8 ms·

Why 4K TVs are stupid

19 points by taytus 14y ago

deltaqueue 14y ago
This article could have been summed up with a chart that has been around for quite some time: http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html As many people have mentioned, total resolve of pixels is not tantamount to proving value of the new medium. It grants flexibility for viewing distances and newer TVs will continue to have better contrast levels, viewing angles, etc.
e03179 14y ago
In a world of capped data consumption, how would companies deliver 4k content over data networks?
- xutopia 14y ago
  Google Fiber?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- twoodfin 14y ago
  One way would be to make a deal with the bandwidth provider to not count the content against any cap. I'd always imagined that if Apple ever gets into the TV business, they'd follow the model they've used with the iPhone and allow the "carriers" like Comcast and Time Warner to sell their customers fat margin "smart TV" plans. At that point, you can treat any content Apple streams the same way Comcast treats their own video-on-demand: unmetered.
  - zobzu 14y ago
    I don't like the idea, because it goes against net neutrality of course. It's not, deal with X, customer don't pay for data! nope. It's deal with X, customer pay extra, and he's: 1/ forced to pay extra for the 4K content in that case, else data cap explodes and that'd cost even more 2/ his choice is limited to partners
untog 14y ago
Agreed. Sometimes I wonder whether it's a "no-one needs more than 640KB" statement to say that I can't imagine needing a TV bigger than the one I have now. I forget how big it is, but it's 40-something inches, and feels like a good fit for the size of my living room. Am I ever going to need one that spans an entire wall? It just seems impractical. I do notice problems with the 1080p display of my TV, but that's compression artifacts from cable TV, not the resolution. There's a law of diminishing returns with this stuff. "Double retina" would be considerably less interesting than retina displays were when they first came out, because the difference would be so much less perceptible.
- manaskarekar 14y ago
  What happens when wall sized "tvs" are high res touchscreens that can be used for multitasking? To not make it sound too far fetched, what about your non touchscreen tv be wall sized. One end, you run one show and listen in using one bluetooth headset, another end your wife/roomie tunes in to another show with their own headset. A third part of the screen's got kids playing video games, and a fourth has weather and news scrolling by. When it's time to party, the 'wall' lights up with psychedelic colors and wavy patterns. When it's time to chill, it just glows with some subdued colors. Press one button and it shows you a status of all your electrical appliances in the house on one part of the screen, the heat, the washing machine status, the ice level in the fridge.. It's not that hard to imagine more interesting uses of technology.
  - untog 14y ago
    One end, you run one show and listen in using one bluetooth headset, another end your wife/roomie tunes in to another show with their own headset. I can't see how that's better than what people do now- watch in different rooms. I really dislike the idea of having to wear a bluetooth headset in order to passively watch TV, and everyone having headsets strapped on seems to ruin the point of everyone being in one room. All IMO, of course.
    - manaskarekar 14y ago
zobzu 14y ago
"So if your eye can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on nearly all modern televisions, what's the need for 4K?" sums it up. and, I sort of agree too, although I generally believe it's because of the capture camera and the compression software. When I look at videos recorded by 4K cameras but at 1080p, it does look better than 720p. When I look at 1080p videos recorded by 1080p cameras, I rarely see a difference with the 720p version. Now for the screen size, it depends on the room size, but, when I go to my friend with a 100 inches projector (as in its the final picture size on the wall), that's definitely appreciable :p Also, 1080p stream already makes me hit stupid ISP data caps, 4K, well, uhm, not sure I've got the bandwidth anyway :) See also: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5BF9E09ECEC8F88F http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5BF9E09ECEC8F88F
- alternize 14y ago
  So if your eye can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on nearly all modern televisions, what's the need for 4K? that's the quote that made me stop reading the rest of the article: I can clearly spot the difference between 720p and 1080p content on my 50" "modern television", sitting on my couch 1.5m away.
  - pja 14y ago
    You're sitting close enough to a large screen that you can benefit from 1080p. Indeed, at that distance, I think you might just be able to get some benefit from 4k. Most people do not sit 1.5m from a 50" screen however. (I'm assuming that the calculations in this blog post: http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/ http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/ are correct.)
