TV watching has not changed and those kids you mention ardently watch the popular reality TV stuff.
In fact its the over 25's who watch more online stuff.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar...study-20120309
"Teens on average watch only three minutes of video a day via computer or cellphone, which is less than 3% of their overall video consumption."

Lets face it, watching TV sat alone in the corner on a tablet is not that all enticing. In fact it also hints that tablets are part fad.

I'm all for new technology, but until 4k is as standard TV I see no reason to upgrade...

Also people go on that 3D is a fad, I've enjoyed certain movies much more in 3D for sure

No, I wasn't mistaken when I made that statement. Detail could mean to different degrees. Obviously I wouldn't be able to see 100% of the detail, but I'm confident in saying that I'd see enough to be satisfied though. I said this on the first page.

I think people are far better off waiting until quite a few 4K titles are released before they buy a 4K TV. It's a bit daft buying the newest technology when hardly any media is available for it.

I suppose the same can be said for most of the newest technology that gets released, as it's generally the hardware that gets supplied first, you only have to look back and see how much HD or how many CD's, DVD's, Bluray's, PS1/2/3/4 games, Xbox/360/One games etc were available when the corresponding hardware first hit the high st, very little, this does not stop consumers going out and buying products.

I had no HD to speak of when I bought my plasma, I had to wait 6months before Sky HD launched, it didn't put me off, but then I tend to be an early adopter for anything AV. I think in a lot of cases it's those who do buy early that kick start the market.

Netflix are streaming 4k from this month, so I'll be interested to see how well that is received.

Never was one to believe any surveys.....Find it more rewarding to see what is actually happening around me. One thing I definitely won't rely on is trawling the internet to find an obscure article in a foreign newspaper...But, as you are addicted to links
Try Here. It's never hard to find an article to agree or disagree with a point on the internet.
As for watching TV on a tablet, Lots of them actually do.
They also stream from their tablets to the TV. Smart TV's also give a window into streamed content and not just terrestrial stuff.
You show your age by thinking tablets are a 'Fad'? Very quaint....

Mmm.... Maybe...

I,m 69. I love my Nexus 7, it has a superb 7" Full HD screen not only do I watch TV on it (anywhere), Blu-ray 1080p24 from a USB hard drive is amazing, ever been on a long distance flight and seen the appalling picture quality on the lcd screens and the dire sound. Decent pair of headphones and a HD screen tablet wins every time. It's a miracle that fits in my pocket

Fad it's not, took mine to Mexico recently. Kept in touch with my emails, watched the occasional movie, skype'd relatives at home and in Oz. Challenged the missus to Scrabble.

I also took a Kindle reader with over a thousand books on it (in the other pocket )

Back pocket had a FULL-HD Sony CX410 camcorder in it.

Time some of you youngsters joined the 21st century.

Its more than juts resolution but in any case I view my 42" Pioneer Kuro 720P from over 10 feet and the difference between SD and HD is night and day except in the case of downscaled animations, where the benefits are much narrower.


Sounds like you got a good deal as there were definitely expensive HD tv's around although I think I got the dates wrong, probably 2004/5 is nearer the mark. I paid £2k for mine in 2007.

Even though I'm sure a lot is lost in downscaling, some of those pictures definitely look more 3D and more lifelike thanks to the sharpness and extreme contrast.


Spot on Graham .

Well I'm sticking with my high end audio analogy. 4K/8K will both happen eventually and commercially too but they may never become mainstream, just like 96K, 192K audio and beyond, which has been available for many years now. But I don't think anyone would argue that any of the 'beyond CD' formats has become mainstream or has even been a commercial success, except in the professional, audiophile-hobbyist and perhaps semi-professional World. SACD, DVD-Audio, where are they now? Not exactly mainstream! Blu-Ray Audio, Pure Audio will go the same way as will 4K/8K flatscreen TV in my opinion. Niche/hobbyist markets.

As for the set manufacturers and most people's willingness to trade up, I think not - and even with those who succumb to the forthcoming inevitable hype, chances are they won't use its capabilities in a way that actually needs 4K. As with audio, we are in video already pretty well at the upper limit of what Joe Public considers necessary and is willing to trade up to.

People soon forget the reasons why CD took off. It wasn't so much the better quality, though that was the hype, it was the better convenience over what went before. The same applied to DVD. The same applied to flat screen TV (HD being driven as a by-product of the mass change from analogue CRTs to larger/digital flat-screens). BUT... that 'more convenient' factor will not apply to 4K as currently envisaged.

'Paper' screen roll-up or stick-on-the-wall TVs could be the next mass-market 'big thing' in TV - and we'll have to wait a long time for that - but it won't be driven by better picture quality, it will be because it's more convenient, unlike 4K flat screen TV as currently envisaged. HD is more than good enough for most people.

With audio most people just cannot tell beyond a normal mp3, and in fact expensive hi fi equipment has been around for decades and has always been a niche technology.

However most people can tell the quality jump quite easily in 4k over HD. As others have said perhaps it's not so much the resolution increase but the perceived contrast, sharpness and colour gamut that also contribute.

I've seen a few 4k demos and with the right source material it really is quite stunning. It is almost like watching a moving high resolution photograph.

Can I ask if you have seen a good 4k demo in action ?

