LG To Show Off New 55-Inch 8K Display at CES

The "K system" is alright by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 01:10 · Score: 0

It is the Megapixel system which is broken.

Re:The "K system" is alright by omnichad · 2014-12-12 02:12 · Score: 2

It's easier to understand in terms of total pixels. 2K is ~ 2MP, 4K is ~ 8MP. A 4x increase in resolution does correspond to a 4x increase in MP.
Re:The "K system" is alright by bondsbw · 2014-12-12 04:03 · Score: 1

Well, yes, resolution is a measurement and MP is a unit for that measurement.
That's like saying a 4x increase in length corresponds with a 4x increase in meters.

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Re:The "K system" is alright by omnichad · 2014-12-12 04:08 · Score: 1

My post was a response to megapixels being somehow "broken." I don't know what they meant, but thought it worth defining MP for them.
Re:The "K system" is alright by ChrisMaple · 2014-12-12 07:21 · Score: 1

Resolution has always been a one dimensional measurement. Sharpness is measured in one dimension, and is perceived in one dimension. Going from 640x480 to 1280x960 looks twice as good, not 4 times as good.
A 4x increase in resolution is not a 4x increase in pixels, it's a 16x increase in pixels, assuming the aspect ration is unchanged.

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We don't care how many pixels it has by 91degrees · 2014-12-12 01:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

That's useful for technical matters like bandwidth calculation but the user cares about clarity.

8K can display a line half the thickness of 4K. That's what matters.

Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by koan · 2014-12-12 01:27 · Score: 1

Now your GF can see the "details" in the nude selfies you send her.

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Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 01:52 · Score: 0

Now your GF can see the "details" in the nude selfies you send her.
I think you meant to type:
"Now your mom can see the pimples on the Herpes outbreak of the actress in the porno you're watching when she comes down to the basement to do your laundry..."
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by rmdingler · 2014-12-12 01:55 · Score: 1

In that instance, exceptional clarity is unwarranted.

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Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-12-12 02:01 · Score: 4, Interesting

Arguably, that depends on how large the display is. In the tablets and smartphones market(and, at least to an extent, smaller TVs and monitors) higher resolutions are mostly about aesthetic improvements. Between the limits of human dexterity on input devices and the limits of human vision you can't use the extra pixels to actually make UI elements smaller(it still has to be a certain minimum size for the user to see it, click it, or touch it, regardless of how many pixels fit in that physical area); but you can use them to make things look buttery smooth and more or less eliminate visible jaggies.

In larger panels, there is still a good deal of room(at least for users with decent eyes) to use additional pixels to add additional effective 'space' into a monitor of the same size. No longer being able to see the nasty huge pixels that result when some terrible person smears 1920x1080 over a 27 inch screen is nice(seriously, guys, WTF is up with the increasing sizes of 1920x1080 monitors? Used to be you could get 19.5/20-inch ones quite easily, now the market is rotten with 22 inch and higher); but it's the increase in work room that really makes the difference.
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by 91degrees · 2014-12-12 02:05 · Score: 1

I'm thinking more from a TV point of view.

With a monitor, number of pixels is important. I really liked my 1920x1280 monitor I had once, just for those extra 200 vertical pixels.
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by AmiMoJo · 2014-12-12 02:20 · Score: 2

8K can display a line half the thickness of 4K. That's what matters.
It's more complex for 8k video, although I agree that's what counts for mostly static computer displays. Details are very thin but I doubt this monitor supports 8k video.
8k video was pioneered by NHK in Japan, and I was lucky enough to see a demo of it a few years ago. As well as 8k resolution the frame rate has been increased to 120Hz native, and the colour depth expanded to 12 bit per channel and the RGB coverage is much higher than either HDTV or current digital cinema. The result is incredibly life like images.
Don't get me wrong, I want one of these anyway, but we are still a way off what will be needed to view the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in full 8k.

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Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-12-12 02:31 · Score: 3, Funny

Fair enough. Now if we could just get broadcasters to stop succumbing to the temptation to turn TV into legovision because turning up the MPEG-2 compression until the video cries means you can have more channels...
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by Immerman · 2014-12-12 03:49 · Score: 1

Why not? HDMI can't handle the bandwidth, but DisplayPort supports 8k at 60Hz and 24bpp - any problems with video will be in finding a video card to drive it and content that can use it. Though as with watching DVDs at 1080p, good upscaling should make for dramatic improvements with existing content.

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Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by AmiMoJo · 2014-12-12 03:57 · Score: 1

So half the frame rate and only 8 bits per channel instead of 12... In other words DisplayPort doesn't support true 8k video yet.

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Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by geekmux · 2014-12-12 04:04 · Score: 2

That's useful for technical matters like bandwidth calculation but the user cares about clarity. 8K can display a line half the thickness of 4K. That's what matters.
When we're talking about this level of resolution, perhaps the upper limits of human eyesight is what truly matters.
Of course, that assumes that consumers use common sense when purchasing TVs the size of drywall sheets. Highly unlikely, especially during Superbowl season.
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by sexconker · 2014-12-12 05:36 · Score: 1

"8k" refers to resolution only. I could say whatever magical system you're thinking of doesn't support "true 8k video" because it doesn't support 240 Hz because that's what you need for 3D.
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by Immerman · 2014-12-12 05:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

You do realize HDMI maxes out at 60Hz as well, right? All that "120Hz" bullshit is just marketers selling you crappy post-processing filters in the TV. And while HDMI did technically upgrade from a maximum of 24bpp to 48bpp in 2006, there's essentially zero content that actually uses that capacity, and that very few people can clearly distinguish the additional slight variations in color anyway, except in the most contrived tests - compression artifacts are *far* more visible, and going to 48bpp tends to make those much worse.

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Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by Smauler · 2014-12-12 06:04 · Score: 2

1920x1280? When was that a standard?
Did you mean 1920x1200?
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by Blaskowicz · 2014-12-12 06:16 · Score: 1

What's with the decreasing size of 1080p monitors? Seen a 15.6" 1080p and it is fairly hard to use with Windows 7's file manager. I have not tried scaling yet as the owner is the kind to jump at me if I do or change anything on that laptop.
That is annoying for young (enough) users esp. as the thing is used with a touchpad.
27" 1080p has "too big" pixels but it's what users want. Had a 20" visible monitor running at 1280x960 and it was pretty sweet.
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by smithmc · 2014-12-12 10:46 · Score: 1

Pfft, that's nothing, I've got an XPS with a 15.6" screen that's 3200 x 1800. And it's gorgeous, you can't see pixels at all. Why don't you just set your system font size appropriately?

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Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 12:58 · Score: 0

120Hz is really useful for 24 frames per second content. When watching 24 frames per second at 60Hz (or 59.97Hz), it requires 3:2 pull down. You may notice that 120Hz is evenly divisible by 24. With a 24 fps aware 120Hz TV and Bluray player, each frame is shown 5 times; not the first for 3 and the second for 2.
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by bongey · 2014-12-12 14:37 · Score: 1

HDMI 1.4 maxes out 60Hz, 1.4 (2009) .
Re: We don't care how many pixels it has by bill_mcgonigle · 2014-12-12 15:32 · Score: 1

If I did my math right, this 8k display has more ppi than my main 24" display. This really changes my conception of what my workspace will look like in 3 years. A 55" display "wall" would be worth a substantial investment. I would save a couple grand for something that dramatic.

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Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by RespekMyAthorati · 2014-12-12 20:24 · Score: 1

No longer being able to see the nasty huge pixels that result when some terrible person smears 1920x1080 over a 27 inch screen is nice
I, and many others, "smear" HD over a 10' diagonal projector screen. The result from a good bluray is gorgeous and sharp.
You clearly know nothing about this.
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by 91degrees · 2014-12-12 23:37 · Score: 1

Yeah. Misremembered.
Re:We don't care how many pixels it has by toddestan · 2014-12-14 14:10 · Score: 1

That assumes that the refresh rate of the panel is stuck at 60Hz and can't simply change to 24Hz for 24 FPS content. CRTs are capable of changing their refresh rates, and it should be even easier for LCDs to do so.

8k HAS twice the pixels by marcello_dl · 2014-12-12 01:13 · Score: 0

we are talking about a single axis, after all.

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Re:8k HAS twice the pixels by Immerman · 2014-12-12 03:55 · Score: 2

Indeed. May as well say:

It might not be immediately clear, but 55" is far more screen area than 27.5", which suggests this whole "inches" system of measuring size is a little odd. On paper, you might imagine that 55" has twice the area of 27.5", but instead, it's 4x.