  - zobzu 14y ago
    note that there is also pretty bad 720p content sometimes, but in general i can't make the diff between good 720p and good 1080p content, even at 1.5m from the tv (ive a recent 60 inches tv) (or even at 5cm away for that matter, since anyway i start seeing the physical pixels on 60 inches at around 1 meter) By good 720p content, i generally mean 1080p content reencoded by x264 in high profile mode or the like (so, it could still be better, but its pretty good) Generally i watch at 4m
panzagl 14y ago
The only reason I want 4K to be adopted is to fight the backward slide of monitor/laptop resolution. Couldn't care less for TV.
mattmaroon 14y ago
I'm not sure it works that way. Just because you can't see pixels individually doesn't mean the overall picture quality won't appear better. I'm too lazy to do the math, but I'm guessing on a 25" screen, by his math, I wouldn't be able to see an individual 480p pixel, but I'd still take the Pepsi challenge between that and 720p. And sure, a high contrast 720p screen might look better than a mediocre 1080p, but that's not a fair comparison. It doesn't mean that given equal quality, higher resolution isn't better. The real reason not to buy a 4k TV is that content is non-existent and probably will be for a few more years at least.
- belorn 14y ago
  Old content is also unlikely to end up being re-encoded to a size above 1080p. Old TV-shows are already having problems getting to 720p, and shows like star trek has to re-render things to get up to 1080, and shows like babylon 5 has yet to make it to the 720p mark.
  - ludovicurbain 14y ago
    Actually while this may be right for some very old or very cheap content, movies tend to be stored on much higher resolution material - Either way if 4k is not a problem, 8k will be, so it remains an increasingly important concern.
runaway 14y ago
This article seems to assume that in order for resolution to have an effect on perceived picture quality, you need to be able to discern individual pixels in the image and I haven't been convinced this is the case. Couldn't the image just "look sharper" without the viewer being able to pinpoint the extra pixels? Anecdotally, I can instantly tell the difference between broadcast 720p and a 1080p Bluray on my 50" from 13 feet away, but that might also be due to compression/encoding/etc. Also, I'm not convinced that in the future we won't commonly have 60"+ screens in our homes. If you could afford it, why not have a true home theater? The bigger issue with 4K for the moment is getting actual 4K content.
- Alex3917 14y ago
  "Couldn't the image just 'look sharper' without the viewer being able to pinpoint the extra pixels?" Yes. The movie Baraka was shot in 8K. When they released the remastered DVD it looks much better for having been shot in 8K first, even though the end product was only at DVD resolution. It's not just a matter of how many pixels you can see, the very fact that there are more pixels in the raw footage means the colors will be more vibrant and accurate is the final product. If nothing else the existence of 4K TVs will cause directors to shoot in 4K, which will make the end product better regardless of how many pixels you can actually see. Also, if you haven't seen Baraka I'd highly recommend it. It's widely considered the best DVD of all time in terms of picture quality, and it's also the one movie that Roger Ebert says we should show aliens to explain the human race.
jlgreco 14y ago
At least such TVs might stand a chance of reversing the unfortunate trend seen in computer monitor resolutions.
rplnt 14y ago
The fact we (consumers) don't need them won't stop us from buying them. It's manufacturers' decision, not ours.
- ygra 14y ago
  Similar to the trend in computer and laptop monitors to move away from 4:3, I guess.
abruzzi 14y ago
I wonder if you could argue some variant of the nyquist theorem justifies resolution significantly beyond our ability to discern pixels? (Just a random thought, as I know little about visual perception.)
- mertd 14y ago
  Here is some basic test: http://i.imgur.com/TqRcx.png http://i.imgur.com/TqRcx.png View the image in 100% zoom. One line is dotted with dots one pixel apart. The other line is a straight with no gaps. If you can tell which one is which, your retina is able to pick up the maximum visual frequency displayed by your device.
  - abruzzi 14y ago
    but what about with color and motion? I know the TV sees pixels as discrete, but if the encoding of the content is 4:2:2, 4:1:1, or 4:2:0 higher resolution might be noticeable. Of course improving the color sampling would be a better solution.
tibbon 14y ago
