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Comment by syspec | Hacker News Reader

I'm still holding onto my 60" 1080p TV.

I feel that the amount of people who care about the jump to 4K (for watching movies / shows) is pretty small.

The amount that care about the jump from 4K to 8k will be a fraction of that.

I had a 1080p plasma up until last year and decided it was time to upgrade. For me it was less about the resolution and more about the picture quality and blacks. Plasma did pretty good for the time it was around but on the OLED the 1080p content looks amazing and so does 4k. For the first few months I was just blown away about how much better it was even on sub-par content. I do agree that few people will upgrade simply because 8 > 4 unless they need a new TV. These newer technologies have better HDR color depth/contrast/brightness and latency which will be the features worth upgrading for rather than resolution.

Same here, plasma for 10 years and now an OLED. The difference is night and day. I don't notice much difference between 1080p and 4K content because of the distance to the screen but HDR is amazing, especially for gaming.

I'd guess your 1080p plasma also weighed 50+ pounds and consumed a few hundred watts of electricity vs. new TVs that are super light and much more energy efficient. So that's another big reason to consider upgrading from a plasma (or at least one less reason to hang on to old tech).

I've still got one of the last (NeoPDP) plasma displays. While it uses a bit more energy than OLED it's not 'a few hundred watts', but tens of watts. Also, since TV's have become cheaper a new TV will probably be a bigger one which uses more energy so there's less energy saving. Manufacturing a new TV will be a bigger energy sink than just using the old one a bit longer.

You're right about power usage but why would i care how much my TV weighs? I don't regularly have to carry it and if you're moving once every few years it doesn't matter is a tv is 100 lbs or 10 lbs.

Yes, for specifics (I still run a 50" Plasma "in the garage, " which was recently replaced with a 55" OLED 4K):

50" Plasma: 290-430 watts, depending on image; refresh rate is SLOW & obvious; I only run this in the wintertime, for "space heating"

55" OLED: 90 watts, twice as bright; colors are INCREDIBLE, almost as good as my ICR10 monitor that costs 3x per pixel;

The 55" OLED has the same pixel density as a 30" Cinema Display, but the pixels are brighter and take up more of the area (i.e. there isn't as much "support network" / black) and is obviously 4K.

8k will be helpful primarily for significantly larger TVs (77"+) depending on the view distance. These higher resolutions will be really valuable for computer monitors so we can have high DPI screens available across all sizes.

I'm really looking forward to a hopefully affordable 6k 32" monitor from Dell this year!

Really though?

I'm on a 4K 27" monitor right now and I can see no edges or pixelation. I'm not really sure what higher resolution would do.

Honestly for the work I'm doing I'd struggle to justify a move to OLED (this is IPS), but at least there'd be a reason. I don't get what the point of ever higher resolutions is when I can't tell the difference.

Sure, someone will say "you can't see the difference but I can", but at that resolution I'm very skeptical.

If you have a 5k 27 inch screen directly next to it you will see a difference, but it’s not huge and I agree that 4k at 27 inches is sufficient from a pixel density perspective. But the scaling is not so nice, 5k at 27 inches allows integer scaling and getting a reasonable size out of it. Same for 6k at 32 inches or more for even bigger screens. I am waiting for the 6k dell mentioned above as well.

I think a good reference is Apple's "retina" brand [1]. For a 27" monitor to be (basic) retina it must be 5K. But yes, there are diminishing returns and resolution isn't everything (I've tried terrible 4K monitors...).

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_display

The point of higher resolutions is bigger screens with the same quality.

I was able to snag a 8k 55" tv for USD ~1000 a couple of years ago and it's absolutely glorious as a monitor. Basically it functions as 4 4k monitors in one unified canvas.

When I sit down to work, most of my field of view is screen real-estate. I can have several pages of code vertically surrounded by handfuls of terminal windows and reference material, and it's all perfectly crisp since it's 8K on only 55".

I think we are basically brainwashed when it comes to monitors. Monitors grow a few pixels in resolution and a few inches in size every decade or so, and I've heard the argument repeated - "I got a 21" (22", 24", 27") screen, it's nice but that's as big as I want to go". Somehow when a new few inches larger becomes the norm in the market, everyone thinks that's OK too.

