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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

> It boils down to "no secure boot, no DRM, no Netflix 4k for you".

I really can't say I'm worried about the theoretical inability to stream 4k video to a 5" screen. At that size, 4k is just wasting bandwidth.

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Netflix streams are usually so compressed that there is a noticeable improvement if you use 4K over 1080p. What you're actually comparing is "blurry 4K" to "blurry 1080p".

And that's if they give you 1080p. I cancelled Netflix because they rolled out price hikes and yet even dominant platforms like Chrome on Windows only get blurry 720p which is completely unacceptable these days:

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

You maybe aren't, but manufacturers of that hardware will get negative PR if their Netflix only runs at 480p - so they comply to limitations.

Is it really that hard to think a bit farther than yourself?

I'm not so sure as many will notice it on a device with a 5" screen.

By my calculations, assuming an angular resolution of the eye of about 1 arcminute[0] and holding the device at 300mm, I get about 700 lines as the upper limit of the human eye. [1] So really there should be no benefit for anything above 720p.

There may be other factors relating to scaling and compression that might make higher resolutions on small devices look better, but it's definitely of diminishing returns.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_eye

[1] https://gist.github.com/dpwm/af467dff758d6f0c5810a2cf902bbf8...

You're still approaching this in a completely wrong way. Noone CARES if you can actually see the difference.

It's a marketing issue - "Galaxy S9 can do Netflix in HD and OnePlus can't" news article is something people will change their purchasing behaviour on.

Not to mention other media providers which will fully refuse to allow video streaming to non-DRMed platforms. Don't get hung up on this one example case.

To be fair you're probably right given the way the capitalist system being developed defecates all over its own foundations, but I wonder how Netflix might feel about their trademark being used for marketing purposes in a way that makes it sound like they are deficient in the devices they support.

Don't you need at least 1400 (well, 1399) pixels to distinguish 700 lines? Otherwise they won't be lines anymore.

Or even 1401 if it's black on white. I was being a bit sloppy in my language. Lines was historically a common term for vertical resolution back when it would have been scan lines.

Resolution is historically and otherwise commonly expressed as line pairs, so I assumed you used "line" as shorthand for that.

Thanks for that clarification. Nice to learn something new :)

I was incorrect in my usage of the term.

EDIT: Actually, if I was referring to TV lines then I guess I wasn't wrong, but "lines" is ambiguous to the point of confusion if n lines can mean a vertical resolution of both n and 2n.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_lines

Allowing for variable angular resolution, and holding the device closer than 300mm, seems to allow plenty of room where you _would_ notice the different. Further, 1080p scaled to 720p is probably going to look better than bit-starved 720p, even if the resolution isn't directly a factor.

Depends on the eye.

I just happen to have some objects from my early childhood, and late teens. I now keep them just for an aging reference.

Until about age 20, I could focus right up to roughly an inch away from my eyes. However, at moderate distances, comparable to some phone viewing, there are features on those objects I know well and could resolve then which take a lens now.

Used to judge quality of LCD displays by the ratio of pixel to space between with naked eye into my early 30s.

Hard to do today. And for me specifically, because of those references, I know about how much harder, or if impossible without a lens.

My point here is I believe many younger people will appreciate 720p plus on modern phone displays. I know I would have.

They're more worried about people ripping the content, not pumping 4k streams to your smartphone.

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