I currently have a 37" Westinghouse 1080p screen that I bought in 2008 or so. The TV industry would like to tell me what is wrong with this screen, and for some things they have it right, and some things have it wrong. What I actually want changed: - Significantly deeper darks and better contrast. Playing a dark game or movie is frustrating compared to my Dell u2311 monitor. I really want an OLED display (I think) to fix this once and for all. A black screen should not light the room with backlight leakage. THIS IS NUMBER 1. Everything else is secondary. - Less TV-included blur. This TV came out before the 120/240hz ones, so perhaps that fixes it. In a fast action movie, I want the blur to come from the 24fps film, not from my TV's poor drawing of the pixels on the screen. - I'd like slightly bigger. I bought this to pimp out my 180sq/ft studio apartment. Now my living room alone is 2x that size will a properly setup 5.1 surround system and plenty of room. I could dig 60" or so. - More HDMI inputs. This screen has one. Yet I have about 6 HDMI devices that I'd like to use. Currently, I'm manually swapping this. - Optical audio output. Kinda a weird one, but I've got a 5.1 receiver that doesn't handle HDMI. Otherwise, its fine. I'd like to run HDMI to the TV and have the TV output optical audio 5.1 for the receiver. That's it. I don't need 3d. In two years, I still won't want 3d. It isn't a feature to me! I don't need built in Netflix. I don't need an internet connected TV. I don't need 4K. The main thing above that's actually not shipped AFAIK is OLED. That's it. Just finally ship OLED screens at a decent price!
- hospadam 14y ago
  FWIW, you can pick up HDMI switchers quite cheaply. If you want to spring for it, remote-operated ones run a bit more expensive ($40 maybe) - but it could be worth it...
  - tibbon 14y ago
    Yea, I should just grab one of those. I had one, but it was terrible. It would cause my Xbox 360 to reset and need the HDMI plugged in and out again whenever it switched. Very odd, but I found other people who had the same problem with this cheap one.
- prawks 14y ago
  Might I point you in the direction of a plasma? Takes care of most of your gripes (I'd have to check on the inputs and optical out), and they're cheaper. Burn-in issues are not a problem anymore, and the newer models work pretty well in well-lit rooms. - Contrast ratios are off the charts for deep blacks. - 600Hz refresh rates - Sizes over 60"
ludovicurbain 14y ago
Yet another article written with total disregard for science. Short article covering the usual bullshit about resolution and why apple retina is wrong, etc. http://wordmunger.com/?p=1348 http://wordmunger.com/?p=1348 For those who didn't know, the eye can see over 10k pixels in an angle of a single degree (the fovea, right where we aim with our guns or bows, of course). That means that in order for content and displays to provide you with the precision that real life offers, one should maybe consider a 40K TV instead. In reality, the brain does a lot to interpolate and most humans aren't trained to make good use of their view anymore (how many of you are sharpshooters or combat pilots mhh?) and thus may not notice a difference at some times, especially when tired or in bad lighting conditions. As I detailed in another comment somewhere, color accuracy is more important (IPS,OLED,..) than resolution because the brain cannot interpolate colors (quite logical indeed, how would you code that ? say that FFFFFF is more FFFA FFFA FFFC than FFFB FFFB FFFB ? good luck with writing anything else than random interpolation) and that means that focus on 4k TV should be secondary to focus on accurate sRGB TVs. It doesn't mean, however that 4K or 40K is useless.
bryanlarsen 14y ago
He uses the metric "if you can't see the individual pixels, then a higher resolution won't help", which is absolute and complete bunk. Improvements are noticeable well before then. Try this experiment: take an iPad 1 and put it far enough away from you so that you can no longer see the individual pixels. For me that's an outstretched arm. Now compare to a retina iPad. The difference is huge even though I can't "see" the individual pixels. That being said, 4K isn't going to do much good with the typical 40 or 50 inch screen. Reports are that 80" is where the improvements really start to become real, though. Not surprising: at 80", the pixels on a 4K screen are about the same size as the pixels on a 40" 1080p screen. That's assuming that you don't sit further back. And you shouldn't. There are reasons that IMAX is a much better experience than a typical theatre, and a reason why the large screen at the theatre is a better experience than the one you have at home. - immersion, that feeling of being inside the movie yourself. - peripheral vision. Movies properly framed for IMAX are zoomed further out than a typical movie. Your eyes are focused on the center of the screen, and the edges are only visible with your peripheral vision. So yes, to really get the benefit of 4K you need to view Imax or similar content on it, sitting up close to a big screen. There isn't much of it, but perhaps there will be more in the future.
- pja 14y ago
  The difference is huge even though I can't "see" the individual pixels. Take a lesson from the audio compression people: If you're not doing a blinded comparison, then you will fool yourself when doing this kind of comparison.
  - mason55 14y ago
    It really depends on your definition of "seeing the pixels". There is definitely a difference between the iPad screens however I wouldn't necessarily say that I can "see the pixels" on the original one. It's more that text and images aren't as clear due to a lower pixel density.