I think most knowledge workers would get hooked on 55" within a few hours of using it. I know I was.

Unfortunately this TV seems to have been a bit of an anomaly. The market today is filled with worse products costing more money. :(

LG was able to make this and ship it everywhere in the world for sub-1000 usd years ago. The technology exists and is not expensive, it just needs to be set free!

>8k will be helpful primarily for significantly larger TVs (77"+) depending on the view distance.

Even for THX recommendation for 40 degree FOV, 4K is above that threshold. And most people would prefer 30 FOV. There are cases where people prefer 50 FOV, then 4K would be at its limit. But even if we were to include 20/10 vision, 50 FOV viewing usage, 5K or 6K would still be enough with room to spare.

We really should have pushed for 6K. 5K would likely get pushed back from marketing because 1K increase isn't enough. While 6K has double the pixel of 4K. ( Great for marketing ). Enough to satisfy even the most demanding, high end users.

The 4Ks I've upgraded to are much lighter, much brighter, much much clearer, and make every second of entertainment that much better. They also use less power and cost a fraction of what my nice 1080p was like 10 years ago. I gift the old models to those that can't afford it. I'm excited for you to join the 4K club whenever you feel ready to make the leap!

I find the difference between 1080 and 4K quite visible. I don't think I can see much of a difference between 4K and 8K, though.

I recently pulled my 2008 46" Samsung LCD from my storage unit and started using it again. It lasted a few weeks until the capacitors gave out. Then I dug around some forums (literally "badcaps.net") located the right values, rode my bike to the local hackerspace, dug through some bins to get the parts I needed, swapped them out at home, and now its going strong again.

I could have bought a 4k TV for $300 but it would be full of surveillance hardware, and I hate that. This TV doesn't even have a network connection, it's just a big monitor. Works great!

8k seems amusing, but definitely seems like a point of diminishing returns.

Great that you fixed your old TV!!

About those new TVs. You always have a choice to not connect your smart TV with the internet and connect something you trust more with internet access to watch what you want to watch. At least that is what we do at our home. I never see or even update the software on the TV itself. What I like about the new 4K OLED TV we have is not the 4K but the HDR, deep blacks and the colors. It was a definite very big upgrade over our old 2010 HD TV.

Yeah I have always liked OLED tech for the blacks and colors. It's good to hear that you haven't had to connect your TV to the internet. I have some vague memories of news stories about TVs connecting to nearby open networks and stuff like that, so I don't like the idea of network hardware in my TV at all. Maybe if I get a well known brand it would be okay. Something to think about for when my TV dies. Just before moving I had been playing Xbox on a monitor I found by the side of the road, and somehow my 2008 TV feels like it has WAY better blacks and colors than that old monitor, so I feel like I've upgraded anyway!

4K for me is about gaming. The Series X can do 4k @120 fps (although most games do not play at this framerate). For me that's the main reason to go for a 4k TV.

My biggest problem nowadays is not display hardware but content.

The experience of acquiring content is terrible - I have to browse many various storefronts which only have subsets of the content I might want and then pay money to "buy" media knowing full well it's ephemeral and will eventually get lost when the company shuts down, discontinues their service or closes my account for an alleged violation of ToS.

Back in the day I used to pirate and watch tons of stuff as a result, but ironically despite my disposable income rising to a level where I don't need to pirate I pretty much gave up on watching movies at home.

At the beginning, piracy was the only way to access content. It was also about building a large library without having to wait for content to become available. Some people saw the Blu-ray era as a relic of the past because they didn't want to deal with physical media.

During the HTPC era (with programs like XBMC, Kodi, and later Plex), it was possible to download the top 100 movies automatically and watch them on your TV. Some major media companies noticed this and released their own streaming platforms, which improved the user experience.

Now, all of that has changed. Most major media companies have their own stores, and the content is fragmented. You have to think and search before you can play anything because you don't know who owns the rights to a particular piece of content (this also varies depending on your location). Some content can even disappear from a platform. The user experience is broken again.

Today, piracy is not about access to content, but about the user experience. Having one store is better than many.