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"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-12-12 01:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

Perhaps if you are buying your LCDs just to watch TV the 'content' argument is a serious problem; but c'mon, essentially all modern 'TV's are just big monitors with built in ATSC/DVT-B tuners and severely questionable EDID data.

Especially when the resolution is an integer multiple of what the existing 'content' was designed for, and a PC with suitably punchy GPU (which actually isn't much punch these days unless you are gaming, where things can admittedly get damned expensive at high resolutions, this isn't the bad old days when you had to buy some freaky Matrox unit to get a VGA out that didn't turn into blurryvision when it met a real monitor) can drive a seriously enormous screen, who cares?.

Quit carping about how Sony hasn't yet graced us with Premium Ultra HD Content on Blu-Ray 2.0 and embrace the fact that you can buy a terrifying pixel-battery of your very own at surprisingly attractive prices. Still a few kinks to work out at very high resolutions that currently available displayport or HDMI standards can't drive properly; but that's really the remaining issue.

Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by AmiMoJo · 2014-12-12 02:23 · Score: 2

TVs are very different to computer monitors in one important aspect: image processing. Computer monitors go for accuracy, but even basic TVs do a fair bit of processing to make the image look good. Some of it is to make up for limitations of the TV itself, like enhancing motion clarity, but a lot of it is to make up for limitations of the source material. Broadcast HD is actually fairly crap if you watch it on a normal computer monitor without any processing.
Many TVs have a "game mode" which disables processing to get the latency down. Try switching to it with an ordinary broadcast HD feed to see how awful it looks with minimal enhancement. Even game mode doesn't disable everything though.

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Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 03:12 · Score: 0

It isn't though.
Content will determine which standard is really adopted. Will 8k matter if all content is in 4k? Will 4k take off if everyone is jumping to 8k before any content is made?
If the cost differential is enough between 4k and 8k, then content is going to provide the inertia to push buyers one way or the other.
Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by Immerman · 2014-12-12 04:00 · Score: 1

Actually DisplayPort 1.3 (released Sept. 14th) supports 8K @ 60Hz, if only at 4:2:0 subsampling. Now, finding actual hardware that supports 1.3 might be a challenge, but the standard itself is available.

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Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by Immerman · 2014-12-12 04:11 · Score: 1

>Even game mode doesn't disable everything though.
Don't I know it, and the "enhancement" wreaks havoc on a pixel-perfect input.
"PC mode" though seems to (usually) be a substantial further improvement, but it isn't always obvious how to enable it. For example on my older Samsung it is engaged by changing the video source name to "PC" - despite the fact that nothing in the documentation makes any suggestion that the name is anything other than a user convenience - and it's changed in a completely different section of the settings than anything that's supposed to affect the picture.
Let me tell you, finally stumbling across that one long after having given up on ever using anything but the VGA port for decent input was a real treat.

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Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 04:41 · Score: 0

> iif only at 4:2:0 subsampling.
That is a big IF since text is unacceptably blurred by anything less than 4:4:4 sampling. 4:2:0 is fine for video and mostly passable for video-like games, but not even close to OK for general computer use.
Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by sexconker · 2014-12-12 05:40 · Score: 1

TVs are very different to computer monitors in one important aspect: image processing. Computer monitors go for accuracy, but even basic TVs do a fair bit of processing to make the image look good. Some of it is to make up for limitations of the TV itself, like enhancing motion clarity, but a lot of it is to make up for limitations of the source material. Broadcast HD is actually fairly crap if you watch it on a normal computer monitor without any processing.
Many TVs have a "game mode" which disables processing to get the latency down. Try switching to it with an ordinary broadcast HD feed to see how awful it looks with minimal enhancement. Even game mode doesn't disable everything though.
Horse shit.
The first thing I do on any TV is disable every single fucking enhancement.
They make games, pc output, broadcast, cable, dvd, bluray, even fucking vhs look like absolute trash.
Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by Immerman · 2014-12-12 06:17 · Score: 1

Possibly true, and while I suspect it may support 4:4:4 at 30Hz, which is sufficient for most text-oriented usages, I couldn't find anything conclusive.
On the other hand, just because 4:2:0 is unacceptable at HD resolutions, doesn't necessarily mean it's unacceptable at 8K, where the pixels are going to be too small to resolve individually - a 40" 8K monitor is after all going to have almost twice the DPI of those high-end CRTs of 20 years ago. I'd have to see it in action, under decent lighting conditions, to make that call. And I'll probably hold out anyway for something supporting v1.4, or 1.3b, or whatever the next release with full 8K support gets labeled anyway.
Then again - as I recall v1.3 can support two 4K screens at full detail and frame rate, so a dual-plug monitor should be able to handle pixel-perfect 8K, which might be good enough.

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Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by Blaskowicz · 2014-12-12 06:23 · Score: 1

"Display Stream Compression" (deemed a "visually lossless" algorithm) should be or was to be an alternative to 4:2:0
I just learned that it did not make the cut to be included in the DP 1.3 spec sadly (maybe in a DP 1.3)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/...
Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by Blaskowicz · 2014-12-12 06:26 · Score: 1

in DP 1.3a, maybe.
Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by ChrisMaple · 2014-12-12 07:54 · Score: 2

Another limit is lenses. For most lenses compatible with a 35 mm format, 4k is close to where the image doesn't become any more detailed by using a higher resolution sensor. That's not to say that equipment with good detail at 8k can't be made, but it means lots of money and loss of depth-of-field.

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Re:"Content" is an obnoxious red herring.. by LordVader717 · 2014-12-13 00:05 · Score: 1

Modern TVs enhance the framerate with interpolation, but that's a recent thing and not present on the low-end. The other stuff are basic colour calibration settings, which many computer monitors support too. Often they'll have more scaling options, but not as good as doing it on the GPU.
In fact one of the biggest complaints about TVs is that their default settings change the image to look good in the store (enhanced sharpness and contrast filters, excessive saturation), so that videophiles usually have to turn off a lot of the processing to get their video to look how it should.

Bill's Monitor by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 01:17 · Score: 0

Let me tell you right now that no one will ever need more than 640K.

Re:Bill's Monitor by Overzeetop · 2014-12-12 01:37 · Score: 1

An array of 1600 of these 8k monitors? Okay...that's really only 163' across and 92' high - barely in the top 20 of the largest screens in the world - but at 156ppi I'd say you're probably sitting too close to the screen if you can see the pixels. ;-)

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Re:Bill's Monitor by jeffmflanagan · 2014-12-12 03:35 · Score: 1

That sounds spectacular, but we're going to need a motherboard big enough to hold 2000 GPUs in SLI/Crossfire configuration.

The Mind Boggles by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 01:19 · Score: 1

Maintain the aspect ratio, double 1D, quadruple 2D. This is witchcraft! Burn these people and their evil "mathematics"!

Too small to be of any benefit. by Computershack · 2014-12-12 01:25 · Score: 1, Insightful

At 55" and average viewing distances of 8ft you're not going to notice all the detail of even 1080p. You literally need to be sat a couple of feet away to get the full benefit of 4K on a 55" display.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 01:39 · Score: 0

So you're not getting one as a computer monitor?
Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by MrL0G1C · 2014-12-12 01:39 · Score: 5, Informative

THAT CHART IS WRONG.
Seriously, I can easily see jaggies where it says I shouldn't be able to, IT IS WRONG by a large factor.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by omnichad · 2014-12-12 02:24 · Score: 1

Some people don't put their TV in the living room. I have my TV mounted relatively low and I do sit only a few feet away from my TV. I only have 42" but I can definitely see individual pixels on non-antialiased text or other sharp graphics. It's a dedicated home theater area, not a general purpose room. I'm not the only one. I would still like larger for immersion, but I will unfortunately be able to see more pixels edges at that point.
Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by MrL0G1C · 2014-12-12 02:44 · Score: 1

PS, a simple test of whether an upgrade to 4k would be beneficial to your enjoyment is the 'sharpness' setting. If you can tell the difference at normal viewing distance when altering the god awful sharpness thing then you would notice the difference between 1080p and 4k (I turn sharpness off, it is an abomination of an 'enhancement' that doesn't belong on HD screens.)
Or draw a couple of diagonal lines in a graphics editor - one with anti-aliasing and one without - if you can tell which line is which then a 4k screen would look better to you.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by silas_moeckel · 2014-12-12 02:54 · Score: 1

That chart must be for the middle aged or older not wearing glasses or refusing to get them. Or maybe it's using comcast's 1080p thats compressed to hell and back.

