- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
A new study published in Nature by University of Cambridge researchers just dropped a pixelated bomb on the entire Ultra-HD market, but as anyone with myopia can tell you, if you take your glasses off, even SD still looks pretty good :)
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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.
Sony Black Trinitron was peak TV.
Sure but, hear me out, imagine having most of your project sourcecode on the screen at the same time without having to line-wrap.
And then there’s the dev that still insists on limiting lines to 80 chars & you have all that blank space to the side & have to scroll forever per file, sigh….
4k is perfectly fine for like 99% of people.
This is why I still use 768p as my preferred resolution, despite having displays that can go much higher. I hate that all TVs now are trying to go as big as possible, when it’s just artificially inflating the price for no real benefit. I also hate that modern displays aren’t as dynamic as what CRTs were. CRTs can handle pretty much any resolution you throw at them but modern TVs and monitors freak out if you don’t use an exact resolution, causing them to either have input lag because the display has to upscale the image or a potential performance hit if the display forces the connected device to handle the upscaling.
Kind of a tangent, but properly encoded 1080p video with a decent bitrate actually looks pretty damn good.
A big problem is that we’ve gotten so used to streaming services delivering visual slop, like YouTube’s 1080p option which is basically just upscaled 720p and can even look as bad as 480p.
Yeah I’d way rather have higher bitrate 1080 than 4k. Seeing striping in big dark or light spots on the screen is infuriating
For most streaming? Yeah.
Give me a good 4k Blu-ray though. High bitrate 4k
I mean yeah I’ll take higher quality. I’d just rather have less lossy compression than higher resolution
i’d rather have proper 4k.
A big problem is that we’ve gotten so used to streaming services delivering visual slop, like YouTube’s 1080p option which is basically just upscaled 720p and can even look as bad as 480p.
YouTube is locking the good bitrates behind the premium paywall and even as a premium users you don’t get to select a high bitrate when the source video was low res.
That’s why videos should be upscaled before upload to force YouTube into offering high bitrate options at all. A good upscaler produces better results than simply stretching low-res videos.
HEVC is damn efficient. I don’t even bother with HD because a 4K HDR encode around 5-10GB looks really good and streams well for my remote users.
I stream YouTube at 360p. Really don’t need much for that kind of video.
360p is awful, 720p is the sweet spot IMO.
I can pretty confidently say that 4k is noticeable if you’re sitting close to a big tv. I don’t know that 8k would ever really be noticeable, unless the screen is strapped to your face, a la VR. For most cases, 1080p is fine, and there are other factors that start to matter way more than resolution after HD. Bit-rate, compression type, dynamic range, etc.
So, a 55-inch TV, which is pretty much the smallest 4k TV you could get when they were new, has benefits over 1080p at a distance of 7.5 feet… how far away do people watch their TVs from? Am I weird?
And at the size of computer monitors, for the distance they are from your face, they would always have full benefit on this chart. And even working into 8k a decent amount.
And that’s only for people with typical vision, for people with above-average acuity, the benefits would start further away.
But yeah, for VR for sure, since having an 8k screen there would directly determine how far away a 4k flat screen can be properly re-created. If your headset is only 4k, a 4k flat screen in VR is only worth it when it takes up most of your field of view. That’s how I have mine set up, but I would imagine most people would prefer it to be half the size or twice the distance away, or a combination.
So 8k screens in VR will be very relevant for augmented reality, since performance costs there are pretty low anyway. And still convey benefits if you are running actual VR games at half the physical panel resolution due to performance demand being too high otherwise. You get some relatively free upscaling then. Won’t look as good as native 8k, but benefits a bit anyway.
There is also fixed and dynamic foveated rendering to think about, with an 8k screen, even running only 10% of it at that resolution and 20% at 4k, 30% at 1080p, and the remaining 40% at 540p, even with the overhead of so many foveation steps, you’ll get a notable reduction in performance cost. Fixed foveated would likely need to lean higher towards bigger percentages of higher res, but has the performance advantage of not having to move around at all from frame to frame. Can benefit from more pre-planning and optimization.
