I am soon upgrading my Philips 26" (720P) to a 42" Toshiba 42Z3030 (1080P) and have a question about 1080P. If Xbox games are 720P when you select 1080P on the xbox the picture is be upscaled. Will that reduce the picture quality? I hope its nothing like DVD upscaling...

It won't affect the image quality in any negative way; I use my Xbox360 on a 1080p display and upscaling improves image quality slightly in some cases. There is no reason to run your Xbox360 on anything but 1080p if your display permits.

very few games support 1080p (gears of war does support 1080p)

games that only support 720p will be stretched and may loose some sharpness and some colours may go blocky, or it may looked stretched, its very much dependent on the make and model of your screen and the technology your tv/xbox uses to upscale the image.

err dont look at all stretched / blocky etc on any 1080p I have ever seen. (Halo3, Forza (Jags but in 720 too), condemmed, oblivion)

Actually, Gears of War DOES NOT support 1080p. It supports a maximum resolution of 1080i, which still looks great on a 1080p display, it's not the same thing.

My TV is 1080p and I have the xbox set to display in 1080P as well. Everything looks good as far as console graphics are concerned, although most games have bad jaggies and Mass Effect doesn't look all that great. I hadn't considered whether reducing it down to 720P might actually help, I'll have to check it out.

Ok thanks guys, I forgot about this thread and now as I have seen this TV again for cheaper I have started to look into it again. I know the 360 would look great on a 42" 720P TV but I want to watch blu ray movies and not to have to buy another TV in the future so I'm not sure if a 720P would be a good idea. Its a shame about the AA on the 360 (Even though this would affect on both 720P and 1080P). Its a hard choice to make.

I would not buy a 720p TV, personally. 1080 is the standard that everything seems to be settling on now. 720 and 480 will be considered backwards compatibility within a couple of years and I'd rather not have to replace my TV that soon in order to make use of the newer standards.

Yeah it is. But about 95% of the time my TVs on its for Xbox 360 games or DVDs. This is why I wanted to know if 1080P would be worth it. I think I'll go for the Toshiba now. Alot of people seem to be using 1080P TVs with their Xbox 360s and no one seems to be complaining about it so it can't be too bad. On the up side blu ray will look really good

i was being silly for a moment there.