal has the detail in it), and (b) they reduce or eliminate the visibility of the pixel structure. Both of these are highly desirable in good home theater. The advantage of low resolution projectors is that they cost so little, so you can get into large screen home theater with a small investment.

Common Resolutions in Home Theater Projectors

Projectors come in a variety of different resolutions, including the following:

• 854x480: This is the least expensive and lowest resolution on the market. It is designed for optimum display of standard definition material in NTSC countries, since both NTSC television signals and standard DVDs contain 480-lines per frame of video. An 854x480 projector can display 480-line video without any vertical scaling, so the picture will look its sharpest. If you live in an NTSC country, you watch primarily DVD and television, and want to get a good basic projector for the least cash outlay, the 854x480 models may be just right for you.
• 1024x576: There are few projectors in this resolution these days, but you can still find them on the used projector market. They were designed for optimum display of PAL/SECAM video, which contains 576 lines per frame. They have little practical use in NTSC countries. But if you live in a PAL or SECAM country, these can be inexpensive alternatives that are ideally suited to viewing standard definition PAL/SECAM video.
• 1280x720: This is currently the most popular home theater projector resolution on the market. Most 1280x720 projectors offer very good to excellent DVD video quality. In addition, they have the unique advantage of being able to display HDTV 720p in native format without scaling. They also do a beautiful job of displaying 1080-line video; even though the signal is compressed into its 720-line format, it still comes out looking like true high definition. Street prices on the most aggressively priced models have dropped below $1,000, so this excellent resolution format is easy to get into from a budget perspective.
• 1280x768: This is a hybrid resolution that combines the ability to display 16:9 video in 1280x720, as well as standard computer resolutions XGA (1024x768) and WXGA (1280x768), in native form without scaling. If your viewing material includes both video and computer data or Internet surfing, this format will allow you to see the computer data signals in their clearest, unscaled form. Note that this is a 15:9 aspect ratio rather than 16:9 as are the others in this list. So when you are viewing 16:9 video material, there will be small black bars at the top and bottom of the projected image. That is the penalty you pay for having those extra 48 lines available to accommodate XGA computer signals
• 1920x1080: The ultimate high definition format, and also the most expensive. The key advantage to this resolution is that it will display HDTV 1080i signals, as well as 1080i and 1080p signals from HD DVD and Blu-ray disc players, all in native format without any scaling. This gives you the sharpest and most detailed images available today. Due to the pixel density, visible pixel structure is virtually non-existent.

Selecting the right resolution for you

We currently recommend two resolutions for widescreen, 16:9 format home theater, those being 1280x720 and 1920x1080. If you want your projector to double as both a video and data projector, the 1280x768 format should be considered as well.

The 1280x720 format is the best choice if you have a more modest budget and/or you don't want to pay a large premium to get the absolute maximum detail out of a 1080i or 1080p video signal. Today's 1280x720 projectors (often referred to in shorthand as "720p projectors") deliver beautiful high definition images from HDTV 720p, 1080i, as well as HD DVD and Blu-ray disc players, so there really is not much of a compromise in picture quality by going with 1280x720 instead of the higher resolution 1920x1080 format.

On the other hand, if you have the money to spend, and you want the absolute sharpest and most detailed picture possible from high definition sources, then 1920x1080 projectors (commonly referred to as "1080p projectors") are the best choice. While the 1280x720 projectors can deliver very impressive HD images, the picture quality in terms of image detail is even better when the projector has the ability to show all 1080 lines of the signal in their native, uncompressed format.