    - tibbon 14y ago
      I agree. I never had a problem with my 3S screen until I had my 4S and turned on the 3S a few months later... looks terrible.
pixie_ 14y ago
My Oculus Rift 3 is going to have a 4k resolution, so I hope my TV content does as well.
Gring 14y ago
I very much disagree with the article. I've seen several 4K TVs, and the picture is amazing. From a typical viewing distance, you can easily see the added resolution, compared to 1080p. I would go ever further, and say that 4K is still not yet good enough. It looks great, but still not like reality. My guess is that this would need somewhere between 8K and 16K. Contrast and framerates could also be higher. Sources: my own experience with 4K TVs at IBC 2007 and a recent trip to Japan.
- mjb 14y ago
  > I would go ever further, and say that 4K is still not yet good enough. It looks great, but still not like reality. Are you sure it doesn't look like reality because of a lack of resolution? The "different from reality" that most people are more likely to notice is the lower contrast, lower dynamic range, restricted color gamut, lack of color accuracy and possibly the lower frame rate.
  - Gring 14y ago
    Oh both are needed to improve. But I can discern the issues, and the resolution is not yet good enough, imho. You know, you can get increased contrast in several ways. Switching to plasma (or some other high contrast tech) is one, adding more pixels is another one. I guess the plasma switch is easier in the short run, but in the long run you still need the additional resolution. Cynic people might say that the reason 4K gets promoted now is that the studios want to sell their movies all over again :-)
dreamdu5t 14y ago
The bottleneck isn't TV resolution, it's recording resolution. Ever since HD displays became the norm video capture has been lagging behind.
Cheness 14y ago
This is a worthless argument. It basicly implies that we should NEVER increase the pixel density of TV screens for home use since 50-60" will probably remain as the mainstream market size. Yes there will be a difference. We have all these anti aliasing technologies because we want everything to look as smooth as possible. In the same logic, however fine images look in FHD, it can always be finer. Perception of moving images are not my field of study, but I could pose a very logical reason why higher resolutions are required. Consider a simple frame within a chronological video, at any given resolution. From one frame to another, there will be a refresh rate limit because you cant not change your image by half a pixel. At a higher resolution this refresh rate limit will be raised proportionally to the resolution increase.
taytus 14y ago
Youtube has a small playlist of 4k videos. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5BF9E09ECEC8F88F http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5BF9E09ECEC8F88F
ChuckMcM 14y ago
When I read these I wonder what gripe the author has with the industry. If 4K is 'stupid' as he claims not enough people will buy it and folks will stop making them. But of course public sentiment is rarely well nuanced, by this logic plasma screens are 'stupid' too. My own personal experience is that the 1080p 'blu-ray' experience is better than the 720p DVD experience [1]. Now there are a bunch of changed variables there from decoding of content to display to television implementations to screen technology. So really its not like I could pin it on just the change in pixels. I expect that the collection of things, media, player, and display, in a 4K world will seem better than a 1080p world, and of course big displays will eventually be very common (I really do think that at some point entire walls of video capable display might be the norm with a controller that can segment off parts to various displays) [1] And I tried to watch an extended play VHS cassette the other day and found I just couldn't stand watching it. That was unexpected, I knew it would be bad but wow.
- pja 14y ago
  1080p 'blu-ray' experience is better than the 720p DVD experience 1080p blu-ray is much higher bitrate than DVD. At least some of that difference is in the compression ratios rather than the resolution of the output frames. Also, DVD is 576i or 480i, with frame-pullup to 576p or 480p for 24fps movies, so it's probably not too surprising that you can tell the difference given the combination of the two!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
protomyth 14y ago
"When I reviewed JVC's DLA-X90R, I sure didn't see an increase in resolution. Admittedly, this is far from conclusive, as there's no native 4K content readily available" There are several 4k downloads from people using 4k cameras (RED for example) and youtube (yes, there is a 4k macbreak weekly). They look stunning in person and the 4k screens screens already in production show an amazing difference from 1080p. That said, the weak link is Cable TV bandwidth. They cannot even supply a good HD signal compared to broadcast. To see for yourself, watch the same sporting event on cable and over-the-air. The difference is amazing.

