This very well might be suited to IMHO. Mods, do as you will. But the reason I’m putting it here to start is that I’m unaware of any content at all available for these TVs, and I thought CS could help. Does anybody know what 4K content is available now, or what will be available in the near future?
The guy at Best Buy said they have BluRay players that “upconvert” to 4k, which to me sounds like “BluRays will play, but they won’t look as good as the stuff you see in the stores”. As far as I know, broadcast TV has standardized at 1080p or lower, and won’t be changing for a generation at least. There’s a lot more online content now though, so does anybody know if Netflix or Hulu or HBOgo plan to stream 4k content (and will standard ISP bandwidth support it)? What about cable and satellite providers? Is there even a 4k successor to BluRay in the works?
I gotta say, these look incredible to me. They look far better compared to standard HD than I ever remember HD looking in comparison to standard def. The 4K TVs in stores were like looking through a window into a piece of nature halfway across the world. But I don’t see the point in buying them if there’s no content! And that confuses me. By the time I started seeing HD TVs in stores, there was already content available, broadcast TV had begun the switch to digital, cable and satellite providers had at least several HD channels, and BluRays were sold right alongside them.
Does anybody have one of these TVs? How does it work? What do you watch? Does it use regular HDMI cables or will I have to rewire everything and get a new surround sound receiver to connect everything to? There are tons of these TVs in stores so people must be buying them, which makes me think I’m missing something here.
I have this one and it just uses standard HDMI cables. It only has one slot for ‘4K’ (it’s actually marked 1080p or higher) and if you try to run standard 1080i or lower content into it it pops up a message that basically tells you you can’t do that and won’t even switch over to that input. So far I’ve only got the cable box plugged into it until I get the time to plug everything else into it. So I don’t know why it says it will upscale everything as that hasn’t been my experience. If I have time this evening, maybe I’ll try it again.
OK, after reading a little, it apparently upscales everything. It’s just that the input signal going into that last input has to be 1080p or higher. All-in-all though, I really like it. It would be nice to have a web browser though.
To me that’s just silly, IMHO. Merely the difference between traditional broadcast-standard 480i and 480p can be quite impressive (a TV format that used to be called ED – enhanced definition). Once you get into 720p and 1080p the difference from SD is like night and day. Try watching the exquisitely filmed opening scenes of Life of Pi in 1080p on a decent TV and tell me that it doesn’t look much better than standard def on your grandma’s 1957 Philco. OK, I jest – but compare a 480i SD broadcast quality clip of that content with the 1080p version on the same TV. I haven’t done it for Life of Pi but I have for other content for which I have both DVDs and Blu-ray versions that I can display in 480 interlaced or progressive or 1080p.
Of course a lot depends on the content, and I’m sure the reason 4K looks so great in the store is the particular content they’ve chosen to show it off. To put it in perspective, 4K is among the standards used in digital cinema, for projecting on screens the size of a barn. On a typical home TV, it’s sometimes hard to tell at a glance if you’re watching 720p or 1080p. I have real doubts that there’s a meaningful perceptual difference between 1080p and 4K on anything less than a top quality projection system with an image size measured in [many] feet, not inches. Indeed, sometimes I find the extreme sharpness of certain movies in 1080p to be a bit unnatural on a home TV, losing some of the cinematic appeal. I want to see the action and hear the dialog as the director intended, and I’m not interested in a dermatological examination of the actor’s skin pores. It’s wonderful for scenic type stuff but not necessarily for all movies, where sometimes the subjective experience is saying, essentially, “Hey, you! This resolution was intended for a bigger screen!”
IOW, “sharper” is not always “better”, and there are other advantages to HD, like progressive-scan (except 1080i) and superior color depth.
Right now, they’re producing 4K TVs mostly because they can, not that anyone actually needs 4K or can benefit from it. At average viewing distances from even the largest home screens, you just cannot see any difference. If we were talking about projection onto a 10’ screen, yes. But on a 60" screen viewed from the couch? You’d have to get within 4’ of the screen to see the pixel structure of even a 1080P screen. The studios have moved to 4K for production because on a 30’ wide screen, the difference between 1080 and 4K is obvious.
On the other hand, they are producing a system for better color depth and contrast ratio. But the truth is those standards have not been accepted yet, and anything that exists in any TV currently on the market is not likely to be the one that will be accepted. And the different system will probably involve different hardware, and your new 4K set will not be upgradable. The demo material probably incorporates the expanded color depth, but again, there is no guarantee that the system used for that demo will be the one that will be adopted.