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Re: Too small to be of any benefit. by DocSavage64109 · 2014-12-12 03:09 · Score: 1

Maybe he doesn't want to be convicted for shooting all the inconsiderate people in the theater who go to the movies for a nice spot to text.
Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by David_Hart · 2014-12-12 03:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

At 55" and average viewing distances of 8ft you're not going to notice all the detail of even 1080p. You literally need to be sat a couple of feet away to get the full benefit of 4K on a 55" display.
The people who are replying that the viewing distance charts are wrong need to understand what the recommendations apply to.
First, they apply to the average person, whoever that may be. Since we all have slightly different eyesight, there are people who will see jaggies at the recommended range and people who will not.
Secondly, the vast majority of the distance recommendations refer to televisions and video, not computer monitors and text or still images. Computer monitors tend to have more precise pixel color and lighting control which makes them sharper but also makes it easier to see jaggies.
The point is that the charts were developed for TVs playing video and they tend to be accurate for this usage. Any application beyond that is pretty much out of scope.
Re: Too small to be of any benefit. by tepples · 2014-12-12 03:17 · Score: 1

Or you could get off your butt and go to a movie theater to watch movies.
Movie theaters have a far poorer selection of catalog titles than, say, Netflix.
Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by Immerman · 2014-12-12 04:15 · Score: 1

Quite so - such numbers typically refer to the limit at which the typical human eye can resolve individual pixels, but it's well known that the eye can still perceive visual texture (such as jaggies) at much higher resolution.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by bondsbw · 2014-12-12 04:26 · Score: 1

Not sure about your eyes, but the graphic appears to be pretty close to the values I'm getting when calculating when the resolution is better than "retina" for most people.
Of course, video compression can alter your results. And sub-pixel motion can cause moiré patterns that are quite noticeable even on retina displays.

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Re: Too small to be of any benefit. by Immerman · 2014-12-12 04:30 · Score: 1

Hmm, Lets see, a few dozen movie tickets so that I can drive across town to watch whatever film is being spoon-fed to me at the time, in the presence of hundreds of potential inconsiderate jerks, while dealing with sticky seats, grossly overpriced snacks, and hopefully not too many technical difficulties.
OR... for the same price I could buy a halfway decent TV and speakers and be able to watch whatever I want, whenever I want, in the privacy of my own home - where the snacks are cheap, alcohol can flow freely, and the only people around are the friends I've invited over.
No contest. Sure the raw A/V quality is lacking, but the overall experience is far more enjoyable. And I can continue enjoying it long after I would have used up those paltry few dozen tickets, and after that all the money I would have been giving the theater to send to Hollywood can now be spent on things produced locally instead.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by Immerman · 2014-12-12 04:32 · Score: 1

Also - they typically refer to the distance at which the eye can resolve individual pixels, but it's well understood that it can still perceive visual "texture" at much smaller angular resolution.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by MrL0G1C · 2014-12-12 05:23 · Score: 1

"better than "retina""
Supposedly my screen is like retina at 6 foot.
"the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels" This is what needs clarifying.
I can clearly see a line of white pixels between lines of black pixels at 8ft.
Most of all, at 7feet some web fonts look atrocious to me, I block web fonts on a site by site basis because of this. The font letters am looking at as I type this is constructed of lines 1 pixel wide, if I turn on 'font smoothing' that looks really bad at a distance beyond the 6foot 'like a retina display'.
There are other differences that I can make out at up to 14 foot - more than double the indistinguishable claim for my screen - 1080p 46" @ 6' = like retina.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by by+(1706743) · 2014-12-12 05:33 · Score: 1

Perhaps some of it could be due to videos vs. static images. For a resolution (or angular pixel density if you prefer) with clearly visible jaggies on, say, text or line art, I might not notice anything if it's a good video. Of course, if you're watching the news or something then you might have static text anyway...
Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by djdanlib · 2014-12-12 07:28 · Score: 1

It looks like it was compiled from "average viewer" survey data after showing people a movie clip, not static computer graphics like text and menus on a website.
Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by bondsbw · 2014-12-12 07:56 · Score: 1

I can clearly see a line of white pixels between lines of black pixels at 8ft.
This is a bad justification. To see why, try this experiment:
1) Create an image of a black background with a single 1px-width white line.
2) Set up a camera at or beyond retina distance.
3) Take a photo and see if you can see the white line in the photo.
I took this to an extreme, using a (crappy) 8 MP phone camera, from a distance 9 times retina distance (11.5" tablet at 1366x768 resolution from a distance of around 18 feet). The resulting photograph still displayed a visible line.
The line was faint and quite blurry, mind you. But I think it demonstrates my point, that things smaller than retina resolution don't suddenly become invisible. And this is particularly true when looking at something that is white on a black background.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by bondsbw · 2014-12-12 08:01 · Score: 1

All of that said, I am just pointing out that the chart can be correct while someone still could make out "jaggies". The idea of a "retina" resolution is a bit of a myth because of things like we have pointed out, and thus we can't take that chart at face value to know whether the result is acceptable.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by LordVader717 · 2014-12-13 01:34 · Score: 1

High-contrast objects are more discernible. Jaggies are an extreme case as they often have a very high contrast at the smallest of subdivisions, and draw a lot of attention because they're right on the boarder of two regions.
This issue only really affects certain types of computer generated images. It could be blurred out with a filter and *still* stay under the resolution people can normally detect. "Naturally" recorded images will have a certain blur to begin with.
I suppose it's an issue of diminishing returns, where you'd have to invest an awful lot more resources to "fix" a relatively minor issue for CGI sources, that could be dealt with more cost-effectively by simply using filters.
Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by MrL0G1C · 2014-12-13 05:05 · Score: 1

The point is that the differences between 1080p and 4k are clearly visible at distances far beyond that which the chart implies so, the chart is wrong.
Take fonts, you can 'smooth' them, to me that makes them look blurry in an ugly way. The font I am typing with right now is constructed of lines only 1 pixel wide, leaving negligible room for font style. Text would clearly benefit from 4k as opposed to 1080p.
The fact that you have to 'blur' things to fix the image points to the deficiency of 1080p. I don't like blurry and I don't like jaggies, I like crisp images, 1080p is nearly crisp - not good enough.
I agree that it's a case of diminishing returns, but 1080p is at best half way there.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by LordVader717 · 2014-12-14 06:18 · Score: 1

>Take fonts, you can 'smooth' them, to me that makes them look blurry in an ugly way.
That's true for low resolutions, but my point was that at high resolutions there's a domain where you can still make out jaggies on a high-contrast edge, but can't tell any tell the difference between higher resolutions if you use a filter.
>The font I am typing with right now is constructed of lines only 1 pixel wide, leaving negligible room for font style.
Pixel-level design has to accommodate for the natural and psychological blurring in the design anyway. Plus, modern fonts are vector-based and designed to scale arbitrarily. If anything the smoothing filters are even *more* important when you get to very small font sizes.
>Text would clearly benefit from 4k as opposed to 1080p.
It would benefit in that you could get up really close to the screen and admire the smoother edges, yes. But for the scenarios we were talking about, sitting at fixed distances and using the smoothing filters every modern OS relies on, no, it wouldn't.
In practical terms it's like this: A pixel-wide black line on a 4K monitor is clearly more detailed than one on a 2K monitor, but once you stand back far enough you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the black line on the 4K monitor and a gray line on a 2K monitor.
The chart might be wrong for some people and I can't argue with that. But we need to be specific about what it's referring to. They're not saying "we guarantee you won't ever see aliasing on this setup" but rather "on this setup you can't tell the difference between between this and a higher resolution, provided that the pixels are smoothed naturally."
For the record I can spot aliasing about twice as far away as the chart references, but can' make out any detail whatsoever on pixel-level objects right about where the chart says I would have full benefit.
Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by LordVader717 · 2014-12-14 06:23 · Score: 1

By the way, the way I tested this was to open a paint program and create a 3x3 black square on a white background with one pixel missing, like this:
xxx
xx
xxx
At about 3 feet for my 24'' 1080p I wasn't able to tell which pixel was missing after randomly rotating it.
Maybe you want to try this yourself and report back. I'd be interested in your results.
Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by MrL0G1C · 2014-12-14 06:31 · Score: 1

What matters to me is that many fonts look crap on a 1080p screen at normal viewing distance. Smoothing doesn't fix this, 4k would.
That is it. The chart is wrong by a long shot.