19 points by taytus 14y ago

This article could have been summed up with a chart that has been around for quite some time: http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html As many people have mentioned, total resolve of pixels is not tantamount to proving value of the new medium. It grants flexibility for viewing distances and newer TVs will continue to have better contrast levels, viewing angles, etc.

e03179 14y ago

In a world of capped data consumption, how would companies deliver 4k content over data networks?

xutopia 14y ago
Google Fiber?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
twoodfin 14y ago
One way would be to make a deal with the bandwidth provider to not count the content against any cap. I'd always imagined that if Apple ever gets into the TV business, they'd follow the model they've used with the iPhone and allow the "carriers" like Comcast and Time Warner to sell their customers fat margin "smart TV" plans. At that point, you can treat any content Apple streams the same way Comcast treats their own video-on-demand: unmetered.
- zobzu 14y ago
  I don't like the idea, because it goes against net neutrality of course. It's not, deal with X, customer don't pay for data! nope. It's deal with X, customer pay extra, and he's: 1/ forced to pay extra for the 4K content in that case, else data cap explodes and that'd cost even more 2/ his choice is limited to partners

untog 14y ago

Agreed. Sometimes I wonder whether it's a "no-one needs more than 640KB" statement to say that I can't imagine needing a TV bigger than the one I have now. I forget how big it is, but it's 40-something inches, and feels like a good fit for the size of my living room. Am I ever going to need one that spans an entire wall? It just seems impractical. I do notice problems with the 1080p display of my TV, but that's compression artifacts from cable TV, not the resolution. There's a law of diminishing returns with this stuff. "Double retina" would be considerably less interesting than retina displays were when they first came out, because the difference would be so much less perceptible.

manaskarekar 14y ago
What happens when wall sized "tvs" are high res touchscreens that can be used for multitasking? To not make it sound too far fetched, what about your non touchscreen tv be wall sized. One end, you run one show and listen in using one bluetooth headset, another end your wife/roomie tunes in to another show with their own headset. A third part of the screen's got kids playing video games, and a fourth has weather and news scrolling by. When it's time to party, the 'wall' lights up with psychedelic colors and wavy patterns. When it's time to chill, it just glows with some subdued colors. Press one button and it shows you a status of all your electrical appliances in the house on one part of the screen, the heat, the washing machine status, the ice level in the fridge.. It's not that hard to imagine more interesting uses of technology.
- untog 14y ago
  One end, you run one show and listen in using one bluetooth headset, another end your wife/roomie tunes in to another show with their own headset. I can't see how that's better than what people do now- watch in different rooms. I really dislike the idea of having to wear a bluetooth headset in order to passively watch TV, and everyone having headsets strapped on seems to ruin the point of everyone being in one room. All IMO, of course.
  - manaskarekar 14y ago

zobzu 14y ago

"So if your eye can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on nearly all modern televisions, what's the need for 4K?" sums it up. and, I sort of agree too, although I generally believe it's because of the capture camera and the compression software. When I look at videos recorded by 4K cameras but at 1080p, it does look better than 720p. When I look at 1080p videos recorded by 1080p cameras, I rarely see a difference with the 720p version. Now for the screen size, it depends on the room size, but, when I go to my friend with a 100 inches projector (as in its the final picture size on the wall), that's definitely appreciable :p Also, 1080p stream already makes me hit stupid ISP data caps, 4K, well, uhm, not sure I've got the bandwidth anyway :) See also: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5BF9E09ECEC8F88F http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5BF9E09ECEC8F88F

alternize 14y ago
So if your eye can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on nearly all modern televisions, what's the need for 4K? that's the quote that made me stop reading the rest of the article: I can clearly spot the difference between 720p and 1080p content on my 50" "modern television", sitting on my couch 1.5m away.
- pja 14y ago
  You're sitting close enough to a large screen that you can benefit from 1080p. Indeed, at that distance, I think you might just be able to get some benefit from 4k. Most people do not sit 1.5m from a 50" screen however. (I'm assuming that the calculations in this blog post: http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/ http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/ are correct.)
- zobzu 14y ago
  note that there is also pretty bad 720p content sometimes, but in general i can't make the diff between good 720p and good 1080p content, even at 1.5m from the tv (ive a recent 60 inches tv) (or even at 5cm away for that matter, since anyway i start seeing the physical pixels on 60 inches at around 1 meter) By good 720p content, i generally mean 1080p content reencoded by x264 in high profile mode or the like (so, it could still be better, but its pretty good) Generally i watch at 4m

panzagl 14y ago

The only reason I want 4K to be adopted is to fight the backward slide of monitor/laptop resolution. Couldn't care less for TV.