Anecdotally, I recently switched from streaming 4k to physical 1080p content. It looks just as sharp, and has more presence, and is much more captivating for me.

> It looks just as sharp, and has more presence

on an lg oled display i instantly notice when something is 1080p vs 4k.

i suggest watching an old movie in 4k. for example die hard in 4k is absolutely incredible compared with the DVD release.

But DVD is not 1080p?

dvd is 1080p

No it isn't.

The highest resolution supported by standards compliant DVD is 720x480 at 30hz, or 720x576 for 25hz/PAL.

yup, you are correct

Compression artifacts (common in even 4k streaming) are way more than the lower res from 1080p blurays. Compare e.g. smoky scenes.

It's less about the resolution and more about the screen itself. I bought a new 720p TV for my grandmother a few weeks ago, and the colors and contrast make for a better experience than her old 1080p TV (my only criteria for the new TV was 'sort-of-hackable' so I could simplify it for her).

Don't underestimate the power of marketing.

That being said, when I walk into a TV store, I'm impressed by the quality of the demo videos. What I'd like to see though, is how these new TV compare to my old one for the content I watch (basically, YouTube videos, and occasionally streaming some movie).

There's actually a lot of processing done to the picture in the store and typically in the out-of-the-box settings, that's pretty annoying and overdone when watching regular content. During my first weeks with a 4K OLED TV I've disabled almost all processing possible, so the image is more neutral and life-like. I don't really notice much difference between 1080p and 4K with that settings.

One thing that I found to be a huge improvement though is Dolby Vision.

There's a lot of not very technical consumers who buy based on these kind of numbers. The way the camera pixel count wars used to be. It's an easy fallacy to fall into if you don't understand the tech, to "want the most for my money".

People are also not considering that unless you get a 4K feed (which is not that common or costs a lot more) 1080p will look blurry or not as a good on a 4K screen of that size

> 4K feed (which is not that common or costs a lot more)

from my experience 4K and 1080p costs the same. not only that, but i haven't really seen popular youtube uploads or movie streams in 1080p for a good chunk of years now.

To get 4K content on Netflix, Paramount+, Hulu, you need to pay more for the premium subscription. On Prime Video and Disney+, the 4K content is usually limited to only the original content. You can get 4K movie/TV show rentals (pay on demand) that will cost more. Digital linear TV services like YouTube TV or fuboTV don't provide 4K feeds for live content most of the time (not including on demand). News streams are still 1080p and sports streams are occasionally in 4K but it's not very often. I didn't know more people are uploading 4K content on YouTube though.

damn, you’re right. thanks for the thorough comment! i do pay more for 4k for netflix and co.

my mistake was thinking about renting titles on prime and rakuten, where i get 4k(uhd) and 1080p at the same price.

This is something I don't get - why aren't four 4k pixels in square used to render 1 pixel from 1080p signal? Unless you mean that input device does have 4k connection to TV, but content being played is 1080p, thus some interpolation happens (but still I would expect modern hardware should make it hard to spot, with good photo editing you don't lose quality dramatically when resizing).

I'm not an expert on this, but I don't think the dimensions and aspect ratio would work with that? I do mean that the input device has a 4K connection to the TV. Like you mentioned, interpolation (upsampling) needs to happen. It depends on the algorithms or hardware chips used, but it's been pretty noticeable for me. I was trying to imply that it might be worth keeping a 1080p display/TV depending on what type of content you want to watch. In my opinion, it doesn't make sense to get a 4K display if all the content you watch is in 1080p.

1080p content is 1920x1080. 4K content is 3840x2160. You just literally double-up the pixel size in each dimension; there's no need for interpolation or anything else that will cause blurring.

I've been working on an FPGA project that involves 1080p into a 4K monitor over HDMI and it looks very sharp to me, even on high contrast edges with a pretty critical eye.

This definitely shouldn't be the case. 1080p can be cleanly upscaled simply by displaying every pixel 4 times. If you have blurry results your display or output device is doing wonky stuff.

I got a 4k OLED last year after using a 30" 1080p LCD for about a decade. Honestly I could take or leave the 4K, but HDR is nice!

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