Originally Posted by White-Knight:
“"Well I'm afraid this is where there is a lot of rubbish floating about in my opinion. There are those who say that the eye can't resolve the resolution so you can't see the difference. There are those who say you need huge screens to notice it.
What I say is simple, look on Youtube for 8K demo videos and if you find the good ones, you realise that even when viewing it on a pc monitor at lower resolution and it's being filmed from a close distance, you CAN see a huge difference in sharpness,. detail and colour range (the latter of which especially results in a 3D effect)".”
“"Well I'm afraid this is where there is a lot of rubbish floating about in my opinion. There are those who say that the eye can't resolve the resolution so you can't see the difference. There are those who say you need huge screens to notice it.
What I say is simple, look on Youtube for 8K demo videos and if you find the good ones, you realise that even when viewing it on a pc monitor at lower resolution and it's being filmed from a close distance, you CAN see a huge difference in sharpness,. detail and colour range (the latter of which especially results in a 3D effect)".”
The problem there being it looks better "even when viewing it on a pc monitor at lower resolution" due to it being a tech demo with very high bitrates to prove a point. Back in the real world, we live in a country where not only has HD been watered down from 1920x1080 @ 15-18MB/s to 1440x1080 @ 6-7MB/s, but they can't even broadcast 720x576 @ 3-4MB/s SD without nerfing it to 544x576 @ 1.5MB/s bitrates (even before HD came along...) Anyone who thinks 4k is going to bring some magic panacea of high-bitrate 4-8k broadcasting is ludicrously naive given the "race to the bottom" history of SD/HD TV, DAB, etc, bitrate nerfing and general "pile it high, sell it cheap" broadcaster attitude in the UK (which sadly doesn't look to be changing anytime soon...)
My prediction : What's going to happen to any 4K UK channel is the same that's happened to literally every single digital SD & HD channel on every single platform (cable, DVB-T, DVB-S, DAB, etc) - it'll be introduced at a high bitrate, which will then be promptly reduced down by 66-75% 6-12 months later to squeeze in more channels. End result = it'll end up looking no better than 1080p at its earlier high bitrates due to over-compression...
Originally Posted by White-Knight:
“"As for SD, native SD needs removing from satellite in favour of 4K and HD native broadcasting with SD via a downscale"”
“"As for SD, native SD needs removing from satellite in favour of 4K and HD native broadcasting with SD via a downscale"”
Nowhere near enough bandwidth for 100% HD even without 4k. SD isn't going to "die naturally" at all anytime soon (neither is DVD) no matter how much a tiny number of enthusiasts want it to hype The Next Big Thing That Needs Selling After 3D Ran Out Of Steam (tm). Broadcasters don't particularly want 4k unless they can charge an arm and a leg for premium subscriptions due to obviously much higher bandwidth costs (a finite resource). Even today only half of Sky subscribers care about the HD pack ("family bundle") over the "variety bundle" for resolution alone and the price reduction of that from £10 to £5 to slow the formerly "HD pack" high churn proves people aren't willing to pay very much on average. And the difference between SD and HD on most sets is far greater than HD & 4k to the average person.
Originally Posted by White-Knight:
“"There are plenty of videos on Youtube where you can see a difference between 4k / 8K and HD even when viewing in HD resolution and from 10 or more feet. One example video to start you off is here: The 3D effect and depth is amazing and sharpness from only a couple of feet of viewing distance, similarly so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U7e_quvkPQ
Watch it at as high a resolution as you can. Ultimately, I've never seen HD look that detailed or that good.”
“"There are plenty of videos on Youtube where you can see a difference between 4k / 8K and HD even when viewing in HD resolution and from 10 or more feet. One example video to start you off is here: The 3D effect and depth is amazing and sharpness from only a couple of feet of viewing distance, similarly so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U7e_quvkPQ
Watch it at as high a resolution as you can. Ultimately, I've never seen HD look that detailed or that good.”
Again the problem is the 1080p version of that clip is a low 4MB/s with very clear bandwidth starvation causing eg, ringing artifacts around her outstretched hand at 5s and a general lack of definition (macroblocks on the wooden stand, lack of definition on her face not due to res but bitrate). Most Blu-Ray's look far better than that like for like due to 4-5x the bitrate. Even the 4k version downscaled to 1080p doesn't look that spectacular vs the average Blu-Ray due to Youtube compression. Certainly nothing I'd pay a premium for (and I'm as geeky as they come).
A lot of placebo out there at the moment & it's a natural contradiction - sit too close to a large screen and you notice the compression. Sit further away and the resolution difference becomes extremely minimal. About the only thing you can do a serious "like for like" with is uncompressed gaming footage on a 4K gaming PC where half the detail isn't smudged out by high Youtube compression, and even then half of today's "next gen" console gamers can't tell 720p vs 900p vs 1080p on an average sized 30-46" 1080p TV from 8-10ft away...

I'm not bashing 4k, but I do think a lot of enthusiasts don't see that a lot of average people with average sized TV sets sitting at normal 8-10ft view distances see the manufactured hype more like the video equivalent of DVD-Audio / SACD vs CD than "Blu-Ray vs DVD reloaded"...