mattmaroon 14y ago

I'm not sure it works that way. Just because you can't see pixels individually doesn't mean the overall picture quality won't appear better. I'm too lazy to do the math, but I'm guessing on a 25" screen, by his math, I wouldn't be able to see an individual 480p pixel, but I'd still take the Pepsi challenge between that and 720p. And sure, a high contrast 720p screen might look better than a mediocre 1080p, but that's not a fair comparison. It doesn't mean that given equal quality, higher resolution isn't better. The real reason not to buy a 4k TV is that content is non-existent and probably will be for a few more years at least.

belorn 14y ago
Old content is also unlikely to end up being re-encoded to a size above 1080p. Old TV-shows are already having problems getting to 720p, and shows like star trek has to re-render things to get up to 1080, and shows like babylon 5 has yet to make it to the 720p mark.
- ludovicurbain 14y ago
  Actually while this may be right for some very old or very cheap content, movies tend to be stored on much higher resolution material - Either way if 4k is not a problem, 8k will be, so it remains an increasingly important concern.

runaway 14y ago

This article seems to assume that in order for resolution to have an effect on perceived picture quality, you need to be able to discern individual pixels in the image and I haven't been convinced this is the case. Couldn't the image just "look sharper" without the viewer being able to pinpoint the extra pixels? Anecdotally, I can instantly tell the difference between broadcast 720p and a 1080p Bluray on my 50" from 13 feet away, but that might also be due to compression/encoding/etc. Also, I'm not convinced that in the future we won't commonly have 60"+ screens in our homes. If you could afford it, why not have a true home theater? The bigger issue with 4K for the moment is getting actual 4K content.

Alex3917 14y ago
"Couldn't the image just 'look sharper' without the viewer being able to pinpoint the extra pixels?" Yes. The movie Baraka was shot in 8K. When they released the remastered DVD it looks much better for having been shot in 8K first, even though the end product was only at DVD resolution. It's not just a matter of how many pixels you can see, the very fact that there are more pixels in the raw footage means the colors will be more vibrant and accurate is the final product. If nothing else the existence of 4K TVs will cause directors to shoot in 4K, which will make the end product better regardless of how many pixels you can actually see. Also, if you haven't seen Baraka I'd highly recommend it. It's widely considered the best DVD of all time in terms of picture quality, and it's also the one movie that Roger Ebert says we should show aliens to explain the human race.

jlgreco 14y ago

At least such TVs might stand a chance of reversing the unfortunate trend seen in computer monitor resolutions.

rplnt 14y ago

The fact we (consumers) don't need them won't stop us from buying them. It's manufacturers' decision, not ours.

ygra 14y ago
Similar to the trend in computer and laptop monitors to move away from 4:3, I guess.

abruzzi 14y ago

I wonder if you could argue some variant of the nyquist theorem justifies resolution significantly beyond our ability to discern pixels? (Just a random thought, as I know little about visual perception.)

mertd 14y ago
Here is some basic test: http://i.imgur.com/TqRcx.png http://i.imgur.com/TqRcx.png View the image in 100% zoom. One line is dotted with dots one pixel apart. The other line is a straight with no gaps. If you can tell which one is which, your retina is able to pick up the maximum visual frequency displayed by your device.
- abruzzi 14y ago
  but what about with color and motion? I know the TV sees pixels as discrete, but if the encoding of the content is 4:2:2, 4:1:1, or 4:2:0 higher resolution might be noticeable. Of course improving the color sampling would be a better solution.

