It might not seem like it, but 720p TVs are not only still in production, but they have some use. Yes, you’re better off using a 4K TV in your living room, and considering how affordable those have become, you’re better off splurging for one than saving a few bucks on a 720p option. However, 720p TVs have their uses, and it doesn’t involve leaving them out on the road waiting for the garbage truck to pick them up.
I don’t blame you for getting rid of your older 720p models, but if you have a few lying around, you might surprised how much value they have. No, you won’t be selling them for hundreds of dollars, but I mean value in how much you can use them around the house still. As somebody who has been getting more into retro consoles, a 720p TV is something that’s on the radar, and it should be for you as well.
Older consoles look good on older TVs
720p is a sweet spot
If you have consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360, then you can get a lot of mileage out of your 720p TV. These two consoles were at the forefront of the HD generation, and 720p is what a lot of them were designed to hit, at least in the early goings of the console generation. If you have a 720p TV lying around, these consoles would look just fine plugged into one. It’s also something you can use your older HDMI cables for, so it’s a matter of killing two birds with one stone.
You can also plug in your Xbox Series X and PS5 to a 720p TV, but that’s not going to result in the greatest picture quality. If it’s the only TV you have, then sure, but I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t have to.
DVDs are solid at a lower resolution
720p is actually an improvement over DVD quality
DVDs only output at 480p, so having a 720p TV is actually an increase over what the format has to offer. If you have a big collection of DVDs, don’t be afraid to pop them into a player and watch them on your TV. In some ways, this can be viewed as a good thing, since watching a DVD on your 65-inch 4K TV doesn’t look too good. If you scale down significantly to about a 32-inch 720p screen, then you won’t notice the glaring issues as much.
Many 4K TVs have good upscalers in them, so DVDs don’t look as horrid as they could, but they are far from a 4K Blu-ray disc or even a regular Blu-ray disc. Nevertheless, I used a 720p TV for years before finally moving on to a 1080p and 4K one, so it’s not like I’m a stranger to how things can look. I recently tried watching a VHS tape on a CRT TV, so I know that it can get a whole lot worse than DVD quality on a 720p TV.
Not bad for a garage or spare bedroom
Picture quality isn’t as important
For most of my life, I didn’t have a garage or any spare rooms for that matter. Now that I have more space than I know what to do with, I’m struggling with what to put in these spaces. I’ve been thinking for a while that a low-cost TV in my garage would be cool. A 720p TV is great for this because not only is it cheap, but if it dies in freezing or hot temperatures, it’s not a huge deal, and I could make it “smart” with a low-cost Roku or Fire Stick.
I used an old TV like this in my basement for a while before I was able to swap it for a 1080p one. For a TV that I’m hardly paying attention to, picture quality isn’t very important. Also, if you’re using it to watch YouTube TV or cable, you’ll find that a lot of broadcasts are still in 720p. That’s slowly changing, and some channels are in 4K, but the majority of them are not.
