What Is FHD?

FHD stands for full high definition, usually written full HD. It is a resolution of 1920 pixels across by 1080 pixels down, in the 16:9 widescreen shape used by TVs and most current monitors. That is 2,073,600 pixels in total.

The resolution comes from HDTV. The 1920 × 1080 image formats are defined by SMPTE ST 274, and the color and signal parameters for HD television by ITU-R Recommendation BT.709. The word full was added to separate 1920 × 1080 from the earlier 1280 × 720 format, which is also called HD or HD ready.

Because so much video, software and hardware is built around 1920 × 1080, FHD became the default resolution for monitors, laptops and TVs for more than a decade, and it is still the most common widescreen resolution on industrial monitors and panel PCs.

Each step up in resolution multiplies the pixel count. The table compares FHD with its neighbours.

More pixels give finer detail on a large screen or at close range, but they also need more graphics power, more video bandwidth and more storage for recorded footage. FHD sits at the point where detail, cost and processing load are balanced for most screens up to around 24 inches.

The labels around FHD can be confusing, so it helps to separate them.

On industrial screens from around 15.6 to 24 inches, FHD gives sharp text at normal viewing distances without asking much of the computer. Any current Intel, AMD or Arm graphics output drives 1920 × 1080 at 60 Hz, so a small fanless PC can run a full HD touch screen, a camera view and an HMI at once.

FHD video also fits standard interfaces with room to spare. 1080p60 runs over HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort and 3G-SDI, and capture cards, encoders and cameras built for FHD are widely available. That makes it a sensible default for machine vision displays, video walls built from smaller panels and operator consoles.

The 21.5 inch (21.5″) panel size is typically built at 1920 × 1080, which makes 21.5 inch industrial monitors and 21.5 inch panel PCs a common choice for full HD control screens, and our sunlight readable monitors include FHD models at around 1,000 to 1,500 nits for outdoor and vehicle use.

Full HD is also the working resolution for a large share of industrial video. Many IP cameras, machine vision cameras and SDI cameras output 1080p, and many video analytics models work on frames at or below FHD, so a 1080p stream is often all an inference pipeline needs.

Bandwidth and storage scale with pixels. An uncompressed 1080p60 stream at 8 bits per color needs around 3 Gb/s, which is why 3G-SDI was sized for it. Compressed with H.264 or H.265 for recording, a 1080p camera stream typically needs a few megabits per second, against several times that for 4K. On a network video recorder or edge AI computer handling many cameras, staying at FHD can be the difference between one system and two.

Showing several FHD cameras on one screen is a different matter. Four 1080p feeds in a 2 × 2 grid on an FHD monitor are each shown at a quarter of their resolution, so multi-camera viewing is a common reason to choose a larger or higher-resolution display.

FHD starts to look coarse on larger screens viewed up close. On a 27 inch (27″) or 32 inch (32″) screen at arm’s length, pixel density falls to around 70 to 80 pixels per inch, and fine text or detailed drawings show visible pixels. Medical review, inspection, mapping and multi-camera layouts on large screens are the usual reasons to move to 4K UHD.

Going the other way, 4K on a small screen adds cost without much visible gain. On a 15.6 inch screen, FHD already gives around 141 pixels per inch, and the extra pixels of 4K mostly show up as heavier graphics load, more heat in a sealed enclosure and the need for operating system scaling to keep buttons large enough to touch.

For long screens on shelves, vehicles or control desks, bar-type stretched panels use FHD-class widths with fewer rows, such as 1920 × 540, rather than a full 16:9 image.

We supply FHD industrial monitors and panel PCs with the brightness, touch and sealing the site needs, and configure and test each one with its computer before it ships.