Originally Posted by BeethovensPiano:
“Hmmm that's disappointing. Didnt realise Plasma was no good for HD.”
Not true at all, it depends on the plasma, some of the best high end 3d displays are plasma. They have come a long long way since they first came out. That native resolution is low end though, 720p, slightly lower actually. Modern plasma is 1080p. So even if that set is a few years old, it was probably a low end set when it came out.
Furthermore it is 42", kind of small.
That being said, dvd and regular sd is 480p, not 720p. Will you get a better image with HD? Yes, will it be as good as a 1080p plasma? No. Can you see the improvement? It will be a bit sharper, but viewing distance/resolution/small size of screen will take a toll. Even 720p is ~3x resolution of sd.
As for the guy above me, I have a true 1920x1080 1080p plasma, and the difference between 1080p and sd is night and day. Tends to be older screens that have the odd native resolutions, and their image quality might be lower to begin with. But I have seen a 720p low end panasonic 50" 1024x768 before, and while the resolution does seem crude, when you stand back 8 feet it did look pretty decent in HD, but if you walked up to it you could see the pixel structure.