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Comment by klausa | Hacker News Reader

What's with the recent trend of putting matte coatings on the most "premium" devices?

This TV does it, the Steam Deck's done it, and it almost always looks terrible (the nano-etching on recent MBPs is _fine_; but still makes the text noticeably fuzzier).

The market for top-end TVs is the people who _really_ care about image quality, why would you jeopardize that with a coating that makes it _worse_?

I'm fine with this being an option for those who want it, but associating "top-end" with matte is bizarre to me. I regularly regret buying the OG 512 GB Steam Deck because the matte coating on it is just so bad.

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Two reasons: Wider viewing angles and light reflection rejection.

Not every TV is used by two people in a room devoid of lighting. Friends will come over, other things will be watched. Some people are very bothered when the ceiling lighting or sunlight from the window "alters" the image.

Enthusiasts are an interesting bunch. Some features loved by others are grave flaws for others. One can't make everyone happy, so matte screens are an acceptable compromise for it, AFAIK.

My old Bravia is matte-ish without "Viewing angle extending layer", which reduces contrast apparently. I'm happy with what I have. It shows moving images, syncs with sound, and is big enough.

> Not every TV is used by two people in a room devoid of lighting. Friends will come over, other things will be watched. Some people are very bothered when the ceiling lighting or sunlight from the window "alters" the image.

> Enthusiasts are an interesting bunch. Some features loved by others are grave flaws for others. One can't make everyone happy, so matte screens are an acceptable compromise for it, AFAIK.

You know what, fair enough. I don't mind these; but I do _hate_ the blurriness that the matte coatings introduce.

Now, I wouldn't call my wife a TV tech enthusiast, but I do know that she's bothered by the reflections occasionally when I don't mind, and I know with her eyesight she straight up physically cannot notice the extra blurriness that the coatings bring.

Once the screen is 10ft away I doubt any human alive could perceive a sharpness difference from a nano texture.

I’d now be actually curious to do a Pepsi-style challenge to test this on myself.

I give myself a ~low 40% chance of being able to tell within a minute when watching a TV show/movie _without subtitles_, maybe 60%ish with subtitles, and maybe low 80% if I was playing a game with any amount of text rendered on the screen.

You don't really need to do a challenge: https://i.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance-televis...

If you own a 50" 2160p ("4K") TV and are sitting more than 1.8m / 6ft away, you're already at the edge of being able to perceive any resolution increase over 1080p. For a 65" TV, its about 2.5m / 8ft.

So no, at typical viewing distance you are very unlikely to notice a sharpness decrease.

Tangentially related, but this is also why the 4K chase on this console generation is so stupid. The vast, vast majority of people will be viewing their TV way beyond the recommended viewing distance, and thus will only be resolving to 1080p with their eyes. We should be chasing better-looking effects and 120 FPS.

I’m at 65” and less than 2m away, and I absolutely can tell when text is not rendered at native resolution, which is why I’m also confident I’d be able to notice the matte coating too.

(I am also probably like three standard deviations _more annoyed_ by the blurriness than an average person, I’m more than willing to believe that an average person wouldn’t be able to tell, or at least wouldn’t be bothered by it anywhere close to the degree that I am.)

Well yeah, at that distance you are supposed to notice the difference in resolution, and presumably the difference between matte and glossy. Most living room situations aren't like that though.

Btw, that page in general is great if you want to optimize your viewing experience: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-r... :)

I'm also someone who cares enough about fidelity to do 10-point tuning on my displays and speakers, so I get your frustration!

Are you sure you're just not comparing crappy screens (what you experience as "matte") with better ones ?

Yes, unless you wanna go down the line of "well actually Apple screens are not that good".

This is a semi-sponsored video from a scammy company that makes glossy displays, so you might want to take it with a grain of salt, but it talks about a real effect with (most, again, Apple's etching is _much_ better, but still _noticeable to me_) matte coatings: https://youtu.be/3mTV1TOblbA?t=124

There are people taking super-zoomed-in photos of their monitors all over reddit too, so you can judge how much haze/blurriness they add to the image:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ultrawidemasterrace/comments/18sb63... https://www.reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/1jf2u54/the_di...

Good lord, <2m from a 65" screen? You'll get square eyes!

Some of that info is now considered outdated.

In addition there's a lot more benefits your missing. 4K will be streamed at a higher overall bitrate with smaller artifacts and noise.

In addition HDR and 10 bit / 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 color can be huge differences in image quality on the right TV and source.

For the first example you could theoretically take a 4K signal and downscale to 1080P before display and theoretically get a lot of the benefits (assuming the person is far from their TV as you say). That being said a lot of people do sit closer and have larger TVs. And many people also have better vision than average.