No but I think you've missed my main point, which is that better convenience drives this kind of development to mass market commercial success, not better quality. The better quality then becomes possible and follows, but you can't do it twice with hardware that's no more convenient than what people already have. Take-up (once it gets going) will be very slow and nothing like the rise of CD players, .mp3 players/devices, DVD players, flat-screen TVs, all of which were far more convenient than their predecessors and not even better quality in some cases!

Try to make the change on quality alone and you end up in a Blu-Ray video situation, it doesn't replace anything, it simply coexists in a minority segment of the marketplace for a very long time, with the ever-present danger of being overtaken by newer more convenient technology.

It could be the case that at a certain resolution and sensible screen size, enough detail is seen. I mean, even with 1080, some people might think that that time has arrived. I still think that more detail can be had though, but I do think there will come a time when the resolution should stop being upped.

Edit: I've a feeling that once designers get the pixels in TV screens to the tiniest that they can get (thinking iPad here), then they might start being able to cram phenomenal detail in the screen as they add more pixels.

You also forget 'convergence', in that TV's are more and more used as PC/Tablet/smartphone monitors.
And logically that rumoured 13" Apple tablet should be 4K. (cheap Samsung ARM chipset + decent monitor)
If so theres going to be plenty of content almost immediately.

Google and partners will certainly be aiming for 4K too. With 5" 2K common, 4K in PC screens above 12" may well become the norm.

Yes indeed and I notice that that very argument is currently being had among even enthusiast DSLR still photographers! Is 24 megapixels needed even by semi-professional still photographers, some argue that even 16 MP hits the limit of affordable lens resolution and practical use, even for still photo pixel peepers. Yet neither 16MP nor 24MP are even 8K - 16MP is just a shade over 5K... yet some think that level of detail needs to be approached for video, with all its attendant temporal resolution issues? Crazy I say! 4K maybe, eventually, for some. Beyond that? Naahhh.

But if manufacturers bring the price of 4k down to similar prices as TV's are now, which will almost certainly happen, 4k will succeed simply because that's all that'll be made by the decent brands, budget models excepted.

Who would have thought 10 to 15 years ago that all TV's sold would be HD capable and being flogged for less than £100?

There's no reason to suggest the same won't happen with 4K once panel production gets underway and it's not cost effective to keep making lower resolution screens.

24 megapixels can be very handy. It allows you lot of flexibility in cropping photos. Want to get close and you don't have a long enough lens. Shoot with the longest lens you have and crop. You still have enough pixels for a A4 300dpi print.

Arguments about lenses not being up to it sounds daft to me. Film has a way higher number of effective pixels than any digital sensor you can get in a consumer camera.

I have a Nikon 5200. It's sensor has 24.71 million pixels, it takes photos 6000 x 4000 pixels = 24 million. I think wherever the info you have came from it's somewhat flawed.

I can only guess how good the output would look on a 4K screen.

A 4x5 camera would need around 60 Megapixels to match fine grained colour film

I think some will have to accept that the UK is considered a bit behind in the tech stakes these days.
Travel the FarEast and the difference is amazing. Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul are buzzing with what we can only envy at the moment. Luckily for us, this is where the price drops happen and with China jostling for market share of 4K TV's prices are set to crash in 2014. The argument that Chinese automatically means rubbish is obviously put forward by those that know little.
For those wanting a large screen that takes up little room on a daily basis....there are 4K projectors out there..

Technology started advancing at a fast rate after about 2005. It seemed to drag along before then. It's now gone into overdrive. I wouldn't be surprised if 4K TVs became very popular in about 8 year's time, maybe even less.

Apple's iPad has a resolution of 2048x1536 and isn't even the size of a normal size laptop screen. For a 32 inch screen in the sitting room, I think there's tons of room for upping the resolution. Once companies have filled 32 inch screens with pixels as small as the iPad's, that's when I think they should stop upping the resolution. If they don't, they'll have to then start increasing the screen size, and the average sitting room can't have a 60+ inch screen TV in it. I think there's tons of room for increasing resolution though.

The move to 4K and eventually 8K (the maximum resolution which is useful for a screen) will happen when people make the switch from the television being in a particular corner or side of the room, to the television being or occupying all of one wall of the room.

There's no point in 4K let alone 8K if you have a 40" or whatever TV positioned several metres from your chair. These are resolutions intended to fill your vision, 8K in particular needs to be like sitting in the front row of a cinema where the screen is larger across than the distance you are sat from it.

Other things like contrast and colour-gamut are irrelevant to the discussion, as they can be equally good on TVs of any resolution. Whilst a 4K TV is likely to be using a high quality panel and therefore excel in the contrast and colour range, a 1080p or even 720p panel is just as capable of performing equally well in those areas and will likely be a lot cheaper.

I'd have to disagree with this, Film doesn't have pixels like digital but the grain is just not fine enough to see much detail above 6 megapixel ( talking 35mm film ). A 24 megapixel DSLR will just blow away a 35 mm SLR film camera and is much more like medium format quality.

Some people still prefer the film look but it's becoming more and more niche

If they make the pixels as tiny as Apple's iPad, I doubt the screens will end up being that big.

If the lenses aren't up to it how are they going to make 8K cameras and projectors ?.