I think we're hitting the point with video resolution that music CDs hit with audio, where improvements in fidelity are largely outside the range of human perception. It's one of the reasons the music DVDs and SACDs never really caught on.
4k at 65" 65ppi
8k at 65 135ppi
This is well within what someone with good vision can see at for example 6-8 feet
For a personal reference I could tell the difference in clarity at 8 ft between a 1080p 24" monitor and a 28"4k monitor. That is 157 vs 92 ppi on a screen a fraction of the size 5 minutes ago.
I must imagine people making such claims have poor eyesight or are using optimum viewing charts as a proxy for distances wherein human vision was sufficiently acute instead of looking for themselves.
For reference someone with good vision ought to be able to distinguish up to about 115ppi at 8ft according to this source.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-highest-resolution-humans-...
The source seems valid despite the mixed bag that is quora. Especially since I and many others can verify this in 10 seconds.
Edit: I wrote 43 instead of 34 by accident. 65" and 1080p = 34ppi
Try it with a high resolution video you've transcoded locally (so you're not dealing with streaming quality differences) at various resolutions. The human visual system is a lot less precise with video than it is with still images. A paused DVD frame often looks like a blocky, terrible mess, but it's perfectly fine when displayed as video.
I won't argue that if you pick your content carefully, and know exactly what to look for, you can tell the difference. But, practically speaking, most people watching a decently encoded video won't see a huge difference from 1080p to 4k at typical screen sizes and viewing distances, and will see even less difference going to 8k.
I honestly can't tell you if I'm watching 720p or 1080p content on our TV without looking at the source file info.
You're confusing "What can be perceived" with "What actually matters." I'd argue 4k was a bit of a stretch to sell new TVs, and 8k is going to be even more so.
We've hit, as someone else said, the 44kHz/16bit point of video. Encoding quality and bitrate matter a bit, just like mastering does with audio, but we're past the point of diminishing returns at this point.
We aren't talking about near the limits of human perception we are capable of perceiving 115ppi at a typical 8 ft viewing distance. 8K for a 65" screen is about the limit. 4k is itself about 1/4 the resolution we can perceive and 1080p is 1/16. You are saying that people can't on average distinguish between 1/4 the resolution we can perceive and 1/16th.
The link I posted was the informed opinion of an electrical engineer that worked in display tech. If people really can't tell the difference between 4k and 1080p shouldn't there be scientific research by this point to show this? You can't because there isn't.
You are like a color blind person exclaiming there is no difference between green and red! There is.
I just measured our living room. We have a 43" (4k) TV at about 16' viewing distance. Just about every chart I can find on TV resolution vs viewing distance (assuming 20/20 vision) indicates that I'm in the "720p is fine" region, on the border of "You really won't notice a difference from 480p." Which is consistent with my experience. I can see the difference between 720/1080/4k if I'm right on top of the TV, but once I'm back where I actually watch from, anything I notice is more a factor of bitrate than resolution - I can certainly tell the difference between a low bitrate MPEG2 source and a high bitrate h.264 source, but that has nothing to do with the resolution.
I don't really have the motivation tonight to pull out my trig tables (I'm about to watch a movie instead, of what resolution I honestly don't know), but... at least for my case, yes, I'm saying I can't tell the difference. And it's entirely possible my glasses need updating (quite likely, honestly), but the "TV size vs distance" charts I've found say nothing of what you're claiming either. And they're by people trying to sell TVs!
To get a more precise fix you can break out a calculator or use this one based on THX recommended viewing angle.
https://myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculato...
It suggests that your tiny tv ought to be optimally viewed from 4.8 feet away and at 16 feet away you really ought to have a tv greater than 100 inches.
Of course most people don't have 100+ inch tvs but they also don't watch tv from 16 feet away unless they are watching a 45-60 FOOT theatre screen. Play with some values in the calculator if you want to see how other people use tvs.
People normally sit 8-10 feet from 60-75 inch tvs and use 40 inches for smaller rooms like bedrooms where they are 6 foot away.
To be clear about the whole picture you are a fellow with bad vision watching a small tv from nearly 3 times further back as the rest of planet earth.
At that distance your tv literally does already exceed average visual acuity and for your usage you are absolutely correct.
Meanwhile the rest of us will benefit from up to 8k in the future.
My vision is perfectly fine, thank you very much, as you seem to insist on going on about how horrid it must be. The difference is entirely explained by the fact that I watch a reasonable sized TV from a perfectly sane distance in a living room that isn't a home theater room and has space for plenty of other activities. No idea how you get a TV 6' away in the bedroom, though, unless it's literally at the foot of the bed. I've never had one in there and never intend to.
Your linked calculator suggests that the "optimum" distance for my TV is about 6' away, which I find quite absurd (having just tried it). I'm watching movies, not programming on it.
We appear to have rather divergent views (and social group priorities, if yours has 60-70+ inch TVs at your suggested 8-10 foot viewing distance) on the nature of television viewing, and, as such, there's not an awful lot more to discuss.
