How does 1080p work?

[Kragos]

Hello,

 

I just wanted to know if I'd be able to see 1080p on a monitor that is 1280 x 1024? I don't think I can, due to the 1024, but I don't know if the 1080 part is in the 1280?

Can someone explain it to me please.

[PCGuy_5960]

1080p content will appear slightly sharper, but not much. Because 1080p is 1920x1080 and your monitor is 1280x1024

Edited December 4, 2017 by PCGuy_5960
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[Levent]

nope, 1920 is the horizontal pixel count and 1080p is the vertical pixel count and your monitor has less than that. You might get a slightly improved quality since you would be down sampling but nothing major.

[Snipergod87]

If its video it will be shrunk to fit at the lower resolution on 1280x1024.  If its a game you will have content cut off or the option would not be available

[Kragos]

3 minutes ago, Levent said:

nope, 1920 is the horizontal pixel count and 1080p is the vertical pixel count and your monitor has less than that. You might get a slightly improved quality since you would be upsampling but nothing major.

So could I see 720p in games then?

[Levent]

Just now, Kragos said:

So could I see 720p in games then?

yup 1280x720 will work but you will get letterboxing

[Kragos]

Just now, Levent said:

yup 1280x720 will work but you will get letterboxing

I'm not bothered by that, so yay.

[Kragos]

1 hour ago, Levent said:

nope, 1920 is the horizontal pixel count and 1080p is the vertical pixel count and your monitor has less than that. You might get a slightly improved quality since you would be down sampling but nothing major.

Does this mean any monitor that is less than 1080 can't actually show 1080p videos and game play then?

[Levent]

1 minute ago, Kragos said:

Does this mean any monitor that is less than 1080 can't actually show 1080p videos and game play then?

it can show, but you are physically limited to your display's resolution (which is 1280x1024 in your case)

[ShredBird]

If you display 1080p on a lower resolution display like 720p the image should look better than if it's a native 720p source.  This is called supersampling, which for games is the primary method of providing something called antialiasing.

 

Because computers are generating images in realtime and have to do it as fast as possible they default to one sample per pixel.  From a signal processing standpoint this is inherently undersampled.  For a high quality image there should be at least 4 samples per pixel.  Running 1080p but displaying 720p means you are getting 2.25 samples per pixel, hence the quality increase.