• Welcome to The Audio Annex! If you have any trouble logging in or signing up, please contact 'admin - at - theaudioannex.com'. Enjoy!
  • HTTPS (secure web browser connection) has been enabled - just add "https://" to the start of the URL in your address bar, e.g. "https://theaudioannex.com/forum/"
  • Congratulations! If you're seeing this notice, it means you're connected to the new server. Go ahead and post as usual, enjoy!
  • I've just upgraded the forum software to Xenforo 2.0. Please let me know if you have any problems with it. I'm still working on installing styles... coming soon.

Is 4K worth it

MatthewB

MatthewB

Grandmaster Pimp Daddy
Famous
okay so a few months ago I bought a 65" Samsung UHD 4K set. I've really enjoyed the "up conversion" to simulated 4K on 1080p material like Bluray and Vudu HDX material. I've applied HDR Plus to this material as I have no media that takes advantage of true HDR like the new UHD bluray players. With HDR Plus added it made the colors on my screen come alive.

Now today I happened to receive a special hard drive that Samsung made that has 10 UHD movies and has 30 4K documentaries to really showcase the power of your TV. Now first off none of these movies or documentaries has HDR content so I kept my HDR Plus engaged so that the TV could apply HDR processing to the UHD content. I started off watching a couple 4K documentaries and yes it is jaw dropping. Then I watched "Life of Pi" in UHD then compared it to Vudu HDX version in 1080p and I gotta tell you yes the UHD did seem sharper up close but when sitting back 10 feet the difference was hardly noticeable. Yes there was a slight "sharpness" to the UHD compare to the HDX version but not so much of a difference that I don't think you'd notice in a blind A/B test.

Granted I got the hard drive at a fantastic price of 30.00 off of Amazon when two years ago the retail price was 399.00 but for 10 UHD movies and 30 or so 4K documentaries for 30.00 it was worth it. Now granted this hard drive only works on Samsung UHD TV's and it says the audio is is Dolby Digital Plus but since my preamp doesn't have 4K pass thru I had to use an optical cable out to my preamp so the best I'm gonna get is DD 5.1 then have the preamp upgrade the sound to DD EX 7.1

I figure if money is tight you might find buying a well made cheaper 1080p set will do you fine for many years to come as not many people are gonna spend the money on a UHD player than spend 30.00 per UHD movie just to get a slight improvement over 1080p granted I liked what HDR can do way better than what resolution can do as from 10 feet back your really not going to notice a big change unless you get a set bigger than 65"

UHD resolution is very nice when sitting three feet away though. 10 feet back and your not really gonna notice.
 
How many manufacturers are selling well made cheap 1080p sets in sizes over 40"?
 
Matt, that matches my experience in BestBuy; I could see the difference up close, but at a standard viewing distance, nada; yemv (your eyes may vary).
 
You guys crack me up. You said the exact same thing when 1080p was the next thing, and you said it when ATSC was launched. Ha!!!
 
Yeah, I have to seriously disagree with Flint. The only reason the comparison is that close is the processing your set is doing to up-scale the 1080p image. If you put that up-converted, processed image next to a 1080p display playing the same content, it would not even be close.
 
I would also say that I can definitely tell the difference between 1080p streaming content and UHD HDR content and there is a noticeable difference between real HDR and simulated HDR.
 
Flint said:
You guys crack me up. You said the exact same thing when 1080p was the next thing, and you said it when ATSC was launched. Ha!!!
Click to expand...
When I moved beyond my CRT TV, 1080p was already in place. And I don't even know what ATSC is.
 
Last edited:
The difference between 720p and 1080p wasn't much. 4K is a much bigger jump. I have noticed that a 4K TV being fed a regular HD image looks better than earlier HDTVs being fed a SDTV image. Give it a 4K feed (which, for mine, it only sees when streaming) and it REALLY jumps.

I think scalers have improved, as has the content- when HD sets came out there just wasn't much in HD. Now most everything is.
 
Akula said:
I think scalers have improved, as has the content- when HD sets came out there just wasn't much in HD. Now most everything is.
Click to expand...

I agree. The imaging processing tech in my TV even makes fairly compressed 720p content look decent. That is no mean feat on a 75" screen.
 
I'm saying that from 3 feet away yes you can really tell a difference it is very noticeable but at 10 feet back it was harder to tell the difference. 4K is really sharp and clear but it's not that much better the further you move back. I'm sure on a bigger display or projection system then yes the difference would be more profound but on my 65" display showing either 1080p HDX then converted to 4K by the TV or a straight up 2k video brought up to 4 K resolution by the studio using my bought hard drive with the ten 4K movies preloaded and connected directly to the TV yes you spot a big difference at 3 feet away. 10 feet away not so much. Was still neat to watch though. I just watched the two Star Trek movies and it was very crisp and clear. Here's a link to the hard drive to show you all what I'm talking about. Only works on Samsung 4K TV's 2014 and newer.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M3SMI3Y/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
Within 6 years all you will have 4K TV and will be writing on the forum how the 8K TVs are only noticeably different when up close and that only with 8K Uber-HDR content are they any better than your 4K TV.
 
