Comment by zobzu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zobzu | Hacker News Reader

"So if your eye can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on nearly all modern televisions, what's the need for 4K?"

sums it up. and, I sort of agree too, although I generally believe it's because of the capture camera and the compression software. When I look at videos recorded by 4K cameras but at 1080p, it does look better than 720p. When I look at 1080p videos recorded by 1080p cameras, I rarely see a difference with the 720p version.

Now for the screen size, it depends on the room size, but, when I go to my friend with a 100 inches projector (as in its the final picture size on the wall), that's definitely appreciable :p

Also, 1080p stream already makes me hit stupid ISP data caps, 4K, well, uhm, not sure I've got the bandwidth anyway :)

See also: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5BF9E09ECEC8F88F

So if your eye can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on nearly all modern televisions, what's the need for 4K?

that's the quote that made me stop reading the rest of the article: I can clearly spot the difference between 720p and 1080p content on my 50" "modern television", sitting on my couch 1.5m away.

You're sitting close enough to a large screen that you can benefit from 1080p. Indeed, at that distance, I think you might just be able to get some benefit from 4k.

Most people do not sit 1.5m from a 50" screen however.

(I'm assuming that the calculations in this blog post: http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/ are correct.)

note that there is also pretty bad 720p content sometimes, but in general i can't make the diff between good 720p and good 1080p content, even at 1.5m from the tv (ive a recent 60 inches tv) (or even at 5cm away for that matter, since anyway i start seeing the physical pixels on 60 inches at around 1 meter)

By good 720p content, i generally mean 1080p content reencoded by x264 in high profile mode or the like (so, it could still be better, but its pretty good)

Generally i watch at 4m

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