I'm assuming you are referring to the Sony ad, if so, those with 4k can view it on YouTube. In addition it make viewers aware 4k products are on sale.

http://presscentre.sony.eu/content/d...6&NewsAreaId=2

4k demos can be found in high St stores, what makes you think they are any bigger than their 2k counterparts?

Apart from the two 84" models 4k comes in two sizes 55" and 65", no bigger than 2k LCD/plasma we have now.

Providing you have wall space a 55"/65" screen would easily fit in an average room because the viewing distance would be minimal - I view a 120" screen and my cinema room is not huge.

They will obviously be broadband TVs.

Most 4K content will be via people like Lovefilm. Obviously any new entrant who cuts the first and biggest deal can monopolise here big time.
Obviously it would also be big for people like with the Discovery channel.

I'm a little bit confused as to what resolution exactly is 4k?

I had assumed it had 4 times the pixels of 1920 x 1080; i.e 3840 x 2160.
In which case, I'm not sure what you mean by 2k?

That new terminology is to talk horizontal pixels.
Prior to this it was vertical pixels, with 1080p being 1920 x 1080.

So switching to horizontal 1080p is 2K(1920 horizontal pixels) and that 3840 pixels horizontal is 4K.

Funnily enough, 1080p is also 2MP in grand total. Using actual MP is more exact but I am not doing the marketing.
4K is 8MP and thus is 4 times.

Ah right, thanks.
I didn't realise they were just talking about horizontal pixels.

I was going to say, it would be a bit daft not having multiples of 1920 x 1080, as it would lead to scaling issues surely?

Yes, it does make upscaling quite simple.

I thought that in tablets it gets stupid but now thinking about it ,something like the Nexus 10 is two thirds 4K.
Working back to 1080p it is thus two thirds of 1080p doubled.

And I quite imagine the iPad Retinas just uses 1080p, also simply chopping off 128 pixels on the horizontal level, or maybe even using them for side buttons.

And we all know the reason for that, right? Bigger numbers!

I suppose we can be thankful they didn't count the pixels like still cameras and call 4K 8M... but you can bet your bottom dollar that someone soon will try to get away with that!

Not really so.

8MP is the more correct, easier to understand, and real term.

You could cheat and have an ultra skinny 4K in 1MP.
4K is semi meaningless only telling you half the story.
e.g. the Nexus 7 and Retina Ipads are both 2K so sound identical.

But the same logic applies to all of them, luckily however most consumers know the rough aspect ratio of broadcast TV.

Yes 8MP could in theory mean 8,000,000 x 1 pixel but the standard these days is a 16:9 screen ratio for TV and something not too far from that for other devices apart from calculators and their ilk. They could have continued to use vertical resolution (2160p) for 4K but hey, 2K doesn't sound half as exciting as 4K and technology vendors just love consumer confusion, especially when it makes it sound better than it is.

Sky etc. will of course use "4 times more detail" (based on pixel count) when promoting it, if and when they start it but in reality, 4K has only twice the spatial resolution of HD and is only twice as good (resolution-wise).

Nope, 4 times as good in base human terms.

Viewing 4 channels at once you would get to see them in 1080p quality, be it at a quarter of the size.
The iPad Retina again can show 4 times as much as the older iPads. If they could run 2 or more apps at once then you would get 4 apps on screen at the same quality as of old.

Or get a much larger TV than you currently have


It would be much better for the industry to be putting its efforts in improvements elsewhere (improved manufacturing of 1080p panels as pretty much every set is littered with panel issues, improvements in software and new features/standards that the average user can appreciate without sitting closer or getting a TV that's too big for their room). They just haven't let the 1080p market mature enough before moving onto the next simply because they see it as a way of selling more hardware at a higher profit margin than they can at 1080p


If you are willing to completely setup a room around a TV then maybe that's true but that's not possible for most people. In my case I would need to take out the fireplace (as placing) it above it wouldn't be good for the TV and wouldn't be best for viewing angles even with a tilting bracket. Even then the narrowness of the room would leave really poor viewing angles from one chair. Its not ideal even now due to the shape/width of the room where I have a 42inch angled in the corner as its marginally too big for the corner, one chairs at a little bit of a strange angle from it, the others too far away. Only the sofa is anywhere near to perfect

If you already have a large TV, they don't make them that much larger

Precisely why I said 'providing you have wall space'.

.....but surely those buying 55"/65" screens will generally be willing to setup their room up around the TV?

Incidentally, I ripped out my fireplace in my old house, just so I could wall mount it for a better cinema experience, so I agree, you need to be either willing/enthusiastic/into home cinema to do it.

