Is there any point in 4K?

How close do you sit.. I know when I play a game I sit a lot closer (cross-legged right in front of the 55" OLED!) than when sitting on the sofa watching a film. If this is the same for you I completely understand if you are able tell the difference between 1080p upscaled and 4k.

Monitor and 3m away from a 65 inch tv
 
Monitor and 3m away from a 65 inch tv

Bigger screen. So many factors to consider: could be for example your TV is great at 4k native, but less good at upscaling 1080p to 4k making it more obviously worse. Could be you have better than 20/20 vision (with/without glasses). Could even be my pupil diffraction limit + visual acuity spreadsheet is slightly wrong :)
 
I have seen the guides that tell me what I can and cannot see then I let my peepers take over and they tell the guides they are in the right area, but not bang on and can be wrong. My eyes I trust.

Interestingly sometimes you need to point out to people what they are looking for. I go for detail that the pixels can form and how well I discern those details, it is what I am keyed in for. Others just want to watch a film and don't care if it is SD or PAL or whatever. They are not looking for it.

Seen some cracking 4k on smaller monitors and larger distance than I sit with my 55. The brain is also part of the eye and that is often forgotten.

Fair enough, if your eyes are happy with the picture then that's the test that really matters! So many factors involved that the guides about viewing distance vs. resolution are exactly that, guides not hard and fast rules!
 
Bigger screen. So many factors to consider: could be for example your TV is great at 4k native, but less good at upscaling 1080p to 4k making it more obviously worse. Could be you have better than 20/20 vision (with/without glasses). Could even be my pupil diffraction limit + visual acuity spreadsheet is slightly wrong :)

Hahaha somehow I think the spreadsheet might be a bit off.. and the 1080p scaler isn’t the greatest !
 
Fair enough, if your eyes are happy with the picture then that's the test that really matters! So many factors involved that the guides about viewing distance vs. resolution are exactly that, guides not hard and fast rules!
Ultimately the viewer is to decide. After seeing 8k demo, I am waiting to see which direction that will eventually go (not no obviously but in a few years).
 
Most times even on a 55 at sofa distance I can spot the difference between HD and 4K straight away - especially with Itunes movies and Youtube - but on some content not so much.

With ATV 4K / UHD on a release like Aquaman if you can't appreciate the 4K there is a serious TV/eyeball issue going on.

With gaming HDR does make a big difference but even with a 1080Ti I often choose 1080p - the difference when playing is not so obvious except the GPU is doing a quarter of the work so Ultra is possible and there is greater bit depth with 1080/60 than 4K/60 on HDMI 2.0

In any case I doubt if you can buy a decent non 4K TV. With Prime and Itunes movies the price is the same, but for Netflix you can make the choice to save cash by sticking to HD.
 
I certainly don't agree that OLED wipes the floor with LCD. A very good LCD (Samsung QLED) is in many ways the match of OLED. Maybe not quite such deep blacks - but very close. For peak brightness and HDR though, LCD kicks OLED into touch. Each has their pros/cons, but modern QLED/OLED sets are now very close in quality.
 
Age old argument of OLED vs anything else. I saw enough of a difference to go OLED and I still have not seen anything in the competition that is close to tempting me back and with a well mastered 4k title, it really shows. For me it is not about peak brightness anything can deliver and never was, it is the blacks, always important for the contrast I like.

Still, personal choice. Be a boring world if we all liked the same.
 
I certainly don't agree that OLED wipes the floor with LCD. A very good LCD (Samsung QLED) is in many ways the match of OLED. Maybe not quite such deep blacks - but very close. For peak brightness and HDR though, LCD kicks OLED into touch. Each has their pros/cons, but modern QLED/OLED sets are now very close in quality.
The most recent QLEDS seem to be an exception apparently. Two years ago they certainly didn't compare.
 
Anyway going back to my original post about the relevance of 4K. I'm not saying higher resolutions are unnecessary, I just feel that it shouldn't be a priority. Samsung is advertising 8K when barely anything is even filmed in 8K. If they could come up with something like a 480hz panel with better response times then surely that would be better. It's very sad how they show off these super high resolution panels with slow motion moving images. Having become used to a plasma I can clearly see the image blurring (yes I know this is down to sample and hold technology) when there is fast motion but to me it is just unacceptable. This is why I have to watch a lot of stuff with "black frame insertion" switched on which effectively makes my OLED dimmer. So in my eyes there seems to be a lot of denial about the true state of the current technology.
 
I think 4k should be the minimum, waving my magic wand. I would like to think 8K takes over and 4k becomes the HD and SD is finally turned off. I don't see it taking off in the UK over the aerial, just IP. There is a big disconnect between the 4k panels and the ISP and the studios at the moment.

4K done well is great and I love it. The ability and capabilities of the industry is improving (most of the bits you don't see). 8k is being used to source 4k masters I am reading in some industry snippets. Live is certainly very good and very noticeable.
 
SD will never go away, there are millions of hours of SD content that many people still want to watch again.
SD on 8k is almost unwatcheable, but can be just about tolerated on 4k.

Personally I don't think anyone would be able to tell the difference between 4k and 8k with a good 8k source from more than a couple of meters away, as the visual resolution of the eye makes even 4k overkill in most environments.
 
Like I said, if I had a magic wand. There is too much tied up in it and sadly it is squatting on resources that need to be freed up but that take money to swap it out. Disjointed at the moment and I think SD a format that needs to die to push the larger formats.

I take what my eye tells me as gospell and more than happy with the reports back from the mk1 ;)
 
Just to add my two penneth, i recently bough a panasonic 4k UHD setup (UB9000 BR & 65FZ952B TV) because we need a bigger tv not because it was 4k and all i can say is that i'm totally underwhelmed by this compared to my old 46" Samsung 1080p set (46ES8000). If im watching the footie tend to watch the Samsung in the front room and more vibrant and reasonably OK with movement. Just don't see a massive difference in the quality and don't get me started on atmos and surround sound via Yamaha A1070 amp as even considering trading this in for a soundbar!!!
 
Cancelled my sky UHD as it was no different from 1080
 
Sky isn't a good indicator as I'm guessing the bitrate is pretty low.
 
Don't worry, the next con is well under way. Welcome to 8K.
Looking forward to buying a 200 inch screen so I can sit 30cm away 😁
 
Sky UHD subscription makes sense for the Netflix 4k cost saving. It pays itself and pays a few quid back.
 

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