Why 4K?

Ardbeg10y posted:

When one of my fiends needs a new tv, they just run to the big shops and buy the biggest / most visible one.

Sounds positively...fiendish - maybe you should reconsider the type of people with whom you associate?

Arun Mehan posted:

I also think the main advantage of these newer 4K TVs is HDR. However, I believe there are two competing technologies so it might be prudent to wait until a standard is agreed upon by the manufacturers. I've never been a big fan of up-converting personally. If the pixels/information isn't there then how can you expect a more realistic picture when the TV "adds" the missing information.

What annoys me is that cable providers here in North America still can't broadcast 1080p but now they are trying to push 4K. Perhaps the codecs have improved but at what cost in terms of picture quality? Blu-ray still is the best way to watch these higher rez videos but the content is quite minimal.

Oh and now Japan is offering 8K!

Arun

Two main advantages of new UHD(4k) HDR TVs are often ignored while obsessing about the increase in resolution: higher colour depth (10bit) and higher frame rates (50/60p instead of 25/30p) meaning smoother motion and more natural looking colours as well as the increase in detail.

Some impressive feedback already coming through from those who have witnessed UHD/4k content on Sky via the new Sky Q boxes...

Every time I have enough cash for  a new 4K tv....the wife wants  a shower fitted or a new oil boiler then a new bathroom...then a holiday.  

Felty99 posted:

Arun Mehan posted:

I also think the main advantage of these newer 4K TVs is HDR. However, I believe there are two competing technologies so it might be prudent to wait until a standard is agreed upon by the manufacturers. I've never been a big fan of up-converting personally. If the pixels/information isn't there then how can you expect a more realistic picture when the TV "adds" the missing information.

What annoys me is that cable providers here in North America still can't broadcast 1080p but now they are trying to push 4K. Perhaps the codecs have improved but at what cost in terms of picture quality? Blu-ray still is the best way to watch these higher rez videos but the content is quite minimal.

Oh and now Japan is offering 8K!

Arun

Two main advantages of new UHD(4k) HDR TVs are often ignored while obsessing about the increase in resolution: higher colour depth (10bit) and higher frame rates (50/60p instead of 25/30p) meaning smoother motion and more natural looking colours as well as the increase in detail.

Some impressive feedback already coming through from those who have witnessed UHD/4k content on Sky via the new Sky Q boxes...

Higher frame rates for movies and dramas are a real negative, in my view. It makes them look like cheap, shot-on-video, Italian soap operas. High frame rates destroy my suspension of reality (hard to articulate - but it makes stuff seem "too real") and I can sense the cameras and crews just out-of-frame. Good for documentaries and sports, though.

Further to my previous post referencing viewing distances and screen resolution, I came across this:

So my 144" from 11ft would definitely benefit from 4D (once programme material is widely available, and projectors become affordable!), wherea my old 50"HD at 8ft wouldn't, and my 32"HD at 7 ft is only partially benefitting from its resolution (but it confirms my eyes seeing a difference)

Someone mentioned refresh rate having doubled to 50/60 with 4k sets, but many sets have been there for a while

Maybe adding a powerline will make these tv's more 'musical' :-)

Innocent Bystander posted:

Further to my previous post referencing viewing distances and screen resolution, I came across this:

So my 144" from 11ft would definitely benefit from 4D (once programme material is widely available, and projectors become affordable!), wherea my old 50"HD at 8ft wouldn't, and my 32"HD at 7 ft is only partially benefitting from its resolution (but it confirms my eyes seeing a difference)

Someone mentioned refresh rate having doubled to 50/60 with 4k sets, but many sets have been there for a while

 

I didn't mean refresh rates of the panels which are now usually 100/120/200Hz but the frame rate of 2160p content. Sky Sports football now films natively in 2160/50p rather than 1080/25i before.

Ardbeg10y posted:

Maybe adding a powerline will make these tv's more 'musical' :-)

Am a bit disgruntled that my new 4K set from Sony has a captive power cable !

Ardbeg10y posted:

I just bought a Loewe Art 40" UHD tv. Reason for buying this UHD tv is that my intention is to use it many, many years. Loewe does seem to do upscaling from 1080p to 4K quite well, so I'm safe for now. In about 3 years 4K content will start to be more mainstream and all recent hdmi standards are also on this TV so any new device can be connected to the TV.

I don't like buying 'disposable' stuff therefore I like Loewe and Naim (my kids broke my old technics cd player within a few minutes, my cd5i is still alive... )

Yeah but 4K has already been around as a consumer product for that long and the content is still thin on the ground. Heck, consumer 8K screens have already hit the shop floors and to what purpose? Some Amazon Prime stuff but a total gimmick because the picture quality of the Fire 4K box is greatly inferior on all content (even streamed from the same source) compaired to a high end 1080p video streamer. And even then, with streaming the sound carrier is generally base level Dolby Digital 5,1. I'd rather have HD audio than 4K yet with every higher res stream on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon prime, the audio stream is the one made to suffer for it - which makes commercial sense since everyone is buying 4K screens and just using the internal speakers - but frustrating for the rest of us.

On the other hand, are there any non 4K sets available these days larger than 32"? I've not seen any here in Japan for a few years so it seems that 4K is more like 3D; you buy it because everything has it, not because you necessarily want it.

However, 4K on a big screen is nice for looking at stills of the family photo album.

feeling_zen posted:

However, 4K on a big screen is nice for looking at stills of the family photo album.

This has actually proven to be the best WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor)! Metal case + foto's.