T61 with nVidia 140m 1080p performance

Hi All,

Haven't been on the forums in a long time, but once again, have turned to all of you for advice / help!

I did search for an answer to this question, and saw a bunch of posts, but didn't really see a definitive answer.

I am thinking of purchasing a Viewsonic 4290p (42", 1080p lcd tv) and want to hook up my T61 (T7300, 2 GB memory, nVidia 140m 128 MB) to it to watch movies. I want to be able to run at 1920 x 1080. This TV has a VGA input, and supports a 1080p signal through VGA. The question is, will my laptop be able to drive this beast of a TV? I'm not looking to game at this resolution, just watch DVD's. (not blue ray... just normal ones) If at some point in the future I want to watch blue ray movies, I'll invest in a HT pc with a decent video card. For now, I just want to hook up my T61 and be able to run it at 1080p without problems, or a noticeable frame rate drop.

Thanks for you help!

 

Well the upscaling from DVDs is going to be by the TV's scaler (most likely). However, the laptop should be able to do 1080p material in x264. You could also use a super efficient decoder such as CoreAVC. And...you don't need 1080p unless you are watching super close. I use 720p material on a 52" and it looks the same. Most people would agree with this.

 

The 140M will run 1080p.

 

Thanks to both of you for your replies!

@ Jaredy:

Doesn't it look better to run an LCD TV at it's native resolution? I don't know, as this will be my first LCD TV purchase. I know with computer monitors, the image looks fuzzy if you don't run at native resolution, I assumed LCD TV's were the same. Or maybe, like you said, you can't tell because you are sitting further away from a TV than a monitor...? I was under the impression that any LCD display looks much better at native resolution.

 

Ideally; but, I say try it for yourself to see if it makes a difference to you. It might not warrant the file size difference of 720p vs 1080p material. I don't think it will look fuzzy to you though. Up close I can see blocking with 720p material, but anything past a 5ft and it is pretty insignificant. My normal viewing is at least 20ft back. So it would be best to try and see what your viewing habits are.