Would downsampling be faster?

[bugme]

I'm not sure whether this belongs in the feature suggestion board, the general discussion or the support board, so I'll just stick it in here.
I use a wireless connection and while it works perfectly for anything below 720p, and for most of my 720p files (even without using the WiFi transcoding modes, some even with the Great Quality preset), I couldn't ever get any 1080p movie to work.

What I wondered is, whether it would be more economic, especially bandwidth wise, to reduce the resolution instead of trying to transcode to a mangled 1080p MPEG2-stream.
My screen doesn't support that resolution, so it would go to waste anyway (or only improve the quality a bit after the screens automatic downsampling).
I couldn't find any discussion on that matter and I see no way to force resizing the video during transcode. I guess 1080p screens are the norm nowadays.

So the question is, wouldn't it be possible to downsample 1080p to 720p, transcode it with the same settings that work for my native 720p files and stream it wireless? It would look the same as my native 720p files and I could stream them with no problems, while the transcoded 1080p files always go over my bandwith limit.

[chocolateboy]

Have you tried: Mencoder -> Use Video Scaler -> Width/Height?

[Val Killmore]

Have you tried the Video Scaler option ?

Enter 1280 for Width and 720 for Height.

This should help reduce bandwidth demand.......in theory. Never needed to use it, but I believe this should help.

Video scaler.PNG (23.66 KiB) Viewed 717 times

[bugme]

Oh odd. I never seen that Option because it's so far to the right that a scrollbar appears.
What do I do with videos that are 4:3 or anything wider than 16:9?
If I enter 720 as height, all 4:3 would be at the correct height, but everything not 16:9 would be stretched (or cut off?).
If I enter 1280 as width, all 4:3 would be stretched.