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Comment by ytdht | Hacker News Reader

If you plan to watch most of your movies in 4K, you probably should wait about 10 years before buying a new TV... the movie industry doesn't adapt very quickly and cable compresses everything so much that you can't even get true 1080 even if they say that they have HD

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Really, for video, 1080p is absolutely fine, if the video is not over-compressed. Even around 20mbps, 4k won't look better than 1080p, for full-motion full-color video content.

Typical movie theaters use 4k today, and 2k (very close to 1080p) less than 10 years ago. For their huge screens. Of course the bitrate is very high, "up to 250 Mbit/s" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinema#Technology_and_...)

For small text and fine lines such as used in a close-up computer monitor, 4k+ can be very beneficial. But for video, it's marketing, and a costly waste.

One good example is that most Blu-ray movie discs are just DVDs converted to take more space (quality was not increased)

Which ones? I can't remember ever coming across one.

I have rented lots of Blu-rays and never found one that was upscaled from DVD to 1080p. Can you provide more details please since I am having a hard time believing that's true.

I did a quick Google search and found this article [1] ... I recall seeing a website that was listing Blu-ray titles with true-1080p but I can't find it right now. Cable does something similar by highly compressing HD content.

1. http://conversation.which.co.uk/technology/many-blu-rays-no-...

Why wait? Sure, some content will be overly compressed, but there is great 4K content available now:

1) Most digital photos are 4K - a 4K TV is ideal for viewing them. 2) Youtube videos 3) This video 4) Other sources of 4K video that are coming online right now.

Sure, you might not get 100% of the benefit of your 4K TV for ten years, but that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.

In my case I had a terrible old TV, so upgrading was a no-brainer.

FWIW: The new Ultra HD Blu-Ray Disc format which supports 4K, HDR, and Dolby Atmos/DTS:X will launch soon (if you can still tolerate an optical medium). Watch for the new "Ultra HD Premium" logo on compatible devices.

Most of the content I watch from Netflix is 4K these days.

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