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Re:Too small to be of any benefit. by LordVader717 · 2014-12-14 09:48 · Score: 1

Any particular examples? Personally I find all fonts look perfectly fine and as-intended on my screen, and anti-aliasing enhances the appearance. But then again I do usually scale text and keep a distance of about 3 feet. Most Windows users keep the teeny-weeny default fonts and just sit closer to the screen.

Dude... by koan · 2014-12-12 01:26 · Score: 1

16k or GTFO.

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Re:Dude... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 02:35 · Score: 0

64k ought to be enough
Re:Dude... by tepples · 2014-12-12 03:18 · Score: 1

Even an Atari 2600 generates 32 kilopixels (~160x200).
Re:Dude... by RespekMyAthorati · 2014-12-12 20:29 · Score: 1

Yeah? I gotta get one of them things.

Video cards? by xtal · 2014-12-12 01:32 · Score: 1

Maybe this will drive some faster video cards.. I run 3 30" monitors (7680x1600); and while 2D and work productivity is no problem.. and, believe me, if you have the means I highly recommend picking them up - 3D surround gaming, even with SLI current-generation cards is a challenge.

What's even more impressive is how fast the 4K panels are dropping in price. Manufacturing FTW.

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Re:Video cards? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-12-12 02:06 · Score: 1

You will pay for the privilege(and your ears won't thank you); but is the scaling of SLI/Crossfire good enough to save you? A quick look shows that you can get motherboards with up to 7 GPU slots without recourse to any terribly specialist vendors(they aren't cheap; but they are perfectly normal motherboard brands that you could have from Newegg by Monday, not some specialist display wall vendor who might get you a quote in the same amount of time), so you can throw a lot of GPUs at the problem; but that only helps if performance actually improves at something vaguely approaching a reasonable multiple of how many cards you add.

Can't see the difference: WRONG by MrL0G1C · 2014-12-12 01:32 · Score: 1, Insightful

I have a 46inch 1080p screen, at normal viewing distance I can make out jaggies and I hate font smoothing because it looks blurry. I've seen that chart that says what distances different native resolutions are effectively discernible and IT IS WRONG by 50% - I can see the difference clearly where the chart says I shouldn't be able to.

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Re:Can't see the difference: WRONG by mwvdlee · 2014-12-12 01:56 · Score: 2

Any other super-human abilities you feel like sharing twice?

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Re:Can't see the difference: WRONG by Kjella · 2014-12-12 01:58 · Score: 1

Well, one shortcoming of that chart is that it assumes 20/20 vision, that's the threshold for "normal" sight that doesn't need glasses but many people have better than that - 20/16 at least is not unusual - or can see better than that once they wear glasses/contact lenses. I think the most extreme cases are something like 20/8, meaning they can see from 20 feet what a normal person would have to be at 8 feet to see. I think it depends on source material and compression though, I've got a 28" UHD monitor (3840x2160) and done comparisons with a very high resolution, sharp image scaled down to UHD and 1080p respectively. It's noticable. It's not a huge difference, it's not like I think of 1080p as blurry. But when I watch the full resolution imagine it's more like wow, there's even more detail.

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Re:Can't see the difference: WRONG by AmiMoJo · 2014-12-12 02:26 · Score: 1

Such claims seem to be based on a flawed understanding of how the human eye works. It's the same reason that the iPhone "retina" display was claimed to be better than human vision could discern the pixels on, even though it clearly looks worse than even the new "retina" screens which themselves look worse than QHD phone screens.
The idea was that if you put thin parallel lines next to each other at some point they blur into one because the human eye can't pick the individual ones out. Unfortunately the human eye doesn't work that way, it combines multiple images over time and can detect edges with greater "resolution" than it can detect parallel lines. Printers have known this for decades, which is why they didn't stop at 200 DPI.

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Re:Can't see the difference: WRONG by fnj · 2014-12-12 02:38 · Score: 1

Yeah, plenty can see better than 20/20, but a whole lot can't even see 20/20 with correction. I would guess maybe 1/3 the population is significantly below 20/20.
Re:Can't see the difference: WRONG by MrL0G1C · 2014-12-12 02:45 · Score: 1

I wasn't aware that the ability to see was super-human.

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Re:Can't see the difference: WRONG by PopeRatzo · 2014-12-12 02:55 · Score: 1

Any other super-human abilities you feel like sharing twice?
My superpower is that I can tell what all the people on the TV are going to say before they say it.

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Re:Can't see the difference: WRONG by DocSavage64109 · 2014-12-12 03:48 · Score: 1

Your superpower is subtitles?
Re:Can't see the difference: WRONG by DocSavage64109 · 2014-12-12 03:50 · Score: 1

Actually, I have a friend who is partially deaf and they leave the subtitles on all the time. His kids are the best readers in their grades at school by a good margin thanks to always having those subtitles up.
Re:Can't see the difference: WRONG by 3.5+stripes · 2014-12-12 04:25 · Score: 1

in his head .. oOOooOoOoOoOoO

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Re:Can't see the difference: WRONG by Immerman · 2014-12-12 04:35 · Score: 1

I've had that problem - try watching something other than your own home videos, that will usually clear it up, though you may have to avoid Hollywood blockbusters as well.

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Re: Can't see the difference: WRONG by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 05:48 · Score: 0

Lines are collections of pixels.
Try spotting one pixel.

About time by Overzeetop · 2014-12-12 01:32 · Score: 3, Funny

5.5" phone screens are at 2560x1440, with 4k on the way. 8k on a monitor...what's the hold up?

Phones seem perfectly able to light the screen and drive the pixels at less than 4W TDP. Seems odd that 8k is such a large challenge given volume, mass and power budgets 20-100x that of a phone.

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Re:About time by Higaran · 2014-12-12 02:03 · Score: 2

It is easy to get high resolution on a small screen. The problem with the larger screens is that you have ALOT higher rate of defective screens, when you increase the size. Once that happens your cost go up because your basically throwing a bunch of them away.
Re:About time by Guybrush_T · 2014-12-12 02:06 · Score: 1

Full HD was nice when it was on 24 inches screen. When you see a Full HD picture on a big screen, the pixels are so big that you may wonder "is this high def ? The pixels are bigger than my old 1990 TV !".
That 8k monitor only has 160 dot per inch. That's not impressive at all.
For a monitor of that size (55"), having an 8k panel is nothing but hard to do. The difficulty resides in the production of the video (computer images are easy to render, but having a CCD captor at 8k is a different story) and the broadcast of the video (bandwidth, CPU, and HDMI cable at that frequency).
Re:About time by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-12-12 02:16 · Score: 1

I am not a subject matter expert; but the swift divergence of typical resolutions on small-screen devices with typical resolutions on larger monitors makes me suspect that manufacturing technique has improved substantially at fabricating very small pixels; but less dramatically at avoiding flawed pixels cropping up often enough to hurt yields of large and high resolution screens.

I mean no disrespect to the (likely substantial) engineering effort and cleverness that goes into cramming 2560x1440 into some teeny little phone screen; but it does have the advantage that, if the glass is being cut into a large number of small screens you can limit your defect-related losses to a relatively small percentage of the total area, even if an unacceptable defect or two shows up in every sheet produced. With larger screens, you need much larger areas of zero unacceptable defects or you'll be scrapping substantial amounts of material.

