Vista Media Centre and Plasma TV Connection

[jonathan_phang]

Hello y'all,

trying to help out a work colleague with his endless search for a new TV and he might be settling for one of the Panasonic Plasma TVs. I think this is great, as they undoubtedly have quality, but the thing I want to know is about the resolution it displays at...

LCDs have square pixels and hence the resolution (such as 1920x1080) has a widescreen aspect ratio. Plasmas have rectangluar pixels and this means that the resolution is going to be square (ie 1024x1024).

My question is does this have any bearing on the way that Media Centre displays??? Wont the PC transmit out a 'square' resolution with the correct aspect ratio, then have this stretched when the TV displays its rectangular pixels???

Dont want to recomend something that wont work to a mate, so any information would be great,

JP

MODS - Just realise this might be in the wrong forum, could go in help/advisory, or in the SFF sub forum too - up to you if you want to move it. Apologies!

[Funkstar]

Originally Posted by jonathan_phang

Plasmas have rectangluar pixels and this means that the resolution is going to be square (ie 1024x1024).

Not if the Plasma has a native resolution of 1920x1080 like all the FullHD panels out there.

FullHD or 1080p is pretty easy as that is a standard resolution, just about anything should be able to output that and have the screen deal with it correctly.

Now, my currect plasma (SD only) works best when you feed it a 800x600 signal. I use mediaPortal (http://www.team-mediaportal.com) which allows me to calibrate its own aspect ratio to compensate for displaying a 4:3 image on a 16:9 screen. I don't know if MCE lets you do this, but I'd be surprised if it didn't.