I’ve got a LCD 55" TV and a 14" laptop. Ok the couch, the TV screen looks to me about as big as the laptop screen on my belly/lap, and I’ve got perfect vision; on the laptop I can clearly see the difference between 4k and FULL HD, on the TV, not so much.
I think TV screens aren’t as good as PC ones, but also the TVs’ image processors turn the 1080p files into better images than what computers do.
Hmm, I suppose quality of TV might matter. Not to mention actually going through the settings and making sure it isn’t doing anything to process the signal. And also not streaming compressed crap to it. I do visit other peoples houses sometimes and definitely wouldn’t know they were using a 4k screen to watch what they are watching.
Seriously, articles like this are just clickbait.
They also ignore all sorts of usecases.
Like for a desktop monitor, 4k is extremely noticeable vs even 1440P or 1080P/2k
Unless you’re sitting very far away, the sharpness of text and therefore amount of readable information you can fit on the screen changes dramatically.
Complete bullshit articles. The same thing happened when 720p became 1080p. So many echos of “oh you won’t see the difference unless the screen is huge”… like no, you can see the difference on a tiny screen.
We’ll have these same bullshit arguments when 8k becomes the standard, and for every large upgrade from there.
The article was about TVs, not computer monitors. Most people don’t sit nearly as close to a TV as they do a monitor.
Oh absolutely, but even TVs are used in different contexts.
Like the thing about text applies to console games, applies to menus, applies to certain types of high detail media etc.
Good to know that pretty much anything looks fine on my TV, at typical viewing distances.
How many feet away is a computer monitor?
Or a 2-4 person home theater distance that has good fov fill?
There’s a giant TV at my gym that is mounted right in front of some of the equipment, so my face is inches away. It must have some insane resolution because everything is still as sharp as a standard LCD panel.
The counterpoint is that if you’re sitting that close to a big TV, it’s going to fill your field of view to an uncomfortable degree.
4k and higher is for small screens close up (desktop monitor), or very large screens in dedicated home theater spaces. The kind that would only fit in a McMansion, anyway.
This discussion drives me crazy because it’s the EXACT SAME FUCKING discussion that happened when 1080p screens became available in the 00s. So many people argued “oh it depends how far away you sit but you don’t really notice it” and “oh if the screen size is small your eyes can’t tell”
NO monthafucka if you have halfway decent eyesight there’s NO WAY you won’t notice a huge change in quality from 720p to 1080p even on a 6” screen. 1080 to 4k is noticeable on almost ANY size screen (we all just skip 1440p, don’t we?) and as the size of the screen goes up and up, it just gets more and more noticeable.
Edit: Forgot to mention, a big reason I heard people making this argument so much in the ‘00s is because I was in TV and computer sales.
I cannot tell 4K because my TV is 50’’ and I sit three meters away
I don’t remember that discussion at all… I remember people being super excited for 1080p, but annoyed that there was no content for it because DVDs were still 480p and TV content was similar. Blurays were 1080p, but weren’t really a thing until the late 00s.
We’ve had 4k for a decade, and there’s still not much content for it. When there is, the difference w/ 1080p isn’t so significant as to be worth the cost, as it’s usually just upscaled 1080 content. 4k makes a lot of sense for a monitor that’s 30" or larger, but for a TV where you’re 10-15 feet away it doesn’t make nearly as much sense.
I forgot to mention, I sold TVs when 1080p was popularized and HD-DVD and Blu Ray came out hahaha. That’s mostly where I heard the “you can’t tell the difference between 720p and 1080” BS. There was plenty of 1080p stuff by the end of the ‘00s and people were still making that argument.
Ah, ok. I’m mostly going based on personal experience from the time.
Diminishing returns.
480 to 720 was massive, and 720 to 1080 was big too. 1080 to 4K is definitely not always noticeable and 8K is well beyond worth the file size.
Agreed with 8k file size for now, but 1080p to 4k is still hugely noticeable to me.