Less important; but still an issue in a few cases(eg. 'retina' iMacs) is that external display interconnects have to hew quite closely to standards because they'll otherwise not work at all(or work erratically depending on sheer luck and generate a huge number of returns), or have to be sold as (wildly expensive) specialist-vendor-validated-and-guaranteed card/monitor pairs(I assume that the absurdly high resolution zillions-of-greys monitors used for reviewing radiology data have already gone down this road at least at the high end). With an embedded display, doing something nonstandard costs more than doing something supported by every cheapo SoC vendor on the pacific rim; but you otherwise have total freedom to do whatever you want, as long as you can deliver a product that works when the customer pokes it. They will never know, and never care, exactly what you did between the logic board and the LCD panel.
Re:About time by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 02:25 · Score: 0

I really like how everybody is patronising you in terms of manufacturing difficulties and nobody has figured out that you are asking why the video cards to drive 4k monitors properly are more expensive themselves than phablets with the same physical resolution.
Amazing answering whoosh you have there, sir.
Re:About time by omnichad · 2014-12-12 02:30 · Score: 2

Not throwing them away. Last I knew, if a panel has a defective quadrant, you get 3 quarter-size panels out of it after it's cut. It doesn't get put into a TV until after QA. And this means that the 8K display is just a perfectly defect-free panel that was probably intended to be 3 or 4 4K panels. Large 4K TV's is part of the natural progression of ramping up production of smaller 1080p TV's. And 8K is coming from smaller 4K production ramping up.
Re:About time by AmiMoJo · 2014-12-12 02:31 · Score: 1

The yields on 5.5" screens are much better. If you have a 1m^2 substrate you can either make it into a single large monitor or many smaller 5.5" displays. A single serious defect writes off your entire large monitor, but only one of your many 5.5" panels.
In addition, because a 60" 8k monitor costs a very large amount of money people expect perfection from it. Accurate colours, even backlighting, no visible dead pixels. That reduces your yields even further.

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Re:About time by Electricity+Likes+Me · 2014-12-12 02:45 · Score: 1

I want 8K phone displays. Entirely so we can use them as VR displays.
Re:About time by Jaime2 · 2014-12-12 02:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'd believe you, but computer monitor resolution was on an upward trajectory until 2005, when consumer HD took off. Since then, it's been nearly stagnant for nine years. This is simply the progress we should have seen a long time ago.
Re:About time by sribe · 2014-12-12 03:54 · Score: 1

5.5" phone screens are at 2560x1440
Or 1280x1440 if you don't believe that an RGBG quad should be counted as 2 pixels just because it's twice as wide as it is tall ;-)
Re:About time by AmiMoJo · 2014-12-12 04:02 · Score: 1

It's not that simple though. A 50" 8k display only works out as 4x 30" 4k displays, and there isn't a huge market for 25" 4k displays at the moment either. On top of that, 4k yields are not particularly brilliant either because while there is a market for 27" 4k monitors, there isn't much of a market for 13.5" 1080P displays.

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Re:About time by omnichad · 2014-12-12 04:07 · Score: 1

there isn't a huge market for 25" 4k displays at the moment either
6" phones and tablets

there isn't much of a market for 13.5" 1080P displays.
That's becoming a fairly standard laptop screen size.
Re:About time by Immerman · 2014-12-12 04:59 · Score: 1

HDMI can't handle it, but as of DisplayPort 1.3 can, and at 60Hz no less. It'd take a heck of a GPU to render 3D at that resolution, but mostly static 2D should be a non-issue. And if you're using a CCD bigger than your head (not unreasonable for professional filming), 8K is unlikely to present any serious challenges.
As for 160DPI, that's slightly higher than the 150DPI of typical high quality magazine printing, though admittedly you're not getting the benefit of "analog anti-aliasing". It's a real shame those micro-mirror projection TVs are so bulky - they can actually harness that benefit. I wonder if anyone has experimented seriosly with diffusion overlays - if you could get the light from each pixel to bleed over maybe 25-33% of the way into the next you could perhaps get a similar effect with LCDs.
Still, I have no use for a 55" screen, even my 40" is on the edge of being too large. But I'm looking forward to the day I can get a cheap, quality 8K screen smaller than that, or even a 4K. Because really, my old 21" 1680x1050 monitor is plenty comfortable to use, despite being only 94 PPI, and even a 46" 4K screen would match that. Going 8K would be pure gravy.

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Re:About time by Immerman · 2014-12-12 05:06 · Score: 1

You don't actually think intensive 3D apps are being rendered at "retina" resolutions do you? Upscaling is comparatively cheap, and 2D is basically a non-issue, even at those resolutions. Hell, DisplayPort 1.3 has even standardized a way to send a 8K@60Hz signal between separate devices.

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Re:About time by jellomizer · 2014-12-12 07:42 · Score: 2

However during that time they let the technology stagnate. So the process to make better hi-res screen wasn't in the R&D pipeline.

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HD4, HD8, HD16 by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 01:32 · Score: 0

If 1920x1080 = HD (and please stop calling 720 "HD"!), then 4K = HD4, etc.

Re:HD4, HD8, HD16 by omnichad · 2014-12-12 02:35 · Score: 1

4K is UHD and 8K UHD is called Super-Hi Vision in Japan. And the 2012 Summer Olympics were shot in that 8K format and displayed at that size at a few places around Great Britain.
You're way too late to the naming game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
Re:HD4, HD8, HD16 by PopeRatzo · 2014-12-12 03:04 · Score: 1

8K UHD is called Super-Hi Vision in Japan.
I love that they're still using mid-20th century naming conventions for new whiz-bang technology.
"Super-Hi Vision" sounds a lot like the old film technologies of the 40's and 50's, like Super Cosmocolor and Super Panavision 70 or CinemaScope.

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Re:HD4, HD8, HD16 by omnichad · 2014-12-12 03:12 · Score: 1

It's NHK who named it. And it beats the FUHD that others are using. Just not a great acronym that time.
Re: HD4, HD8, HD16 by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 03:43 · Score: 0

Someone was "super high" when they came up with 8K!
Re:HD4, HD8, HD16 by AvitarX · 2014-12-12 06:18 · Score: 1

The 4k is the width though, so it'd be HD1 (1280), HD2 (1920), etc. etc.

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Dismaying.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 01:36 · Score: 0

I know that marketing people can't do math, but I was rather dismayed to see that individual who submitted this assumed that most Slashdot readers couldn't either. The "xK" resolution debacle has almost always referred to a display that is "xK * xK" pixels. If you want people to listen to what you have to say, it usually helps to not insult them. And I do just fine with my 2K*768 monitor configuration, thank you.

Re:Dismaying.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 01:39 · Score: 0

Typod. That should be "xK*zK"

Can't wait for 20K... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 01:41 · Score: 1

8K displays still require liquid Helium to get to that temperature. Hydrogen boils at 20K - and it should be much cheaper.

8K!? but I haven't even bought a 4K yet by RichMan · 2014-12-12 01:42 · Score: 1

Do we need this? Is there really a sizable market for people who must have the latest even if the current stuff is good enough?

Re:8K!? but I haven't even bought a 4K yet by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 01:59 · Score: 1

There's no need for 4K, there is no consumer media. blu-ray doesn't do it, HDTV is stuck at 720p or 1080i. The singular benefit of 4K over 1080p is that it doesn't need to scale the regular "HD" resolutions, 720p shows as 3x3 pixels, 1080p is 2x2.
Re:8K!? but I haven't even bought a 4K yet by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 02:07 · Score: 0

Netflix will be starting to stream large swashes of 4k content, in the markets that matter, in early 2015. Current gen console's and some high-end TVs will get it in Feburary. Amazon prime will follow suite later in the year.
Re:8K!? but I haven't even bought a 4K yet by Pascoea · 2014-12-12 02:19 · Score: 0

There is no need for 1080p, there is no consumer media. DVD doesn't do it, NTSC is stuck at 480i or 480p. The singular benefit of 1080p over 480p is that it doesn't need as large of black bars to show standard cinema content.
Re:8K!? but I haven't even bought a 4K yet by omnichad · 2014-12-12 02:40 · Score: 2

There was no consumer media for HDTV for a long time before Blu-Ray. A long time after a lot of people already had HDTV's.
The London 2012 Olympics was shot in 8K. There were only a few public screens in Great Britain where you could actually watch it, but the cameras are there. Japan and Korea are leading the way with cameras and content broadcast tests.
Digital sound has been above the Nyquist limit for some time now. The resolution war won't end until we surpass that limit. Sort of. We'll have wall-sized 20K TV's in 10 years, but computer monitors will still only be 1080p...because stupid.
Re:8K!? but I haven't even bought a 4K yet by Immerman · 2014-12-12 05:18 · Score: 1

I use a 40" 1080p monitor - I promise you it's not remotely "good enough", except in the sense that I wanted a big-screen monitor and that was the best available. 4K will at least bring its resolution in line with my almost adequate 20" monitor. 8K will be the first actual improvement in "standard" screen resolution in what, a decade or so?
Oh... you're talking about TV. Yeah, I don't see much point there either - 1080p already lets me see way more skin imperfections and bad makeup jobs than I have any desire to. It would be nice to be able to watch movies at home with a comparable level of detail to the theater though. Even if we're doing good to get one movie every few years with enough visual quality to be worth it.

