Technology

4k is way better than 1080p, it's not even a question. You can see that shit from a mile away. 8k is only better if your TV is comically large.

I didn’t get why HD tv was relevant at all. I really did not understand that for a couple years.

Then I got glasses.

I suspect 4k matters for screens of a certain size or if you sit really close, but most of us don’t so it doesn’t matter.

Anecdotally at average viewing distances on my 55" TV I can't really tell a difference. If I had an enormous TV maybe I would be able to tell. 1080 > 2160 is for sure not the leap 720 > 1080, or 480 > 720 was in the average environment that's for sure.

It's all about the baseline.

Cinematic, Blu Ray bitrate 1080p vs 4K is not too dramatic.

Compressed streams though? Or worse production quality? 4K raises the baseline dramatically. It's much harder to stream bad-looking 4K than it is 1080p, especially since '4K' usually implies certain codecs/standards.

You know what would sell like hot cakes? A dumb TV with Dolby Vision support. I went down the rabbit hole of finding a large HDR monitor and adapters to trick end devices to output player-led Dolby Vision to a HDR monitors, because I don't need my TV to have a complete OS with streaming services and adverts integrated.

In the end I couldn't find anything that didn't have drawbacks. It's something that could easily exist but there are no manufacturers bold enough to implement it.

Streaming tech moves so fast, I want to add it to my TV through hardware like a fire stick, not to become dependent on the TV manufacturer putting out updates until it's 'Out-of-support'.

I went with a TV and disabled as much of the junk as I could with a service remote and just never connected it to the internet, but jumping through these hoops seems so silly.

If you’re sitting the average 2.5 meters away from a 44-inch set, a simple Quad HD (QHD) display already packs more detail than your eye can possibly distinguish. The scientists made it crystal clear: once your setup hits that threshold, any further increase in pixel count, like moving from 4K to an 8K model of the same size and distance, hits the law of diminishing returns because your eye simply can't detect the added detail. 

I commend them on their study of human eye "pixels-per-degree" perception resolution limit, but there are some caveats to the article title and their findings.

First of all, nobody recommends a 44-inch TV for 2.5 metres, I watch from the same distance and I think the minimum recommended 4k TV size for that distance was 55 inches.

Second, I'm not sure many QHD TVs are being offered, market mostly offers 4k or 1080p TVs, QHDs would be a small percentage.

And QHDs are already pretty noticable quality jump over 1080p, I've noticed on my gaming rig. So basically if you do the jump from 1080p to 4K, and watch 4k quality content, from the right distance - most people are absolutely gonna notice that quality difference.

For 8Ks I don't know, you probably do get into diminishing returns there unless you have a wall-sized TV or watch it from very close.

But yeah, clickbaity titled article, mostly.

Really depends on the size of the screen, the viewing distance, and your age/eye condition. For more people 720 or 1080 is just fine. With 4k, you will get some better detail on the fabric on clothes and environments, but not a huge difference.

8k is gonna be a huge waste and will fail.

simply incorrect. in some circumstances sure 1080p is sufficient, but if the tv is big, close, or both. then 4k is a definite and noticeable improvement.

4k looks sharper as long as the actual content is real 4k, even from afar.

The question for me isn't whether or not there's a difference that I might be able to see if I were paying attention to the picture quality, it's whether the video quality is sufficiently bad to distract me from the content. And only hypercompressed macroblocked-to-hell-and-back ancient MPEG1 files or multiply-recopied VHS tapes from the Dark Ages are ever that bad for me. In general, I'm perfectly happy with 480p. Of course, I might just have a higher-than-average immunity to bad video. (Similarly, I can spot tearing if I'm looking for it, but I do have to be looking for it.)

Honestly after using the steam deck (800p) I'm starting to wonder if res matters that much. Like I can definitely see the difference, but it's not that big a deal? All I feel like I got out of my 4k monitor is lower frame rates.

Highly depends on screen size and viewing distance, but nothing reasonable for a normal home probably ever needs more than 8k for a high end setup, and 4K for most cases.

Contrast ratio/HDR and per-pixel backlighting type technology is where the real magic is happening.

i suspect screen size would make the difference. you won't notice 4K or 8K on small screens.

"No duh" -Most humans, since ever