HD is a terminology that applies to TVs, that in essence merely means 'high resolution'. ALL PC monitors are HD in that sense, because they have always had a higher resolution than TVs. There's no such thing as an "HD monitor".
That's not completely true...a monitor under 22" with a native resolution of 1080P or more is considered HD, as most 22" screens will not support such resolutions...yet some 18" screens do. Unless you are very close to the screen, or you have very little physical room for the screen, you are better off just buying a larger screen for larger resolutions.
HD Doesn't just encompass 1080p, it includes 720p as well, which at 1280x720, is lower than the 1280x1024, 1280x800 and 1440x900 minimum standard for PC monitors.
I think its more then obvious the op is questioning weather to go with 1050 or 1080. I have heard most people say 1080 doesnt really offer much advantage over 1050. The main reason, i think, to consider a monitor supporting 1080 is for Blu_ray, but even then, your not loosing much detail at 1050 vs 1080 as opposed to 720 vs 1080.
It's not certain, and there's no harm in asking. Either way, 1920x1080 monitors are superior for video playback compared to 1680x1050, but can be detrimental for gaming. 1920x1200 is of course ideal for both, but they can be expensive.
A lot of (usually older) games don't support it so have to upconvert from lower resolutions, which looks pretty bad.
It does not look that bad...it just does not look much better than the orriginal resolution did. That fact is that older games look pretty bad in general, and there isn't much that can be done about it other than using a crummy, blurry screen.
You can't upscale 1680x1050 to 1920x1080! These are different aspect ratios! If you do pull it off, it will look terrible because it will be stretched and mangled. Even if you kept the aspect raio through the upscale, you would only up upscaling about 3%....better to just have 15 pixel tall letterbox bars above and below the picture.
By that logic, getting any monitor can get ugly...a 16:9 will not display 16:10 well without letterboxing, and a 16:10 will not display 16:9 well without letterboxing, and neither will display 4:3 well without letterboxing. Even 4:3 has problems, with displaying 16:10 and 16:9 requiring letterboxing as well. If you have an output that only does 16:10, then it is a PC or MAC program, and probably has options to change to 16:9 anyway. When all is said and done, a 720x480 SD DVD will look better on a HD 16:9 or 16:10 screen than it does on a old SD 4:3 screen.
I thought I'd add that out of my 2 screens the Bravia smashes it. My older brother has an Asus 22" Monitor 1920x1080,is a Crysis fan and I'm sure he would say FULL HD all the way. Doesn't resolution quality have a lot to do with the quality of the GPU too?