Jumping from 4K to 8K I would say the differences are much less important given the massive file size increase. Many nicer cameras even only shoot in around "6K". Shooting higher resolution does allow you to do a bit of cropping and recomposing in post however which is nice. And of course things like stabilisation.

4K on phones though I think is truly dumb. Just wasting heat and battery life

The bitrate thing is certainly true, but at the bitrates that Netflix streams I'd almost rather have the same bitrate for a 1080P stream and then use my Shield to upscale it.

As for the color thing, 4:4:4 has very little material released in that format. And there's a reason we chose to compress 4:2:2 instead of 2:2:4, humans are just much less sensitive to color than to brightness. That's why HDR is so nice, the extra brightness steps.

People can certainly have better vision than 20/20 (which is taken as standard, although it is above average already).

And yup, 8K is unnecessary aside from maybe cinema front row seats. And 4K phones are indeed stupid haha. Interestingly enough, for example the Deck is plenty sharp at 720P which I personally would have never expected until owning it.

If only it were that simple - unfortunately "4K" also comes with higher bitrates (if you fall back to 1080P it will just max out at a much lower bitrate)

Most content that is not 10 bit will also be 4:2:0 - you are right that 4:4:4 is overkill but 4:2:0 does sorta suck.

It's really about the overall the package

You're confusing "benefits of playing 4K-mastered media" and "benefits of having more pixels on the panel"; which is what the original point was about.

> I do _hate_ the blurriness that the matte coatings introduce

Doesn't apply in this case, does it? Can you really see it watching media on a large TV at the usual viewing distances?

I haven't noticed blurriness really.

I have noticed that the darkest "black level" is less black (despite it being OLED screen) than on glossy screens in light conditions. That difference disappears in darker environment.

And then my wife can't tell the difference between 576p and 2160p, so I guess everyone is different.

I explicitly bought a high-end matte TV (Samsungs S95D) because of the coating - I like having light in my living room which means a lot of reflections from windows and other lights.

Matte coating pretty much solved all my issues with glare and reflections and I don't have to sit in darkness while watching things anymore, it's great. The tradeoffs are negligible and appear in situations where other TVs would be unwatchable. It's been a bigger QoL upgrade than actually switching to OLED.

Is it fully matte, like on a desktop monitor, or is it some "reflection reduction" semi-gloss/semi-matter whatever magical coating?

I can't really say - there is an obvious film on it. The light/reflections turn into a very diffuse, barely visible lighter spot.

Yeah we have one of these in our kitchen diner and it's excellent.

Because matte vs glossy is a separate discussion from cheap vs premium. The former is about marching the expected viewing conditions and the latter is about how advanced it tries to be about doing so. If you want the most optimal possible viewing experience you need to combine multiple aspects like that, not just buy a premium device.

> Because matte vs glossy is a separate discussion from cheap vs premium.

My whole complaint is that it increasingly isn’t!

If I wanted a “premium” variant of Steam Deck, I had no choice to opt out of matte coating.

If I want the best TV panel possible from Sony, it only comes with the matte coating.

I’m fine with the option for matte being there for folks who like this! I just want to be able to opt-out of it, if I still want the “best” among other axes.

This echoes the tug-of-war customers are having over controller (and Steam Deck) size haha. People with big hands think the Steam Deck and PS5 controller are perfect and the Switch and PS4 controller suck. People with small hands feel the exact opposite.

The option is either clever engineering or choice. Apple chose the engineering route with their nanotexture screen coatings. Microsoft has done it with the XSX controller, which has clever cut-outs so people with small hands (kids) can hold it in a different but still-comfortable way. Hopefully TV OEMS figure out a way to ape Apple.

About half the time in the last few years Sony's flagship OLED and Mini LED options have been glossy. When they haven't, they've been semi-glossy. Short of every model being duplicated, 50% of the time is all one can hope for.

I just don’t want to be reminded how I look like while using these devices, it’s really distracting to me.

If I wanted to know what I look like, I use a mirror.

I don't think "matte" needs to be blurry ?

Proper screen should be neither super glossy or super matte. From what I remember screens designed for color correction and whatnot are usually a sort of in between.

Could also be that at the TV size the outer screen itself is glass (which is naturally "glossy" but also much clearer and lower abbe value than any plastic) so a coating to reduce reflections might be ideal.

I doubt they're talking about the kind of crappy "matte" screen you might associate with an old ass Thinkpad laptop or something.

I haven't had any problems with the Deck's matte coating, but if it really bothers you, you can replace the screen, they're $40, and the Deck was designed to be repairable.

That's the wrong way around. Matte is better for performance but gloss attract consumers so Apple puts "Pro" and glossy front in the same product. Actual pro displays are always matte, a bit like how actual pro cameras always have non-clicking shutter buttons but reviewers point that out as a con.

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