tibbon 14y ago

I currently have a 37" Westinghouse 1080p screen that I bought in 2008 or so. The TV industry would like to tell me what is wrong with this screen, and for some things they have it right, and some things have it wrong. What I actually want changed: - Significantly deeper darks and better contrast. Playing a dark game or movie is frustrating compared to my Dell u2311 monitor. I really want an OLED display (I think) to fix this once and for all. A black screen should not light the room with backlight leakage. THIS IS NUMBER 1. Everything else is secondary. - Less TV-included blur. This TV came out before the 120/240hz ones, so perhaps that fixes it. In a fast action movie, I want the blur to come from the 24fps film, not from my TV's poor drawing of the pixels on the screen. - I'd like slightly bigger. I bought this to pimp out my 180sq/ft studio apartment. Now my living room alone is 2x that size will a properly setup 5.1 surround system and plenty of room. I could dig 60" or so. - More HDMI inputs. This screen has one. Yet I have about 6 HDMI devices that I'd like to use. Currently, I'm manually swapping this. - Optical audio output. Kinda a weird one, but I've got a 5.1 receiver that doesn't handle HDMI. Otherwise, its fine. I'd like to run HDMI to the TV and have the TV output optical audio 5.1 for the receiver. That's it. I don't need 3d. In two years, I still won't want 3d. It isn't a feature to me! I don't need built in Netflix. I don't need an internet connected TV. I don't need 4K. The main thing above that's actually not shipped AFAIK is OLED. That's it. Just finally ship OLED screens at a decent price!

hospadam 14y ago
FWIW, you can pick up HDMI switchers quite cheaply. If you want to spring for it, remote-operated ones run a bit more expensive ($40 maybe) - but it could be worth it...
- tibbon 14y ago
  Yea, I should just grab one of those. I had one, but it was terrible. It would cause my Xbox 360 to reset and need the HDMI plugged in and out again whenever it switched. Very odd, but I found other people who had the same problem with this cheap one.
prawks 14y ago
Might I point you in the direction of a plasma? Takes care of most of your gripes (I'd have to check on the inputs and optical out), and they're cheaper. Burn-in issues are not a problem anymore, and the newer models work pretty well in well-lit rooms. - Contrast ratios are off the charts for deep blacks. - 600Hz refresh rates - Sizes over 60"

ludovicurbain 14y ago

Yet another article written with total disregard for science. Short article covering the usual bullshit about resolution and why apple retina is wrong, etc. http://wordmunger.com/?p=1348 http://wordmunger.com/?p=1348 For those who didn't know, the eye can see over 10k pixels in an angle of a single degree (the fovea, right where we aim with our guns or bows, of course). That means that in order for content and displays to provide you with the precision that real life offers, one should maybe consider a 40K TV instead. In reality, the brain does a lot to interpolate and most humans aren't trained to make good use of their view anymore (how many of you are sharpshooters or combat pilots mhh?) and thus may not notice a difference at some times, especially when tired or in bad lighting conditions. As I detailed in another comment somewhere, color accuracy is more important (IPS,OLED,..) than resolution because the brain cannot interpolate colors (quite logical indeed, how would you code that ? say that FFFFFF is more FFFA FFFA FFFC than FFFB FFFB FFFB ? good luck with writing anything else than random interpolation) and that means that focus on 4k TV should be secondary to focus on accurate sRGB TVs. It doesn't mean, however that 4K or 40K is useless.

bryanlarsen 14y ago

He uses the metric "if you can't see the individual pixels, then a higher resolution won't help", which is absolute and complete bunk. Improvements are noticeable well before then. Try this experiment: take an iPad 1 and put it far enough away from you so that you can no longer see the individual pixels. For me that's an outstretched arm. Now compare to a retina iPad. The difference is huge even though I can't "see" the individual pixels. That being said, 4K isn't going to do much good with the typical 40 or 50 inch screen. Reports are that 80" is where the improvements really start to become real, though. Not surprising: at 80", the pixels on a 4K screen are about the same size as the pixels on a 40" 1080p screen. That's assuming that you don't sit further back. And you shouldn't. There are reasons that IMAX is a much better experience than a typical theatre, and a reason why the large screen at the theatre is a better experience than the one you have at home. - immersion, that feeling of being inside the movie yourself. - peripheral vision. Movies properly framed for IMAX are zoomed further out than a typical movie. Your eyes are focused on the center of the screen, and the edges are only visible with your peripheral vision. So yes, to really get the benefit of 4K you need to view Imax or similar content on it, sitting up close to a big screen. There isn't much of it, but perhaps there will be more in the future.

pja 14y ago
The difference is huge even though I can't "see" the individual pixels. Take a lesson from the audio compression people: If you're not doing a blinded comparison, then you will fool yourself when doing this kind of comparison.
- mason55 14y ago
  It really depends on your definition of "seeing the pixels". There is definitely a difference between the iPad screens however I wouldn't necessarily say that I can "see the pixels" on the original one. It's more that text and images aren't as clear due to a lower pixel density.
  - tibbon 14y ago
    I agree. I never had a problem with my 3S screen until I had my 4S and turned on the 3S a few months later... looks terrible.

pixie_ 14y ago

My Oculus Rift 3 is going to have a 4k resolution, so I hope my TV content does as well.