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Re:8K!? but I haven't even bought a 4K yet by captjc · 2014-12-12 05:21 · Score: 1

We'll have wall-sized 20K TV's in 10 years, but computer monitors will still only be 1080p...because stupid.
Nah, The reason PC monitors have been stuck in the HD-age is because LCD TVs were damn cheap to produce and took practically nothing to repurpose into monitors. Since the death of CRTs, TVs and Monitors have converged into more-or-less the same device, at least as far as manufacturers are concerned. The second that 4K TVs become dirt cheap to produce in 13"-30" sizes, you will see 1080 monitors going the way of the dodo. Same with 8K, etc.

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Re:8K!? but I haven't even bought a 4K yet by toddestan · 2014-12-14 14:31 · Score: 1

For a computer monitor, you can take advantage of 4K immediately. The 4K televisions are a bit of a mystery though.

There is nothing odd about it. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2014-12-12 01:43 · Score: 1

If you double the length and the width of the rectangle you will get four times the area. There is nothing odd about it. Quadratic (and cubic ) relationships are very common. Typically the height of human beings and their mass follows a cubic relationship. The urban sprawl distance and the area of the city follows a quadratic relationship. It is not odd. It is just math.

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4k monitors by codewarren · 2014-12-12 01:45 · Score: 3

You can even get 4K PC monitors for an attractive price

Citation needed (...please!)

Re:4k monitors by omnichad · 2014-12-12 02:42 · Score: 1

Depends on what's attractive to you, but ~$500 at 28" is it for a lot of people:
http://www.monoprice.com/Produ...
They have crossed below that line several times.
Re:4k monitors by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 02:42 · Score: 0

Tigerdirect has a Seiki 4K 50" for $399.
Re:4k monitors by Rob+Riggs · 2014-12-12 03:07 · Score: 2

You can even get 4K PC monitors for an attractive price
Citation needed (...please!)
Dell 28 Ultra HD 4K Monitor on sale for $300. I don't know about you, but that is a very reasonable price to me. It is certainly not the best. You get what you pay for. But this one has the 4Ks.

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Re:4k monitors by toddestan · 2014-12-14 14:34 · Score: 1

There's plenty of them available for under $1000, with some under $500. Compared to what we paid for high end monitors back in the 90's, they are incredibly cheap. And that's not even taking inflation into account.

What's the Motivation? by mentil · 2014-12-12 01:50 · Score: 4, Interesting

8k won't be ready for anything any time soon. HDMI 2.0 doesn't even support 8k 30Hz, and few TVs have Displayport. 4k Blurays are taking their time arriving to market, and 50GB arguably won't be enough for 8k without a codec upgrade which would itself require a new disc player. What portion of existing bluray players have old HDMI ports or processors that can't handle 4k content? It's not like 4k TVs are high-margin items anymore -- I saw a nice 50" one at Walmart for $699 a few weeks ago, and there were cheaper ones online. The price has hit rock bottom before there's even the demand for them. Unlike 4k cameras, there are only a couple prototypes of 8k cameras, so almost all content will be rendered CG for a while.

I'd read countless arguments on Slashdot that human eyes can't discern resolution higher than 1080p in a 50" TV over 10 feet or so, before I actually watched a demo 4k TV running 4k content, for about 15 minutes. If you have a 50" TV in your bedroom, 5 feet away from where you're sitting, you can definitely notice a huge improvement in detail. I stepped about 15 feet away and in most scenes it was still usually an obvious, substantial improvement over 1080p.
An electronics retailer in Europe held a contest, setting a cordon that people had to stay behind, more than 10 feet away from two televisions, and were asked which was the 4k tv and which was the 1080p. 98% of people correctly guessed which was which. Maybe people asked others who cheated, but it suggests that "most people can't tell" is bullshit. I seem to recall when the Apple retina display claims first came out, a scientist mentioned that humans' actual acuity was about 50% better than what Apple was claiming. It's also worth noting that while a single still retina image may be at a certain DPI, there are psychovisual effects (like depth perception) that can improve the resolution inside the brain, beyond what one retina picks up at one time. The eyes also saccade all the time, which I seem to recall can be interpolated to improve resolution.

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Re:What's the Motivation? by Kjella · 2014-12-12 02:17 · Score: 1

An electronics retailer in Europe held a contest, setting a cordon that people had to stay behind, more than 10 feet away from two televisions, and were asked which was the 4k tv and which was the 1080p. 98% of people correctly guessed which was which. Maybe people asked others who cheated, but it suggests that "most people can't tell" is bullshit.
This electronics retailer wouldn't happen to be in the business of selling people expensive new 4k TV sets by any chance? There's a lot of ways you could configure a 4K and 1080p TV to get that result like contrast, color and Netflix 4K probably got as many compression artifacts as an upscaled BluRay. I have a UHD monitor for gaming and such but TVs are way ahead of the content, I've no idea why 4K TVs are actually selling.

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Re:What's the Motivation? by smallfries · 2014-12-12 02:33 · Score: 1

I guess the more expensive one was 4k?

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Re:What's the Motivation? by ebh · 2014-12-12 02:43 · Score: 1

Of course usable 8K is a long way off. Even movie theater projectors are still 4K. That's why they're showing it at CES, not in the Best Buy.Black Friday doorbuster circular. CES is all about mine's-bigger-than-yours.
Personally, I'd rather see the frame rate go up rather than resolution. The standard for 4K movie theater projection is 250Mbps, which is only enough for 24fps. The standard also specifies compression limits so that picture quality won't suffer too much. At 1Gbps, you could compress it even less, and still project at 60fps. If you ever saw a Showscan movie back in the 80s, you know the difference in realism the higher frame rate makes. (BTW, the audio is up to 16 channels of uncompressed .wav at 24-bit, 48Khz or 96Khz sampling. I guess they decided that lossless compression for audio wouldn't save enough bandwidth to matter, compared with the video stream.)
Re:What's the Motivation? by MarkRose · 2014-12-12 05:39 · Score: 1

A 50" 1080p TV has a dot pitch of approximately 0.58 mm. That's huge.
My 27" 1440p monitor has a dot pitch of 0.23 mm. I can clearly see pixels jaggies 2' away. It's not capable of producing fonts smaller than 8 px without collapsing the whitespace in and between letters. I can clearly read an 8 px font on that display from 7' away.
The pixels in the 50" TV would be discernible at 5'. I would have to be 18' away from that TV before I couldn't read an 8 px font on it. I would discern detail three times farther away than that, so 4k would be an improvement over 1080p for a 50" TV any closer than 50' away. People who disagree might have less than 20/10 vision (20/10 is actually common).
For desktop work, where I'm usually about 24-30" away, 8k in a 30" format (~294 ppi) would be really nice. I have a feeling I'll be waiting a while for that though.

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Be relentless!
Re:What's the Motivation? by Immerman · 2014-12-12 05:46 · Score: 1

Sure, not much content to justify it as a TV in the near term, but...
DisplayPort 1.3 was released a few months ago, and supports 8K@60Hz.
Upscaling to 1080 did wonderful things to DVDs for years before HD content became more than a fringe novelty.
A 4K 40" monitor has barely the same resolution as a decade-old 20" HD monitor, and that was a step down from the high-def CRT monitors of 20 years ago, which had plenty of people were anxiously awaiting the final end of the clearly visible pixel which seemed to be coming over the horizon. 20 years later it looks like we may finally be getting both big screens and high resolution.
About %$#@! time.

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--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Re:What's the Motivation? by phoenix_rizzen · 2014-12-12 08:56 · Score: 1

Most people can't tell ... if there's nothing to compare against.
It's *very* easy to tell the difference between two monitors if you have them side-by-side. But stick one monitor into one room, and the other into another room, and ask people to pick the best one after walking through the two rooms, and it'll be a lot harder.
It's like comparing DPI on print jobs. Anything under 300 DPI looks like crap. But go over 300 DPI on a B&W laser, and it gets very hard to tell which is better ... unless you have them sitting side-by-side.

LOL ... by gstoddart · 2014-12-12 01:51 · Score: 2

Earlier this year, both Apple and Dell unveiled "5K" displays that nearly doubled the number of pixels of 4K displays. 4K already brutalizes top-end graphics cards and lacks widely available video content, and yet here we are looking at the prospect of 5K.

