The author observes that 4K TV sets have come down dramatically in price but 4K content seems to be retreating into a niche. For the latter he cites price increases to his streaming services.
He wonders why this is, muses on cultural history and doesn't come up with a precise answer.
I propose the answer is simple: the prices of TVs and streaming services are unrelated. Hardware tends to trend down in price as we get better at making it.
Content is not the same. Most of the content you watch on streaming services is owned and produced by an oligopoly. Streaming disrupted their lucrative cable model, and they want to get its prices and profits back up to the peak levels of cable. Since they're an oligopoly and they collude with each other (formally or informally), there's not much you can do about it. It will mean 4K is irrelevant for many people who don't want to indulge their latest price hiking tactic.
There is more content than there are eyeballs. And its growing faster than eyeballs can be grown. There are many kinds of content competing for those finite eyeballs.
What happens in such an abnormal environment of over supply will never make any sense.
Instead looking at smartphone screens, it seems to me we're approaching the "CD moment" - in case of screens it's the DPI. Can't see a pixel with a naked eye? Not even when a water droplet forms a lens? If so then packing more pixels doesn't... change anything; in pretty much the same sense that after 44.1 kHz 16 bit it's the human senses that don't perceive any difference.
Seems screen-wise the new frontier is brightness and HDR.
I think CD quality is a good analogy to 4k, 1080p is mp3 128 and 1440p is mp3 320. 1080p isn't quite human level perception, but no one will notice if they aren't trying. 1440p is essentially exactly human perception, and 4k is slightly better.
Personally, since you can't really buy 1440p TVs, makes sense to me to keep 1080p TV if you have one, but buy a 4k if you're getting a new TV.
Good chuckle here and """I'm offended!!!""". I'm not. mp3 128 in video is a crappy 480p stuff - bearable, but not _enjoyable_. 1080p on an appropriate display would kinda work as mp3 v0 - good enough for _almost_ all.
But then again, I have not spent any time with 4k content on an appropriate display. I may stay mistaken until!
Ha, okay mp3 128 is 480p then. Fwiw, I happened to watch an old DVD I had recently (480p), it was so much worse than I remembered. 1080p to 4k is very much not as big a quality jump.
Screen size and resolution are firmly implanted in consumers' minds as THE metrics to rule all metrics.
Just like other flawed metrics like horsepower for cars, megapixels for cameras, "watts" for amplifiers and powered speakers, and so on. Hope I'm wrong!
As much as numbers are universal they seem to be quickly fatiguing the general public... if there isn't a _perceptible_ improvement! Regardless of units; and I like that about non-engineering - normal people: if it isn't perceptibly better then... _whatever, next!_.
(and I certainly didn't by my current camera-device for the megapixels)
and I like that about non-engineering - normal people:
if it isn't perceptibly better then... _whatever, next!_
Well... I like what you are saying, but I think there is additional nuance.
There are a lot of things that are "perceptibly better" that only reveal themselves over time.
Probably the best example would be the benefits of well-designed physical controls in cars, relative to poorly designed touch interfaces. Unless you're really attuned to UI design it's hard to understand how aggravating bad touch interfaces are until you've already bought the car and spent some significant time with them.
Same with things like boots. A poorly made boot is most definitely going to be perceptibly worse over time even if you are are not a "boot nerd" but it is hard to discern this up front.
A display with great HDR support is kind of like that. It's most definitely perceptibly better even if the viewer doesn't care about tech crap. But it's harder sell.
I watch tv on my 720p non-smart tv and it still feels like I'm living in the future. Nobody needs 4k. Hell, nobody needs 720p. A lot of people lives in a luxury bubble.
I’m also perfectly content with my 1025x768 non-smart plasma TV.
I also didn’t notice that my wife had bought Succession and The Outsider on DVD instead of Blu-Ray. The picture quality for TV box-sets on DVD seems to have somehow improved over recent years – or maybe my visual acuity is getting worse as I get older. :(
Once I started running 3D games in 4K I'm never going back to 1080p. I presume this has something to do with anti-aliasing which is crucial for rendered image quality. For movies, however, I can barely see the difference between 4K and FHD. My point being: camera video is one thing and real-time rendered 3D world is something completely different when it comes to 4K.
It feels like the 4K rendering resolution often outpaces the quality of the assets being rendered. Similarly, back in ye olden days, I felt a lot of early 3D games looked better at 320x240 at high framerates than 640x480 at lower framerates.
Obviously that moment has long passed. I'm sure it will be the same for me with 4K vs. 2K vs. 1080p as the technology and production values progress.
Article doesn't mention AI upres tech like DLSS, which could be the future. My experience on 4k monitors is that DLSS is noticably better than 1080, and not much worse than native 4k. Don't know about 8k, but I think 4k is a sweet spot for TVs.
Most TVs already do this upscaling but they smoothen things like skin textures. DLSS is an entirely different thing, right? DLSS only helps with renders that happen on hardware like games,digital art etc. NVidia has this thing called super resolution (that was recently included in VLC too)
You're right, DLSS is specifically for games, I forgot "super resolution" was the name for the Nvidia model that runs in full screen mode, which I've used and is pretty cool, seemingly better than automatic upscaling in TVs.
4k is great and a noticeable improvement for computer work, while I agree with the article about not being so useful for TV screens, unless you go 55-inch or larger.
Source: I own a FullHD 40” TV set and a 43” 4k monitor. I once tried swapping them and watched 4k footage, and quality difference was not significant IMHO.
But you can notice pixels at fullhd on larger screens ofc - noticed them on a 55” and a 65” TV set.
Oh, yeah important caveat for sure. If you go to the store now many TV brands don't even sell mid/high level TVs smaller than 55", unless they are intended for gaming (probably expected to sit closer).
With a large enough TV at a close enough distance, it can make a difference. On my 55" at about 4m distance I can see better detail in 4K but 1080p is still very good. Anything larger and/or closer, and the difference will be a lot more pronounced.
I'm sure I would be slightly happier with a modern 4K TV (as long as I could avoid getting a "smart" one), but I'm still perfectly content with my 720p TV from 2007. My main gripe with it is that it doesn't play nice with some kinds of HDMI input (it doesn't have good support for adjusting overscan), but even that is no more than a minor nuisance.
It's definitely not worth even the ~$500 we paid for this TV to get a new one just at the moment.
Of course, the author’s main point, that 4K isn’t worth the additional fees most providers charge, is demonstrably true. However, there’s another factor the author didn’t mention: a 4K TV also adds high dynamic range (HDR), an improvement that definitely is noticeable regardless of one’s distance from the screen. Even “just” 1080p is pretty snappy when HDR is available. For example — and, yes, I know many HN commenters aren’t into sports, but just for the sake of the example — HDR makes a world of difference when you’re watching, say, a night game and can see a much more realistic range of brightnesses in uniforms, helmets, and even just stadium lighting in general. The same is true for watching 4K/HDR travel videos on YouTube.
He wonders why this is, muses on cultural history and doesn't come up with a precise answer.
I propose the answer is simple: the prices of TVs and streaming services are unrelated. Hardware tends to trend down in price as we get better at making it.
Content is not the same. Most of the content you watch on streaming services is owned and produced by an oligopoly. Streaming disrupted their lucrative cable model, and they want to get its prices and profits back up to the peak levels of cable. Since they're an oligopoly and they collude with each other (formally or informally), there's not much you can do about it. It will mean 4K is irrelevant for many people who don't want to indulge their latest price hiking tactic.