Whenever I try and view a 4k video on YouTube, it is nigh on impossible! 1080p videos are the best I can watch for now!

4 times the area, 2 times the spatial resolution (if the source material as broadcast is good enough, and in most cases it won't be).

In other words, you will theoretically at the optimum viewing distance from screen be able to visually separate objects half the size (twice as small) on a 4K screen as on a 2K (~ HD) screen. You will also have to sit at half the screen distance to see a 4K screen optimally compared to a 2K screen (not a quarter the distance).

Nobody says a 6 foot man is 4 times bigger than a 3 foot child - he's twice as big, and technical measurements of resolution use line pairs per millimetre - in one direction. This area/pixel count thing is just manufacturer hype to sell more sets by making them sound twice as good as they actually are. People can obviously describe resolution how they want, using red green and blue sub-pixels if they really want to make it sound good (24 mega sub-pixels, wow). But they'll be using their own made-up standard, not the internationally agreed measurement standard.


http://www.arri.de/fileadmin/media/a...gyBrochure.pdf page 5.

I'd say he's actually 8 times bigger as he will weigh 8 times as much (assuming the shape and body composition is the same). I'd say for instance a 100kg man is twice the size of a 50kg man even though the smaller man has 80% of the height of the larger one.

Similarly I'd say a 50" TV is 4x the size of a 25" TV. I take your point though about the resolution being twice and it's comparable to say dpi on a printed page.

No way! It's twice the size, like a 100 foot tree's twice the size of a 50 footer.

But at least we agree on spatial resolution, phew!

There's a useful eye resolution chart on page 19 of that .pdf I linked to, by the way. My eyesight's starting to drift... the wrong way! Another reason why I don't need 4K in my living room (or full HD come to that) I guess.

They can, and as likely as not he is easily 4 times the 'size'.
It would make a funny tug of war man versus two 3 foot children. You are not being very horizontal with your tall story.

Something the 'size of 4 football pitches' never becomes the 'size of 2 football pitches' !

4K TV is exactly 4 lots of 1080p. It becomes a bit ridiculous to think otherwise.

I'd also say it was 4x the size, it's twice the size diagonally but 4x the size in area.

Probably why the are describing 4k as having 4 times the detail of 2k, because the same principle applies, you can fit 2k resolution 4 times over on a 4k screen - technically it'll have 4 times the detail if you don't take into account motion resolution.

For television the correct terms and resolutions are UHD 1 which has 3840 by 2160 (I,e. 4 HD panels )
And UHD 2 which us 7680 by 4320 (I.e 16 HD panels)
Thses are defined along with other parameters like bit depth frame rate and colour gamut in BT 2020

For film theDCI spec 4k is 4096 by 2160 (I.e. Twice 2k in both directions ....)
But there are other sizes depending On what aspect ratio you are looking for!!!!!!!

Yeah but bigger means taller in this sense, height/length tends to be the first thing you think about when comparing the size of people. And trees. Even football pitches, many things, in fact. TV screen sizes too (albeit diagonally, which I've always found to be weird but again I think it's a case of vendors picking the biggest number they can, of the three). But all this is beside the point really - see below.


None of that alters the fact that the international scientific standard for measuring spatial resolution is in one direction: resolveable line widths or line pairs per millimetre. Separately in each direction and definitely not areal. Vendors are the people who sucked us into pixel counting, pixel peeping and area comparisons, which is misleading because doubling the pixel count does not result in being able to resolve objects half the size, far from it. It doesn't even have 4x the level of detail, it can show about 4x the number of tiny two-dimensional objects, each of which is half the size (length or height). So it's really 4x the number of details but is only 2x the level of detail (i.e. spatial resolution as measured by the international standard).

But the vendors have sucked us all in to their megapixel-counting more exciting sounding imaginary dream World where everything sounds twice as much 'better' than it really is! Not to mention all the other important picture quality parameters that are almost as important as resolution but are rarely improved by much because the numbers don't sound 'sexy', grrrr.

[/ über-rant]

I'll weigh in with the fact that according to you I'm about as big as Big Daddy.

Point conceded, I've calmed down now. There are many ways of comparing size or 'bigness' and you can legitimately choose whichever of the various definitions you wish.

But as I said, all that's beside the [image resolution] point.

Does anyone remember pal+ wide screen? channel 4 tried it then dropped it because SD was about to be launched by Sky, I'm thinking this is another bad idea who would want to buy a TV than can only upscale? yes the picture may be better than current 1080p HD, No one is broadcasting in 4K Blu-ray's may look better but still not 4K IMHO forget it for the moment if anyone may do this it will probably be SKY in the future & if they do guess what yes they will charge for it.