Fuck it, we're going to 5K ...

I predict that this technology will be adopted for computers FAR before it is adopted for TV in any meaningful sense.

Know why? Consumers got raped in the last HD format war. People bought gear which subsequently wasn't supported.

I have no intention of lining the electronics industry with the money to replace my TV, my amp, my DVD player. The stuff I own is relatively new, and works just fine.

The reason content for 4K is slow catching on because consumers are all thinking "why the hell would I switch to yet another format?" I expect we'll see 5K, 6K, 8K, 10K ... and all before the vast majority of consumers give a damn.

My view of 4K for TV is a big "I don't care, because it's expensive, pointless, and pretty removed from being a need".

I won't be surprised if it flops.

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Lost at C:>. Found at C.

Where's my iPhone with UltraRetina? by BenJeremy · 2014-12-12 02:03 · Score: 1

Come on, Apple, when are we going to see our 5" 8K displays? Imagine how clear that will be!!

(^*@$# marketing numbers... by Kiyyik · 2014-12-12 02:08 · Score: 1

OK, so we use vertical resolution for years and years, and everyone susses it out. 480 interleaved? Got it. 720 progressive? Keen. So what genius decided to switch us over to the horizontal resolution? I'll bet you anything it was some schmo in Marketing who figured hey, the horizontal is twice the vertical, so if we use that number instead it'll make our TVs sound twice as good. Instead, it's confusing as hell and deeply annoying for anyone trying to keep u with this crap.

Personally, I think they should do like camera sensors, and go by megapixels. 1080p? 2 megapixels? Got it. 4K? 8 megapixels? Spiffy.

Anyway. I reckon 1080p will hold me just fine for a good while. I'm in no hurry to upgrade. And I doubt many people are.

Re:(^*@$# marketing numbers... by omnichad · 2014-12-12 02:51 · Score: 4, Informative

So what genius decided to switch us over to the horizontal resolution?
Digital theater projection has used the 2K and 4K terms for a very long time. Nevermind that going to a 2K digital theater is little better than watching a 1080p TV, 4K is the gold standard for theater because it approaches/surpasses the projection quality limit for 35mm (by the time you account for grain, film copying, and sharpness). I'm not saying 35mm can't hold more detail, but the signal to noise ratio is low beyond that.
4K is a big deal because it matches the best visual experience you can get in the theater. You may say that you don't even need higher than 1080p, but Apple started it with their "retina" display. We've hit and surpassed the Nyquist limit in digital sound a long time ago. Apple's phone display reminded people that this is now getting very possible with video.
Re:(^*@$# marketing numbers... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 02:56 · Score: 0

Agreed -- and a "Full HD" screen makes a truly shitty computer monitor. I want my 1600 vertical back!
Re:(^*@$# marketing numbers... by DocSavage64109 · 2014-12-12 04:08 · Score: 1

What res where you ever running that had 1600 vertical? (Unless you are talking about a 2560x1600 30" monitor that you can easily buy new)
Re:(^*@$# marketing numbers... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 09:47 · Score: 0

Apple DID NOT start it with Retina. You really think Apple made this happen? Jeeze!
Re:(^*@$# marketing numbers... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 18:30 · Score: 0

Apple started it with their "retina" display.
... and then went back in time 10 years and built the IBM P220.
Re:(^*@$# marketing numbers... by toddestan · 2014-12-14 15:09 · Score: 1

Don't forget that the actual horizontal resolutions are less than what they say too. 2K is 1920 pixels, 4K is 3840 pixels, and 8K is apparently 7680 pixels. Kind of reminds me how hard drives are sold, actually. Someone mentioned cinema, but in cinema 4K is 4096x2160, and this had been well established before the TV and computer monitor makers redefined the term.

monitor of my dreams by Lawrence_Bird · 2014-12-12 02:08 · Score: 1

and then some. I do hope they bring this to displays in the mid 30" range. But have to wonder if scaling issues are going to be a big concern.

OLED, or equivalent, is needed more than this by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 02:10 · Score: 0

I don't want 8k (or even 4k) if it's going to continue to be lit by edge mounted LEDs. We need to see some good 4k OLED screens at 46 - 55 inch sizes first really. Or any other technology that can provide the same benefits.

Hyperacuity. It's real. by jeffb+(2.718) · 2014-12-12 02:16 · Score: 1

Visual hyperacuity is one factor that often gets ignored in "how much resolution do you need" calculations. You'll see those "bumps" in nearly-flat diagonal lines much more readily than the simple calculations would suggest. Anti-aliasing everything tends to take care of that problem, but it's still pretty unusual to anti-alias everything. For example, does your system allow fractional-pixel cursor movements?

Re:Hyperacuity. It's real. by omnichad · 2014-12-12 03:06 · Score: 1

For example, does your system allow fractional-pixel cursor movements?
Do any? That would be very nice. I'm just glad that it gets updated at 60Hz. For that matter, if you get your monitor to hit 120Hz, you'll see smoother movement just for the higher temporal resolution.

What's state of the art in UI scaling? by swb · 2014-12-12 02:19 · Score: 1

It doesn't seem to be in Windows 8.1 from my experience on a Surface Pro 2 -- it's a nice display and very high resolution, but it's scaling options leave a lot to be desired.

I can only imagine the same phenomenon would be true on super high resolution screens, although a lot of people seem to like 4k monitors, but it's hard to know what these would be like in day-day usage.

Incredible pixel density is nice, but it seems like (IMHO, anyway) that UIs and applications need to have a lot more flexibility about how they work with very high resolution displays.

Re:What's state of the art in UI scaling? by omnichad · 2014-12-12 03:08 · Score: 1

Windows 7 introduced "Zoom" under the advanced display settings. It works well enough. Essentially scales everything (except improperly designed programs) perfectly. And a lot of the Windows UI elements scale well - most of Windows 8's new UI is vector-based anyway (or it appears to be). Similar to how Mac OS X handles "Retina" displays but with more fine-grained controls.
Re:What's state of the art in UI scaling? by LordVader717 · 2014-12-13 01:57 · Score: 1

I find it has much to be desired, though to be fare that is also due to the state of Windows applications. Metro apps probably work well, but Metro isn't how most people use their Windows PCs (File Explorer still isn't Metro-compatible). So what most people are left with is badly-scaling apps in the desktop environment. The two fixes are to scale fonts, which makes the menus look shit, or to scale the apps, which makes them look blurry. And there is no way to selectively scale them, and the settings are global. The only solution is to enable it and then selectively disable the scaling for apps that scale well, by manually changing the properties on the .exe file which you have to grab out of the depths of the file system.

just fix HD - 1080i/p! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 02:28 · Score: 0

before we go down the path of 4 or 8 k, lets fix HD...Im convinced that if we could get cable, satellite and internet streaming HD to look as good as bluray no one would care about 4k or 8k...Forget 4/8k and lets focus on upgrading backhaul and end user devices to a better mpeg codec and maybe tossing some more bandwidth at HD streams/channels.

Re:just fix HD - 1080i/p! by Lumpy · 2014-12-12 02:51 · Score: 2

Will never EVER happen. Comcast (and other cable companies) will not upgrade bandwidth unless someone holds a gun to their head after being beaten bloody.

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Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Re:just fix HD - 1080i/p! by Immerman · 2014-12-12 06:34 · Score: 1

I would - I want a decent large, high-res computer monitor. And even if we could get streaming up to blueray standards, there would still be lots of room for a higher resolution display - just look at the dramatic improvements good upscaling brings to DVDs: often better than the current streaming options.

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--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.

Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 02:34 · Score: 0

I've got a standard 1080 P 48" that I play DVDs, Netflix and Hulu on on a low end "high speed" internet connection. Even at those resolutions if I get within a few feet of the screen I can practically read the displays/pc screens on most shows. Why in the world would you need higher resolution for most setups? Maybe if you have some gargantuan screen, or are using these things for PC monitors it might make sense. But if you have a standard TV setup Blue Ray resolutions are pointless let alone 4k and now they're talking about 8K? I suppose progress is nice but why pay extra for something that has no purpose? Its like paying 30% more for a ultra high resolution printer (TV) when the paper (your eyes) that exists is maxed out by the standard printer resolutions.

