03-15-2012, 01:15 PM

Will there be a noticeable difference between the way 720p videos (or ripped dvds) play on the ipad 3 vs. the ipad 2?

03-15-2012, 02:04 PM

Not really - you might get better color saturation, but the quality will look more or less the same.

03-16-2012, 03:09 PM

Originally Posted by Zoolook

Not really - you might get better color saturation, but the quality will look more or less the same.

I can't verify this yet, but this is likely to be ENTIRELY incorrect.

First of all, the new iPad can PLAY 720p videos at the full resolution -- 1280x720 instead of downsizing it to 1024x768 as it did before, so there's that right off the bat.

Secondly, the new display is, according to every review I've read, much more than just 4x resolution improvement. And more than just a bit more color saturation, so the reviewers say.

So yes, I think you should expect a noticeable improvement, and even more so if you upgrade those videos to 1080p -- which you can do for free if they were purchased through iTunes.

03-16-2012, 04:41 PM

Originally Posted by chas_m

I can't verify this yet, but this is likely to be ENTIRELY incorrect.

First of all, the new iPad can PLAY 720p videos at the full resolution -- 1280x720 instead of downsizing it to 1024x768 as it did before, so there's that right off the bat.

Secondly, the new display is, according to every review I've read, much more than just 4x resolution improvement. And more than just a bit more color saturation, so the reviewers say.

So yes, I think you should expect a noticeable improvement, and even more so if you upgrade those videos to 1080p -- which you can do for free if they were purchased through iTunes.

Well, I'll know on Monday.

The resolution is interesting, given 720p content is almost always 16:9, so 1024x768 can't really accommodate it anyway and I hadn't considered that, good point.

03-17-2012, 08:05 PM

Well now that I've got a new iPad myself, I ran some tests.

I had some video files I had converted to (original) iPad-sized from HD sources, thus they were scaled down 16:9.

I then put some fresh videos in that I'd converted to MP4, but otherwise left the 720p or 1080p resolution unchanged.

Yes, noticeable difference (though lower-res files still look pretty good, they upscale very well). On the 1080p stuff, VERY noticeable difference.