Given how much time I spend actually looking at the screen while the show/movie is on, it might as well be in ca. 2000 RealVideo 160x120 resolution.
I’m supposed to be watching Haunted Hotel right now. It’s on, but here we are…
If you read RTINGS before buying a TV and setting it up in your room, you already knew this. Screen size and distance to TV are important for determining what resolution you actually need.
Most people sit way too far away from their 4K TV.
People that have their tiny displays on the opposite side of a room is so funny to me. It’s a similar reaction I have to giant-guy tiny-car.
I remember one time I saw a maybe 27 inch computer monitor on the wall above a fireplace and it was just like… I need to leave before I say something.
That’s how we watched TV in the CRT era
Something like a dozen years ago I visited my father and sat 20+ feet away from his 27" television struggling to make things out. It was comically small for the room. I asked if he was interested in buying a newer and larger one. He agreed and we made the change to a 43". A modest increase and it helped quite a bit, though an even larger model would’ve been my choice. This satisfactorily infuriated his wife who then had to learn a new remote. Change is hard for some.
As someone who grew up with a 20-some inch CRT in a console format (think TV-as-furniture that sits on the floor and not a TV that sits on furniture), and then eventually got a 19" hand me down for bedroom use… yeah, the commonality of enormous flat panels still makes me shake my head in wonder sometimes.
That said, when my parents’ 27" CRT died about 10 years ago, we gave them our old 55" plasma. It was hilariously oversized for the space. But it was free (to them) and we made it work.
Michael Scott vibes.
“Brand New Plasma TV. Fits right into the wall.”
Like literally exactly this omg
Or they buy an 80" TV to hang on the wall of their camper van.
The difference between 1080p and 2160p is night and day to me.
It depends on how far away you sit. But streaming has taken over everything and even a little compression ruins the perceived image quality of a higher-DPI display.
with all the menus now days I mainly want sharp text
This is highly dependent on screen size and viewing distance.
On a computer screen or a phone screen? No, it’s not really noticeable. Hell, on some phone screen sizes/distances, you might not even be able to tell 720p vs 1080p.
On a 120"+ projector screen? Yes, it is definitely noticeable.
I have a small home theater and picked up a refurbished 4K LED projector (Epson 3200) coming from an old 1080DLP (Viewsonic 8200) - massive difference!
Now play 1080p content on it to compare
I had a 6" 720p phone. Couldn’t tell the resolution, but could definitely tell the longer battery life
But that could easily be due to the quality of the projector rather than the resolution. Everyone in here saying they notice differences is completely missing the point. You’d need to compare against the exact same panel type, manufacturer, model year, etc with the exact same manufacturing processes in order to come to this conclusion yourself.
I get what you are saying, however at 120", less than 20 feet away, you can literally see the individual pixels (especially at 1080). It absolutely does make a difference under the right circumstances, that is empirically true. You can test it yourself if you are skeptical but I’m telling you for a fact that on resolution alone there is a noticeable difference for anyone who has 20/20 vision on a big screen closer up.
agreed. I have a similar setup and our projectors are not even doing “true” 4k, it’s pixel shifting. so the real thing would be even more noticeable.
Pixel shifting is for when it upscales, isn’t it? If you have a 4k source, you’ll get a 4k picture from what I read about this series.
That said, 1080p upscaled definitely still looks better compared to the old projector (though the newer one is also brighter, which also helps).
My desktop monitor is a 54" 4K TV that I sit about 3’ from. It’s somewhat difficult for me to pick out individual pixels even when I lean in. My living room TV is 70" 4K, but I sit 15’ away from it. There’s no way I could tell the difference in 4K and 1080 from pixel density alone. I can however tell the difference between 4K and 1080 streams because of how shitty low bitrates look. 4K streams crush all of the dark colors and leave you with these nasty banding effects that I don’t see as often on lower resolution streams.
4K streams crush all of the dark colors and leave you with these nasty banding effects that I don’t see as often on lower resolution streams.
Reason #123798 why I watch archived copies of blu-rays (that were legally purchased completely legally) via Jellyfin/Plex.