Re:Why? by DocSavage64109 · 2014-12-12 04:12 · Score: 1

Blu-ray resolutions are not pointless. For an obvious example, compare the sharpness of subtitles between a dvd and a blu-ray some time.
Re:Why? by Immerman · 2014-12-12 06:39 · Score: 1

Two reasons: Big TVs, and decent computer monitors. A 30" 4K monitor has a resolution only barely as good as a high-end CRT screen from 20 years ago, and even back then people were looking forward to the pixels finally shrinking to the point where they weren't glaringly obvious - back before LCDs at 1080p cast us into the New Pixelated Age of computing.

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--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Re:Why? by DriveDog · 2014-12-12 07:51 · Score: 1

Absolutely. Too bad there are so many problems with BluRay players. The only reason of which I'm aware that BluRay machines have frequent software updates is so DRM can be frequently changed. We should all just say no to future media that doesn't have unchanging specs.

What about AA now? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 02:44 · Score: 1

Can I finally turn Anti-aliasing off?

Throw away your ancient out of date 4K sets! by Lumpy · 2014-12-12 02:49 · Score: 1

Only losers have 4K... 8K is the way to go!

Sadly you cant get 4K content yet, Although a 50 inch 8K display on my desk would be a wonderful thing for my work computer.

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Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.

Re:Throw away your ancient out of date 4K sets! by XxtraLarGe · 2014-12-12 06:23 · Score: 1

Sadly you cant get 4K content yet,
You can't? I thought there were some services providing 4K.

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Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Re:Throw away your ancient out of date 4K sets! by DriveDog · 2014-12-12 07:44 · Score: 1

"Although a 50 inch 8K display on my desk would be a wonderful thing for my work computer."
Agreed, but I'd get more increase in productivity from a decent chair.

Don't have the bandwidth for this by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 02:53 · Score: 0

Don't have the bandwidth for this.

Maybe with multicast or sat. But cable?? they are still mostly on mpeg 2 and comcast does not even have SDV.

7680 <> 8K by tverbeek · 2014-12-12 03:17 · Score: 2

The problem isn't that people don't understand the difference between linear and area measurement scales (so 8K is four times the number of pixels as 4K), but the fact that anyone lets these marketing drones get away with calling 7680 pixels "8K". 8K is either 8192 in binary terms, or 8000 in decimal terms.

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http://alternatives.rzero.com/

dumb by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 03:23 · Score: 0

Tired of the resolution race. There are other ways to make a picture look better. Even 4k has diminishing returns, but 8k is ridiculous. I have a 15mb connection and avoid HD streaming because it can sometimes get choppy. Hope anything beyond 4k never goes mainstream. We will never see a jump in clarity like we did from SD to HD again. Even 4k is questionable.

4-8K a waste at normal TV viewing distance. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 03:54 · Score: 0

Do I want a 4-8K for a computer monitor? Hell yes!

Do I want a 4-8K for a TV? HELL NO!

At about 7.5', and farther, my high end, 1080p55" looks just as sharp as 4K. Science has easily proven the diminishing returns you get from viewing distance . I can't believe the baseless hype surrounding 4-8K. C'mon people, pull your heads out of your bums. This is 7th grade science.

Can it play DVDs? by marciot · 2014-12-12 04:04 · Score: 1

I, for one, am looking forward to watching my DVDs with 10x10 pixels per pixel.

Size and PPI by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 04:11 · Score: 0

I don't care what K it is. I don't care if it's WQUXGA . I don't care what the horizontal and vertical number of pixels are. I want to know how big it is and what the PPI number is.

Width, aspect ratio and PPI. For a television, that's it.

If I know that I can't see resolution finer than X DPI at Y feet viewing distance, then I can make my decisions based on that.

Sure, there are other interesting bits and pieces such as the refresh rate, color gamut, viewing angles and so forth, but for the most basic understanding of what I'm looking at, the dimensions and resolution are what I'm after. There's no reason that I should have to figure out what PPI results from a 55" diagonal display with 7680x4320 pixels. Nor figure out the dimensions of the monitor.

A handy web site tells me that the monitor display area is 48" wide, with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a pixel density of 160 PPI.

For a computer screen, I also want to know if my computer can manage the display. Give me one number for that as well. For example, if my GPU can handle up to 10MP, then seeing that a monitor has 33MP tells me that it's not something that my GPU has a hope of driving at full resolution.

IBM T220/T221 by thegreatbob · 2014-12-12 05:14 · Score: 1

Don't forget that IBM had a decent 3840x2400 22" IPS panel in production as early as 2001. It was rather expensive, and had to be driven as multiple sub-panels. It also had a very low refresh rate compared to what one would find normal today. Seems like mentioning numbers with more than two digits causes consumers' eyes to glaze over, hence '4K' as a blanket term for stuff with roughly 4000 pixels in width.

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There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...

Isn't This All In Vain? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 05:39 · Score: 0

Aren't humans only able to see HD? And are these 4K and 8K just a waste of time? I understand that on large displays, pixelation occurs on standard definition content. But seriously? 8K on a cell phone? Why? To what end?

Hey LG by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 06:03 · Score: 0

Why don't you concentrate on making a fridge that doesn't make knocking sounds or a washing machine that doesn't squeak...

Re: Hey LG by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 06:14 · Score: 0

+1

Yawn... by superdave80 · 2014-12-12 06:57 · Score: 1

Wake me when we get to 11k.

Re:7680 8K by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 07:39 · Score: 0

It comes from the fact that 4K originally stood for 4096 x 2160 resolution and was intended for films. TV uses a 16:9 aspect ratio which isn't as wide, so it becomes 3840 x 2160. But they decided to keep calling it 4K for some reason. They're doing the same with 8K.

Swell by DriveDog · 2014-12-12 07:40 · Score: 1

Huge pixel count. Great. Seriously, I like it. I can view DSLR photos in full resolution.

But it's going to take a long time for bandwidth available to most folks to catch up with the needs of 3840x2160. Hard to imagine the data flow necessary for 7680x4320 being available to most of us for years. In fact, that's about the fastest being rolled out to residences today. Then what? Then there'll have to be sources. Netflix's servers don't provide 1080p for me now, having an ISP that doesn't interfere and 50Mbps bandwidth on DSL, which should be just about enough for even uncompressed video.

Hey, at least the focus is on pixel count instead of idiotic curved screens and 3D. What would be real advances? Holographic 3D and quality programming. Now we have who knows how many TV channels and networks, but only about the same number (very few) of quality shows as we had 50 years ago, not long after the FCC head's "television is a vast wasteland" comment.

Re:7680 8K by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 07:56 · Score: 0

there are no "terms" (plural) of each metric prefix

8k is 8000, nothing else.
8192 is 8.192k
there is no "binary metric system"

Re:7680 8K by diamondmagic · 2014-12-12 08:19 · Score: 1

It derives from cinema, where 2k projectors output 2048x1080: 16:9 productions still use a 1920x1080 subframe, but most movies are either in 2.40:1 or 1.80:1 which is wider than 1920x1080, hence the extra width supported by digital cinema projectors.

Somewhere along the line, someone figured 2160p was too strange a number to use for consumer 16:9 televisions, so they went with "4k" by which to mean "16:9 in a 4k frame."

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Wonder what the public key field is for?

the hell with 8K, give me 40K by Khashishi · 2014-12-12 09:54 · Score: 1

https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/vi...

I might... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 10:13 · Score: 0

"On paper, you might imagine that 8K has twice the pixels of 4K, but instead, it's 4x."

I might imagine that - if I didn't realise that a screen is two-dimensional....

Yawn - This IS NOT big news. Don't buy 4K TV! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 11:26 · Score: 0

Slashdotter's who have access to IEEE Spectrum magazine should refer to an article a few years back that described how NHK (Japan's national broadcaster) was conducting tests on 8K TV BROADCASTS (not just monitors). If my memory is correct, these were over the air broadcast tests as well! So the technology exists and is being debugged / proven for mass use!

This reminds me of the CES shows in Chicago in the 80's where various manufacturers were demonstrating their 1080 TV cameras and monitors. While it took a while to reach the market (mostly due to broadcast standards wrangling), standard def TV was old news then. Imagine the chagrin of people who have a 1 or 2 year old 4K TV when the 8K product announcements become commonplace...

Hold back on wasting money on a 4K monitor unless you have a good use case right now! They'll be a lot cheaper shortly (but then again, what electronic gear isn't)...! At least the 8K models will be somewhat future-proof.

Re:7680 8K by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-12 18:34 · Score: 0

So what's 7680 to 1 sig fig then?

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