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Comment by eterm | Hacker News Reader

What bothers me about 4k is the switching of terms.

4k makes it sound like it has 4 times the vertical resolution of 1080p, but for pure marketing reasons, suddenly instead of the 4k referring to vertical resolution as 1080 did, it refers to horizontal resolution, so is really only twice the horizontal resolution of the 1920 that 1080p had. Overall that's 4 times the pixels because of squaring, but still!

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We really ought to insist on using more correct terms like UHD (Ultra High Definition = 3840×2160 pixels) and only referring to "true" 4K cinema (4096 × 2160 pixels) content/equipment as 4K.

Like "HD" (1080) vs "HD Ready" (720) I think we've already lost that battle, and yet again it's "buyer beware" where people will get sold inferior goods as if they're the good stuff by having the same or similar terms for different quality. (Although in this case it's not as large a difference as HD vs HD ready was)

Ive never seen "HD Ready" refer to 720. As I remember it, HD Ready meant that the TV was HD (720 or 1080), but it didnt include an ATSC or QAM tuner. It was more like a monitor than a true TV.

The distinction I've seen with 1080p is calling it True or Full HD.

Maybe this is specific per country, but in the Netherlands 'HD Ready' always referred to 720 instead of 1080.

Actually, it referred to 768, as that was the number of lines that the cheap panels had. Which meant that even to display 720p content you had to scale it.

There really needs to be an international standard for these terms. What's wrong with listing a display by its capabilities? 1920x1080 60hz 24bpp. That way we can get rid of all this HD, HD Ready, UHD, 4K nonsense. It's marketing speak only meant to confuse you into buying something you wouldn't have if you were better informed.

Listing by megapixels would make me happy. The number of diagonal inches has been the least helpful indicator of screen quality over the last decade, and the WUXGA nonsense is too hard to keep track of as well. Adopting a MP number would do more to get us high res screens than any other change.

We can do better, how about having marketing be based on

a) Number of pixels in scientific notation

b) Alternatively log base 10 of number of pixels

They do that for digital camera displays and it’s super confusing.

That was meant to be in jest - though i would probably chuckle if I saw a marketing banner that said "All new Monitors now with 5.02 x 10^7 pixels"

If you used megapixels it wouldn't be any worse than camera sensors. I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been done as an alternative to VGA, SVGA, DVGA, WSVGA, XGA, WXGA, SXGA, WSXGA, UXGA, WUXHA, WQSXGA, WXUSXGA, qHD, HD, FHD, QHD, UHD, FUHD, etc. (several resolutions omitted)

A number of megapixels and an aspect ratio would give all the information you need, while boiling it down to easily comparable numbers.

General consumers often care more about physical size than actual resolution. Why else would 1920x1080 pixel computer monitors be sold in sizes up to 27 inches? What explains the proliferation of 15 inch, 1366x768 laptops, or even 17 inch 'laptops' of any resolution?

It's not that the consumers cared more about physical size, it's that they literally didn't know any better.

Definitely, I was just talking in terms of resolution. Megapixels and aspect ratio gives you the same information as width and height (in pixels).

1.05 megapixels vs 2.07 megapixels is a much more obvious comparison to most consumers than 1366x768 vs 1920x1080. One has twice as many pixels as the other.

Switching to that system could even make a few more people realize that a small number of pixels with a huge screen size isn't a great idea. IMO most consumers just see "1366x768" and think "Oh those are big numbers it must be fine."

Eh, you got me. Digital camera disaply resolution is reported like that, worse, they don’t count pixels but “dots” (i.e. subpixels).

Example: the Olympus E-M10 has a 1,037,000 dots display, which means 345,600 pixels, which means 720x480. But all the marketing material (and review websites) reports “1 million dots display”.

Further aggravating: "4k" isn't "four thousand (and 96 in binary pocket change)", it's the marketing-by-association of noting that "true 4k" at 4096 is "close enough" as the consequence of taking a 4096x2160 display and feeding it 16:9 content, then trimming the resulting side black bars.

More detail at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution

2160p just doesn't roll off the tongue! People will get used to it - they've managed to deal with the nebulous ideas of "SD" and "HD" and "Full HD," which I would guess are fairly well used if not the dominant terms.

I'm more worried that there's going to be a 4K/"full 4K" thing because of the aspect ratios!

But mainly I'm just pumped to have a 4K monitor. As soon as they're as good as the mid-range Dell Ultrasharps in terms of color and options I'll be making the switch.

The term 4k has been around much longer than 1080p, etc. It is a term from computer graphics and the movie industry which means 4096x2160 (17:9 ratio) or 4096x3072 (4:3 ratio). I have helped build, test, and used "4k" tiled wall displays for scientific visualization. It is cool that you can now just buy a single monitor for the same purpose.

Considering most HD refers to 1080i or 720p, even more so here in Australia, I don't mind this so much. Remember, anywhere really, that broadcast or cable TV is hardly ever 1080p.

With this step hopefully killing off interlacing, I support any even somewhat dishonest marketing exercise to be justified.

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