Gring 14y ago

I very much disagree with the article. I've seen several 4K TVs, and the picture is amazing. From a typical viewing distance, you can easily see the added resolution, compared to 1080p. I would go ever further, and say that 4K is still not yet good enough. It looks great, but still not like reality. My guess is that this would need somewhere between 8K and 16K. Contrast and framerates could also be higher. Sources: my own experience with 4K TVs at IBC 2007 and a recent trip to Japan.

mjb 14y ago
> I would go ever further, and say that 4K is still not yet good enough. It looks great, but still not like reality. Are you sure it doesn't look like reality because of a lack of resolution? The "different from reality" that most people are more likely to notice is the lower contrast, lower dynamic range, restricted color gamut, lack of color accuracy and possibly the lower frame rate.
- Gring 14y ago
  Oh both are needed to improve. But I can discern the issues, and the resolution is not yet good enough, imho. You know, you can get increased contrast in several ways. Switching to plasma (or some other high contrast tech) is one, adding more pixels is another one. I guess the plasma switch is easier in the short run, but in the long run you still need the additional resolution. Cynic people might say that the reason 4K gets promoted now is that the studios want to sell their movies all over again :-)

dreamdu5t 14y ago

The bottleneck isn't TV resolution, it's recording resolution. Ever since HD displays became the norm video capture has been lagging behind.

Cheness 14y ago

This is a worthless argument. It basicly implies that we should NEVER increase the pixel density of TV screens for home use since 50-60" will probably remain as the mainstream market size. Yes there will be a difference. We have all these anti aliasing technologies because we want everything to look as smooth as possible. In the same logic, however fine images look in FHD, it can always be finer. Perception of moving images are not my field of study, but I could pose a very logical reason why higher resolutions are required. Consider a simple frame within a chronological video, at any given resolution. From one frame to another, there will be a refresh rate limit because you cant not change your image by half a pixel. At a higher resolution this refresh rate limit will be raised proportionally to the resolution increase.

taytus 14y ago

Youtube has a small playlist of 4k videos. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5BF9E09ECEC8F88F http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5BF9E09ECEC8F88F

ChuckMcM 14y ago

When I read these I wonder what gripe the author has with the industry. If 4K is 'stupid' as he claims not enough people will buy it and folks will stop making them. But of course public sentiment is rarely well nuanced, by this logic plasma screens are 'stupid' too. My own personal experience is that the 1080p 'blu-ray' experience is better than the 720p DVD experience [1]. Now there are a bunch of changed variables there from decoding of content to display to television implementations to screen technology. So really its not like I could pin it on just the change in pixels. I expect that the collection of things, media, player, and display, in a 4K world will seem better than a 1080p world, and of course big displays will eventually be very common (I really do think that at some point entire walls of video capable display might be the norm with a controller that can segment off parts to various displays) [1] And I tried to watch an extended play VHS cassette the other day and found I just couldn't stand watching it. That was unexpected, I knew it would be bad but wow.

pja 14y ago
1080p 'blu-ray' experience is better than the 720p DVD experience 1080p blu-ray is much higher bitrate than DVD. At least some of that difference is in the compression ratios rather than the resolution of the output frames. Also, DVD is 576i or 480i, with frame-pullup to 576p or 480p for 24fps movies, so it's probably not too surprising that you can tell the difference given the combination of the two!
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protomyth 14y ago

"When I reviewed JVC's DLA-X90R, I sure didn't see an increase in resolution. Admittedly, this is far from conclusive, as there's no native 4K content readily available" There are several 4k downloads from people using 4k cameras (RED for example) and youtube (yes, there is a 4k macbreak weekly). They look stunning in person and the 4k screens screens already in production show an amazing difference from 1080p. That said, the weak link is Cable TV bandwidth. They cannot even supply a good HD signal compared to broadcast. To see for yourself, watch the same sporting event on cable and over-the-air. The difference is amazing.