Flint said:
Within 6 years all you will have 4K TV and will be writing on the forum how the 8K TVs are only noticeably different when up close and that only with 8K Uber-HDR content are they any better than your 4K TV.
Click to expand...

I still have my RPTV Mits Diamond series in my basement so your statement that we will all have a 4k tv in 6 years may not be as accurate as a 4k tv picture.
#notanearlyadopter #dontcaretoupgrade #imatightwadsoendthriftcheapskate
 
I still have a 480i television in my basement and a crappy 720p one in my bedroom. I may still have that 480i unit in 6 years.
 
Not that we aren't interested in what TV the waiting area at the laundry-mat has but I don't think Flint's assertion is that all non-4K TVs will suddenly disappear from the face of the earth.
 
It took a while for 480i displays to go away. 720p sets are still around, but not all that common anymore.

It depends largely on what the factories are making. At some point it's cheaper to just use a 4K panel than to spec out a 1080p or 720p panel because the 4K ones are more plentiful.
 
You guys are friggin' hilarious!

A bunch of guys with 480i TVs talking about how 8K isn't any better than 4K because of what they saw at the store? C'mon! This is a riot!
 
But Flint the human eye can only handle so much resolution. Even experts say 4K is far too much for the human eye to distinguish. 8k and 16k is just overkill at this point.
 
That's not true...

We've discussed this many times on this forum, but interpreting color is vastly enhanced by having more pixels to work with. So, if the screen is better than 8:8:8 color depth, but not quite 10:10:10 which true HDR intends to offer, then more pixels can compensate for the lacking capability by mixing two shades of color in a 2x2 grid which represents one pixel in a 2K display. So, even with non-HDR original content, or content which is HDR but the screen itself has pixel color depth limitations, the extra pixels improves perceived color quality AND improves issues related with banding if a decent scalar is used. It is much simpler (and less processing hungry) to improve color and clarity issues with 4x more pixels than with trying to force the better image into a screen where the pixels are just at the limit of human capabilities.

Why do you think the 4K screen on the new Sony cell phone is so much more appealing to look at than the lower resolution phones we have been using? It isn't that the higher resolution alone offers better clarity, it is that the higher resolution allows for an image to be presented to our eyes which is higher resolution than our eyes AND the video processing on the phone can easily take advantage of that to make our eyes see a better image.

This isn't rocket science.

Again, as an analogy, when our laser printers were 300dpi printing a natural looking photograph resulted in a really high contrast looking image. Then when they offered 600dpi laser printers they could print photos with some amount of pleasing gray scale quality. Later the 1,200 dpi laser printers were capable of producing enough perceptible shades of gray to make the photos they printed almost as good as a proper black and white photo. I even had a printer with 1,200 x 2,400 dpi capability which produced stunning gray scale photos. That same principle can be applied, via a decent scalar, to 1080p content being shown on a 4K TV to produce a better image than what a 1080p TV can provide.

So, I laugh at the notion we don't need more resolution. That said, more important than raw resolution is the color depth, or gamut, or HDR, aspects. I have written at length about that, even before 4K TVs were here. With a 4K TV, you can improve the perceived color depth of a 1080p signal quite easily using the techniques black and white laser printers did to get gray scale photos to print.

See, where I am going?

This is not about seeing individual pixels, this is about using multiple pixels to product colors and shadings which one pixel cannot, so replace one larger pixel as would be seen on a 1080p TV with four pixels on a 4K TV, and Bob's your uncle.
 
by the way, I am not saying anyone must buy a new 4K TV if they are serious about their home theater. Heck, I have no plans to buy any TVs at all. I am saying 4K TVs are better than 1080p TVs, if they are of similar quality. This is especially true of they support proper HDR. For some reason I get the impression that most of you saying they are not worth it are saying you don't want to upgrade and thus cannot admit they are better. Well, that is like me saying a BMW M5 or Porche 911 isn't a faster car than my 1998 F150 which is on the verge of total collapse. Just because the old TV is suiting you fine doesn't make the new TVs a waste of money and pointless.
 
I agree Flint with what HDR can do to a color gamut but when sitting back ten feet and not seeing a true difference between 1080p and 4K I don't think there is going to be a difference between 4K and 8k. I read a great analogy about pixels awhile back. Your on a beach and you look down and see sand. Now imagine each grain of sand is one pixel. Now look out at the sand 10 feet away. You still see the sand but you can't tell the individual grains anymore at that distance. Same reasoning applies. Yes HDR and scaling make a huge difference but there comes a limit to how many pixels we cram into an image that our eye won't be able to tell the difference.

Don't get me wrong I love my 4K tv but as I sit back ten feet it gets harder to tell the difference between a bluray image and 4K resolution.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top