why does it say FullHD?

Hi
i have a vaio fw21l. I was just wondering why the laptop has a sticker saying FullHD 1080 when the resolution is 1600x900.

Is there much difference?

Thanks

 

It's got an HDMI out?

 

It is referring to HDMI Out which is FullHD 1080p. BTW, eventhough your screen is 1920x1080, I don't think you can tell the difference with a 16.4" notebook.

 

Actually the difference between 1600x900 and 1920x1080 is quite noticeable. Plus, the 1080p screen is actually better.

 

Standalone Blu-Ray players have FullHD stickers, and they don't even have any built-in screen at all! But they can output FullHD when connected to a 1080p monitor -- and so can your laptop.

But even if you play it back on the built-in screen, you'll still get most of the benefit. The difference between 480p (DVD res) and 900p (your laptop's screen) will be much more noticeable than the difference between 900p and 1080p.

 

Not when watching Blu-ray movies. The 1080p screen looks better only because it has richer color, not because it has higher resolution.

I have FW190 at 1600x900 which has the same color reproduction as FW590 at 1920x1080. If you put both screens side by side, I bet you would barely notice the difference.

Having said that, Blu-ray still looks much better with either screen than DVD. You couldn't go wrong with Blu-ray.

 

Huh? As far as I can tell, the colour gamut is slightly smaller; how is that richer colour?

And yes, depending on the source material, a 1080 screen can look far better, due to the lack of scaling. Scaling from 1920x1080 to 1600x900 introduces blurring -- there's no way around that.
Of course, most videos don't have high enough resolution to start with to notice this, and are already blurry, but there are exceptions where you clearly can see this. Small text rolling credits is a good example -- it can be unreadable on a 1600x900 screen due to blurring, while being legible on a 1920x1080.

 

In terms of watching movies, yes it's true but it also helps if the screen has the same resolution as the movie (when talking about Blu-Ray and 1080p). Watching a 1080p on a 900p screen kinda defeats the purpose. But I would notice the difference in terms of text size and screen work area.

 

Does this mean that Sony Z laptops with a Blu-ray drive can output Full HD (1080p) hence the Full HD sticker, where as a Sony Z laptop with a DVD player would only output to a maximum of either 720p or 1080i because it has no Full HD sticker?

 

-Is it possible that some Sony Z laptops would have a 1.2 and some 1.3? Or would all kinds of variances have the same port?

-How can I check the version of the hdmi connector on my current Sony Z laptop?

 

Well, almost anything these days can output a 1080p signal. If you want to play 1080p video smoothly, you'll need a graphics card capable of doing that... and most are capable these days.

Probably the main reason for no FullHD sticker is... there aren't many legal sources for 1080p video to watch, other than Blu-Ray.

 

Some players upscale the image, hence the lack of sticker.