Just to clarify, 4K and UHD are not the same thing but I understand some TV manufacturers like the sound of “4K” and stick with it although their sets are only capable of UHD resolution. For simplicity’s sake, I will use the term 4K for both standards.
No doubt 4K TVs look amazing and will soon be the standard, but the problem right now as you have discovered is the lack of content. If you’re in the USA, Netflix and Amazon offer some content in 4K, but it isn’t “real” 4K like the dedicated demos you see in the stores. 4K requires a huge amount of bandwidth and for content providers to be able to stream it to you over the not-so-robust network they have in the USA, they compress the hell out of it which renders artefacts and other noise you would not get with physical media.
For “true” 4K content, you can wait for 4K Blu-rays which have already been showcased at consumer shows and are supposed to come out at the end of this year. Or, you can buy a 4K media player and download content from their dedicated media stores.
Some people are happy with watching up-scaled 1080p content, but to me, 1080p on a full HD set looks better than it does up-converted on a 4K set. Different manufacturers obviously use different scaling engines so that comes into consideration as well. The best one out there right now is Sony’s advanced algorithm. Panasonic comes a distant second and all the rest are pretty much just for show, IMHO.
As for cables, you’ll want to hook everything up with HDMI 2.0. You can get away with HDMI 1.4 but they won’t be able to handle 60fps.
So, you can wait to get a 4K set until there is more regular content, or be a vanguard and get one now to enjoy a pseudo experience. BTW, the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 is set to be broadcast in 8K in Japan.
Seriously? Aren’t major motion pictures still only filmed in 4K? That was kind of the appeal to me, the idea that I can have my own movie theater at home, where everything looks just as good as the local cinema.
Also, what’s the difference between “Ultra HD” and “4K”? I thought they were different manufacturers’ lingo for the same thing.
I view 4K as the third cycle of electronics companies selling televisions capable of displaying media before content distribution is possible or widespread (3D, 1080p and now 4K).
It used to be that you bought a TV and used it for a decade or more. Now the consumer electronics companies are addicted to getting you to replace your TV every few years. In the last 15 years we have seen a shift from CRT -> Flatscreen -> HighDef -> 3D -> 1080p -> 4K -> ?
Already some great answers here. I would like to add that in addition to an HDMI 2.0 capable box, you will also need a High Speed HDMI cable. No need for a fancy, expensive, ripoff Monster cable or anything, just make sure it says it supports 4K.
Depending on your viewing distance, 4K may not even help. Here is a great article on Rtings explaining the relationship between screen size, viewing distance, and resolution. 4K Content Summary and 4K Resolution Details are especially relevant.
Here are the rest of their articles. Lots of good info.
4K is definitely the Next Big Thing, but it’s not in full swing yet. Getting a 4K TV now will future proof you a bit, but they’re only going to get cheaper.
Yes, movies are typically filmed at 4K, but to get a true movie theater experience, you’ll have to watch it on a huge display to make use of all the pixels. Viewing 4K content on a display less than 65 inches is like using a car to travel 100 yards. You will not get the full benefit on such a small scale.
4K is a movie industry term to signify that projection was at 4096x2160. UHD is a broadcast standard to mean 3840x2160. A few “4K” panels give true 4K resolution, but the majority are UHD, which makes sense for television because the aspect ratio is almost the same as the current 16:9 standard. The aspect ratio for 4K would be great for watching movies without letterboxing but you would probably have to deal with pillarboxes when watching regular TV programs.
And about the Tokyo Olympics being broadcast in 8K; I didn’t mean to make it sound like Japan was going to have regular 8K terrestrial broadcasts by 2020. It’s going to be a one-time technology showcase to do a satellite broadcast of this world-watched event. NHK, the public broadcaster in Japan, starts testing this in 2016.
And one final advice to anyone considering buying a 4K/UHD TV; Wait for the OLEDs to come out and settle in price. This is where the real new advancement in TVs is.
Netflix will be streaming 4K, I believe that is a upgrade option right now, but I don’t know how many offerings they have in 4K, and you got to have the bandwidth to stream it or it will just drop down to HD or lower. And Netflix’s streaming is compressed so even though it may be a 4K stream to the TV, information and detail is lost in the compression. Possibly it would look better streaming in a less compressed 1080p then a heavily compressed 4K stream.
About the cables, the advice I have heard is try the HDMI cables you already have first, yes the old standard HDMI cables are not certified to work at 4K but that does not mean that they can’t.