DVDs, Blu Rays, 4k, 8k etc. What is your experience

Cafe Society
1

My TV is 4k. It has 4096 × 2160 pixels and I use a mix of blu rays, DVDs and streaming services.

I have a roku, but I don’t know if it can handle 4k or not. I’ve had it for a few years so it may be out of date.

In my experience, an upscaled DVD isn’t much different than a blu ray. Several of my movies have both a blu ray and DVD disk.

But I’m wondering if trying out a new Roku stick that can handle 4k is worth it. My roku seems to be on its last legs.

What are other people’s experiences with DVD vs Blu ray vs 4k?

Is 8k a thing? are there 8k streaming boxes, streams or discs?

My TV is 50" or 55" and it is about 8 feet away

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html

2

Going to this site, where the chart comes from, it says I have to be 2-3 feet from the TV to notice the difference in 4k vs Blu Ray using the calculator.

https://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/

But again, I don’t notice much difference between an upscaled DVD and a Blu Ray at 8 feet.

3

I think you’ve answered your own question. With a 55" set, you’re unlikely to notice the difference between HD and 4K at normal viewing distances. Even less so if it’s 50".

I reconfigured our viewing space to move up from a 50" to a 75", and at that size I can see the difference from about 10 feet, but it can be subtle.

If your Roku is on its last legs, by all means buy 4K when you replace it to be ready if and when you get a larger TV. But don’t expect to see a difference between HD and 4K on a 55" set at 8 feet.

And 8K is just ridiculous in a home setting. To give you an idea, IMAX laser digital is 4K. There are non-IMAX giant screen systems that use, and need, 4K, but unless your screen is 40 feet wide and you sit 20 feet from it, you don’t need 8K.

4

I have an ONN box that I have hooked up as a way to use chromecast. But apparently the ONN box is capable of supporting 4k.

So I signed in with the ONN box and I’ve watched a couple movies in 4k on Max. There actually is a quality difference between this and when I stream the same movies on my roku stick.

5

I have a 77" OLED and at this point standard DVDs are pretty much unwatchable. Once the screen gets that size the resolution just can’t keep up and them image has a consistent blur. Blu-Rays offer a standard picture that I would say is the “satisfactory” image quality.
The only things 4K has really stood out for me is streaming live sports via ROKU or streaming some of the newer films from the past 20 years.
I have maybe a dozen 4K discs for choice movies that really show off the 4K imagery (Furisoa/Fury Road, Dune(s), Blade Runner 2049) but something like the original Blade Runner in 4K I really don’t see any improvement over Blu-Ray.
I did get the LOTR trilogy in 4K and it did not disappoint.

6

I’m not noticed 4k as being much clearer than 1080p. Disclaimer, I don’t use a screen larger than 46".

On a side note, 4k (4096x2160) is twice the resolution than 1080p (2048x1080), not 4 times. They changed the naming convention to list the larger number in order to make it sound like a bigger jump from 1080p to 4k.

7

It depends on how you understand “x times the resolution.” 4K has twice the number of pixels on either the horizontal or vertical dimension as 2K/HD, but it has four times as many pixels as those formats, because area increases as the square of the sides.

8

4K is literally 4 times the resolution of 2K. You can fit 4 2K images in the same space as one 4K.