For what content? Video gaming (GPUs) has barely gotten to 4k. Movies? 4k streaming is a joke; better off with 1080 BD. If you care about quality go physical... UHD BD is hard to find and you have to wait and hunt to get them at reasonable prices... And these days there are only a couple UHD BD Player mfg left.
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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It's such a shame that UHD isn't easier to find. Even the ones you can find are poorly mastered half the time. But a good UHD on an OLED is chef's kiss just about the closest you can get to having a 35mm reel/projector at home.
You are absolutely on point with 4k streaming being a joke. Most 4k streams are 8-20 Mbps. A UHD runs at 128 Mbps.
As someone who stupidly spent the last 20 or so years chasing the bleeding edge of TVs and A/V equipment, GOOD.
High end A/V is an absolute shitshow. No matter how much you spend on a TV, receiver, or projector, it will always have some stupid gotcha, terrible software, ad-laden interface, HDMI handshaking issue, HDR color problem, HFR sync problem or CEC fight. Every new standard (HDR10 vs HDR10+, Dolby Vision vs Dolby Vision 2) inherently comes with its own set of problems and issues and its own set of "time to get a new HDMI cable that looks exactly like the old one but works differently, if it works as advertised at all".
I miss the 90s when the answer was "buy big chonky square CRT, plug in with component cables, be happy".
Now you can buy a $15,000 4k VRR/HFR HDR TV, an $8,000 4k VRR/HFR/HDR receiver, and still somehow have them fight with each other all the fucking time and never work.
8K was a solution in search of a problem. Even when I was 20 and still had good eyesight, sitting 6 inches from a 90 inch TV I'm certain the difference between 4k and 8k would be barely noticeable.
Bro I honest to God can't see the difference between 1080 and 4k, you could put them both next to me and I'd struggle to point out which is which. We don't need 8k. Enough is enough
You could probably see the difference on a big enough TV. The kind of thing you only see in home theaters. I'm not sure you could make a big enough TV for 8k to matter.
Like watching a movie in 720p vs 1080p in the notebook, you don't see the difference. Once you try the same in a TV you notice how the 720p looks like shit.
Not just size of TV but quality of TV. Not all 4k panels are the same. Spend lots of money on a kickass OLED TV and you'll see the difference between 1080p and 4k. Assuming both sources are of high quality of course. Comparing a high quality 1080p vs a low quality 4k isn't enough.
Pretty sure my eyes max out at 4K. I can barely tell the difference between 4K and 1080P from my couch.
Try BD vs UHD BD on a modern movie. No Country for Old Men for example. Hugely noticeable.
If you can’t notice it when you’re not comparing side by side it doesn’t count
I never said side by side. The UHD is noticeable without that.
Well the good thing is info storage cost and processing power tends to increase over time, so that’s one side of their argument handled; and things tend to keep progressing technologically over time, so I’d assume 8k would eventually replace 4k, and so on and so on; but the human eye does have a limit to what it can resolve- so at some point 2d images will probably just be as good as we need them to be
8k is going to be for things like billboards, movies, and jumbotron-scale applications.
I am a filmmaker and have shot in 6k+ resolution since 2018. The extra pixels are great for the filmmaking side. Pixel binning when stepping down resolutions allows for better noise, color reproduction, sharpened details, and great for re-framing/cropping. 99% of my clients want their stuff in 1080p still! I barely even feel the urge to jump up to 4k unless the quality of the project somehow justifies it. Images have gotten to a good place. Detail won’t provide much more for human enjoyment. I hope they continue to focus on dynamic range, HDR, color accuracy, motion clarity, efficiency, etc. I won’t say no when we step up to 8k as an industry but computing as a whole is not close yet.
Imagine you're finishing in 8k, so you want to shoot higher resolution to give yourself some options in reframing and cropping? I don't think Red, Arri, or Panavision even makes a cinema camera with a resolution over 8k. I think Arri is still 4k max. You'd pretty much be limited to Blackmagic cameras for 12k production today.
Plus the storage requirements for keeping raw footage in redundancy. Easy enough for a studio, but we're YEARS from 8k being a practical resolution for most filmmakers.
My guess is most of the early consumer 8k content will be really shoddy AI upscaled content that can be rushed to market from film scans.
