EU 8K TV ban goes into effect – here’s how Samsung got around it
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Also, a lot of the people affected might be kids and teens and they have no way to repair the damage if you blast your ear holes too much.
Seems like something should be done about it.
There's plenty of laws I'm not a fan of, but people's hearing is important. I expect products to be safe unless being dangerous is inherently a part of their function. I don't want phones to catch fire or food that has poison.
Initially there was just the silly "EU warning" that meant after X (supposed, because not all equipment is made equal) decibels, it would not go higher unless you actively confirmed you would be exceeding said limit, however that has made way by just reducing output all the time - not everyone is happy with cheap crap, some of us have higher quality equipment that needs the power and clarity, whereas muggles are happy with what sounds like a brick in a washing machine.
If you can't judge what a safe volume is without experiencing discomfort or ringing afterwards, you've probably got bigger risks.
It also ignores that with age, hearing naturally reduces in both fidelity and perceived volume, so what are the rest of us supposed to do?
I keep telling the missus that we only have about a decade remaining when it is worthwhile to invest in a top-tier television. After that, even with glasses we won't appreciate the upgrade enough to be worthwhile.
Ditto with PC monitors. I spent a lot of money on 4K as an early adopter because I had better than 20:20 vision and could appreciate the difference. These days I sometimes don't even notice if something is running at 1080p! An upgrade to 8K would be a waste of money.
Of course, when my kid grows up and I have to buy him new electronics, I get an excuse to spend money on expensive gadgets again...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y5jEK-72JQ
It's effectively -> we tested a bunch of games at both resolutions, and couldn't tell which was which. So 8k doesn't seem to be worth it.
The screen has some fixed pixel density, using called PPI or DPI. As you sit closer or further away, the screen will cover greater or fewer degrees of your field of vision (I recommend looking up diagrams to get a better understanding of this concept). You can thus combine a screen’s physical pixel density with your distance from the screen to get a single number called “PPD”, pixels per degree, that represents how many pixels fit into one degree of your field of view. As a reference point to contextualize this number: the “Retina display” popularized by Apple is based on the claim that at 300DPI, the eye can no longer pick out individual pixels on phone screens usually held at 10-12 inches away. This corresponds to a PPD of 57. Higher PPD is better but it tapers off: going from 50 to 100 PPD is “visible individual pixels vs high end Retina”, while the difference between 1,000 PPD and 10,000 PPD is nothing (we are well beyond human eye capabilities and both would look the same).
THX (from the cinema industry) gives us some numbers on optimal FOV - how much of your field of vision the screen should take up, measured in degrees. The maximum is 70 degrees (fills your field of view out to the edges of your peripheral vision), the optimal is 40 degrees, and the minimum is 26 degrees.
I’m on an iPhone 14 Pro and according to my tape measure I am holding it 20cm away from my eyes (FOV of 39 degrees), which gets me a PPD of 66. If I sit down at my computer which is a 13in 2020 MacBook Pro M1, my tape measure says 60cm from eye to screen, giving me a 27 degree FOV and a PPD of 95.
My tape measure says it’s 250cm from my eye to my TV, so let’s look at some 4K and 8K options. Samsung makes 4K and 8K screens in 65in, 75in, and 85in screen diagonals.
65in 4K: 120 PPD, 32 degree FOV
75in 4K: 105 PPD, 37 degree FOV
85in 4K: 93 PPD, 41 degree FOV
65in 8K: 239 PPD, 32 degree FOV
75in 8K: 209 PPD, 37 degree FOV
85in 8K: 186 PPD, 41 degree FOV
So is it worth it? Only if you want to sit so close that the screen fills your entire field of view.
I can find you slashdot posts from 2005 saying the same darn thing about 720p. Nothing denser will make a difference in a living room TV, they said.
And then you see the next-gen screen in a store showing nature footage with waving grass (natural moire, high-frequency content) and you're shocked how much better it is because frequency artifacts still matter. It keeps happening two decades later.
The difference between a tiny bird flying above the african veldt that has wings and one that is just a moving black dot is clearly perceptible to the eye. Birds smaller than a pixel flick in and out of existence on a screen in a way they don't when watching a flock in real life.
8k is where the frequency artifacts may finally trail off and it's probably as far as video file standards will ever go, but...
A standard construction blueprint is often 48x36 to be able to see the entire building at reasonable detail.
48x36 at 300 ppi is 14,400 x 10,800 pixels which is in the range of 16k. To be able to see an entire building and move over it with your eyes instead of by scrolling and zooming requires that level of resolution.
That's the level at which we've run out of reasons for denser screens. You wouldn't put a 16k screen in your living room but many people will want them in their desks.
There are reasons to sit very close to a large dense screen/print.
Just think about how much power the Commission wasted on all the bureaucrats, committees, travel perks, lobbying meetings, tests etc for this endless pile of completely useless regulation that surely has no success metrics tied to it. All because they have too many staff and stuff the organisation with socialists who dislike markets. Such a pity, European decline will be discussed by historians for many centuries into the future.
I found 8k tv ridiculous as much as the next guy but I found regulation to be even more ridiculous. Wait until they come for the rest of your energy.