
Why 4K TVs are stupid - taytus
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57366319-221/why-4k-tvs-are-stupid/
======
tibbon
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!

~~~
prawks
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"

~~~
tibbon
Hmm, that just might be what I'm looking for. I haven't really entertained a
plasma since they initially launched and at the time weren't all that amazing.

------
bryanlarsen
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.

~~~
aw3c2
If you cannot differentiate the smallest visible unit of the screen, the
pixels, then what do you actually differentiate? Surely nothing related to
screen resolution/density.

~~~
mason55
I think there needs to be some clarification as to what "seeing the pixels"
means. If you lean in close enough you can actually see the individual RGB
components. Further back and you can see the separation between pixels still.
Even further back and you can make out the difference between something that's
aliased and anti-aliased.

When someone says you can "see the pixels" I think of the second level there,
where you can see gaps between the individual pixels. However upping the
resolution can help decrease the jagginess in things like non-anti-aliased
text.

~~~
pja
This is not about being able to see the gaps between the pixels. Anti-aliased
vs not anti-aliased I'll grant you, because the whole point of anti-aliasing
is to approximate what the eye would see if it really was averaging a real
image over the solid angle taken up by each individual pixel.

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runaway
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
"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.

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zobzu
"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>

~~~
alternize
_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
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/> are correct.)

------
Gring
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
> 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
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 :-)

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deltaqueue
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>

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.

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ChuckMcM
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
_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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panzagl
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.

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untog
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
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
_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
That's just an example. With directional sound, you can have your sound zones.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_sound>

And that's just one use. There are tons of things that can be done with a wall
sized "tv."

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mattmaroon
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
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
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.

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e03179
In a world of capped data consumption, how would companies deliver 4k content
over data networks?

~~~
twoodfin
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
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

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Cheness
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.

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protomyth
"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.

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abruzzi
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
Here is some basic test: <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
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.

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taytus
Youtube has a small playlist of 4k videos.

<http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5BF9E09ECEC8F88F>

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

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

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

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

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dreamdu5t
The bottleneck isn't TV resolution, it's recording resolution. Ever since HD
displays became the norm video capture has been lagging behind.

------
ludovicurbain
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>

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.