There is also a 17k blackmagic coming out! The high resolution sensors they use aren’t a standard RGB pixel layout though so it’s not a great direct comparison. Like you said though, there’s no pipeline or good workflow for 8k in the slightest. Will take years if the industry decides to push for it
The same argument goes for audio too.
6K and 8K is great for editing, just like how 96 KHz 32+ bit and above is great for editing. But it's meaningless for watching and listening (especially for audio, you can't hear the difference above 44khz 16 bit). When editing you'll often stack up small artifacts, which can be audible or visible if editing at the final resolution but easy to smooth over if you're editing at higher resolutions.
If we had the 90's economy there would be a bunch of folks looking to get 8k tvs.
The difference between 1080 and 4K is pretty visible, but the difference between 4K and 8K, especially from across a room, is so negligible that it might as well be placebo.
Also the fact that 8K content takes up a fuckload more storage space. So, there's that, too.
solution: 16K 3D TV. buy now.
I only want the curved IMAX version, though
I just want a projector at that point, seems we are destined to bounce around aspect ratios and that might help the black bar situation.
Even 1080p isn't hugely different from 4k in many cases. Yeah, you can probably notice it, but both are fantastic resolutions. I've had a 4k TV for years, and I can count the number of times I've actually watched 4k content on it on two hands because it generally isn't worth the storage space or extra cost.
I find that it really depends on the content on the size of the display.
The larger the display, the more you'd benefit from having a higher resolution.
For instance, a good quality 1080p stream vs a highly compressed 4k stream probably won't look much different. But a "raw" 4k stream looks incredible... think of the demos you see in stores showing off 4k TVs... that quality is noticeable.
Put the same content on a 50"+ screen, and you'll see the difference.
When I had Netflix, watching in 4k was great, but to me, having HDR is "better".
On a computer monitor, there's a case for high-resolution displays because they allow you to fit more on the screen without making the content look blurry. But on a TV, 4k + HDR is pretty much peak viewing for most people.
That's not to say that if you create content, 8k is useless. It can be really handy when cropping or re-framing if needed, assuming the desired output is less than 8k.
think of the demos you see in stores showing off 4k TVs… that quality is noticeable.
Because stores use a high quality feed and force you to stand withing 4ft of the display. There is a whole science to how Best Buy manipulates TV sales. They will not let you adjust TV picture settings on lower margin TVs.
Because stores use a high quality feed
Yes, obviously, and consumers who are buying such high-end displays should do their best to provide the highest quality source to play back on those displays.
Distance from the display is important, too. On a small TV, you'll be close to it, but resolution won't matter as much.
But from across the room, you want a higher resolution display up to a certain point, or else you'll see large pixels, and that looks terrible.
Personally, going with a 4k TV was a big leap, but the addition of HDR and an OLED display (for black blacks) had the most impact.
think of the demos you see in stores showing off 4k TVs… that quality is noticeable.
Sure. But remember that much of the time, the content is tuned for what the display is good at, which won't necessarily reflect what you want to watch on it (i.e. they're often bright colors with frequent color changes, whereas many movies are dark with many slow parts). At least at the start, many 4k TVs had a worse picture than higher end 1080p TVs, and that's before HDR was really a thing.
So yeah, it highly depends on the content. As you mentioned, in many cases, 1080p HDR will be better than 4k non-HDR. Obviously 4k HDR on a good display is better than 1080p HDR on a good display, but the difference is much less than many people claim it to be, especially at a typical TV viewing distance (in our case, 10-15 ft/3-5m).
computer monitor
I find the sweet spot to be 1440p. 4k is nicer, but the improvement over 1440p is much less than 1440p vs 1080p. My desktop monitor is a 27" 1440p monitor w/ approx 109 ppi, and my work laptop is a Macbook Pro w/ 3024x1964 resolution w/ approx 254 ppi, more than double. And honestly, they're comparable. Text and whatnot is certainly sharper on the nicer display, but there are certainly diminishing returns.
That said, if I were to watch movies frequently on my computer, I'd prefer a larger 4k monitor so 1080p content upscales better. But for games and normal computer stuff, 1440p is plenty.
Given that I don't find a ton of value in 4k over 1080p, 8k will be even more underwhelming.
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Another possibility for why consumers don't seem to care about 8k is the common practice by content owners and streaming services charging more for access to 4k over 1080p.
Normalizing that practice invites the consumer to more closely scrutinize the probable cost of something better than 4k compared to the probable return.
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