In point of fact a medium sized living room is 12x18 with a TV on either a stand or the wall along the longer wall and seating that is around 2 feet deep and off the wall by at least a foot. This means that in an medium size living room there is 8-9 foot between seat and screen. In a large living room 15x20 there is still only 11-12 feet.
People actually are putting 60-75 inch screens therein so we can support the position that the figures given by the calculator represent how people actually use TVs and supports the position that HD -> 4k -> 8k will be perceptively still beneficial given the constraints of human eyeballs.
1/3 of the US lives in apartments and 80% live in urban area where housing is comparatively more expensive. Even for slightly larger houses its common to have a living room and a family room and give up a lot of space to the individual bedrooms. It's supper likely that the TV is in a room that is between 12-18 and 15-20. With the TV on the long wall.
Also for some reason sticking your TV on a stand is still pretty popular vs putting it on the wall. This means that in a 14' room your tv is between 0' and 1' off the wall and your rear end is 3' off the wall. This puts as little as 8' between viewer and tv in 12-18 and as much as 12' in the larger room if they hang it on the wall.
How the US population is distributed is kind of interesting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/03/how-s...
Regarding the question of average living space in the US people in the US almost universally prefer single units detached housing but as the song goes you can't always get what you want. Many for example would prefer to be close to urban settings with more jobs. Others can only afford to rent.
Among renters, around 1/3 of the population, half live in 111 sq meters or less
1/3 of owners live in domiciles of 167 sq meters or less and and 60% of owners live in domiciles 222 sq meters or less.
Combining renters and owners 77% of Americans live in 222 sq meters, 54% live in 167 sq meters or less, 25% live in 111 sq meters or less. Some rounding and conversion between sq ft and meters.
This means about a 1/4 each live in
<= 111 sq meters
112-167 sq meters
168-222 sq meters
> 222 sq meters
https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-...
The people paying lots for tiny apartments in the city think your 16' of open space in your living room is as unusual as you think they are with their relatively giant TVs in smaller spaces.
Interesting, but doesn't tell me much - I live in an apartment, well under 111sqm, and have a 55" TV around 12' from the couch - so still too small / too far away, according to recommendations. People with even smaller living space (at ~80sqm, my apartment is reasonably large for a two bedroom unit where I live) may simply get smaller TVs to compensate, still being "too small".
These are anecdotes. I'm curious about what people actually do, I don't know, and (contrary to your assertions about what most people do) it doesn't sound like you do either.
My assertion is that due to the above asserted space constraints the majority of people in America are 8-12' from their TV. I also assert that the same people are buying 60"+ TVs
I linked a source that suggested that people could distinguish up to 115ppi at 8' If I understand correctly that means they ought to be able to distinguish about 90ppi at 12'.
If these assertions are correct most people would benefit from 90-115ppi and based on THX recommendations would benefit from the increasingly popular and cheap large screens that people are provably buying despite living in not so huge spaces. In fact tv size purchases are trending upward based on what people can afford.
https://www.consumerreports.org/lcd-led-oled-tvs/tv-trends-t...
A 60" 4k screen is only 73 ppi meaning we aren't beyond human visual acuity yet and 4k at 75" we are down to 59ppi.
The majority of consumers will based on good visual acuity be able to distinguish between 4k and 8k in the room sizes and screen sizes where such products would be relevant and applicable and a median American would benefit.
Now I wonder what Samsung’s motivation for this could possibly be?
>but the "TV size vs distance" charts I've found say nothing of what you're claiming either. And they're by people trying to sell TVs!
The people selling TVs actually say you ought to buy a big ass TV.
> You are like a color blind person exclaiming there is no difference between green and red! There is.
You're arguing against a complete strawman here. The key point that Syonyk was making is this:
> I won't argue that if you pick your content carefully, and know exactly what to look for, you can tell the difference.
If you're watching a nature documentary or anything else that puts an emphasis on the visuals, people are going to notice the difference by themselves. But most of the stuff we watch doesn't focus on visuals, it focuses on narrative. If I'm watching a legal drama, I don't really care if I can count the hairs in the lawyer's nostril or not. Again, I'll probably be able to tell apart the 4K version from the 1080p version from the 720p version of the lawyer's face's closeup, but even if I watch just the 720p version, it won't significantly impact my enjoyment of the narrative.
First goalpost high dpi video is already outside the range of human perception.
> I think we're hitting the point with video resolution that music CDs hit with audio, where improvements in fidelity are largely outside the range of human perception.
Second goalpost ok its not but its really close
> I won't argue that if you pick your content carefully, and know exactly what to look for, you can tell the difference. But, practically speaking, most people watching a decently encoded video won't see a huge difference from 1080p to 4k at typical screen sizes and viewing distances, and will see even less difference going to 8k.
Third goal post ok its actually clearly discernible but I mostly care about the story anyway.
> But most of the stuff we watch doesn't focus on visuals, it focuses on narrative. If I'm watching a legal drama, I don't really care if I can count the hairs in the lawyer's nostril or not.
Believe it or not but some people said the same about HD vs SD towards the beginning. It was complete bullshit then too. I too enjoy the story and psychological drama but its not books on tape. Film and TV are a visual medium wherein being able to see the world more clearly adds to the experience.