4K UHD TVs Are Being Adopted Faster Than HDTVs (venturebeat.com)

Now this may surprise some: 4K Ultra HD televisions are expected to double sales to 15 million units in the U.S. in 2016, and the next-generation TVs are now being adopted at a faster rate than predecessor high-definition TVs. 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray players are also selling at a fast rate, according to Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, the big tech lobbying group, VentureBeat reports. From the report: At a press event in San Francisco, Shapiro said that 62 percent of consumers plan to buy a consumer electronics viewing device in the next 12 months; 33 percent plan to buy a smartphone, and 29 percent plan to buy a TV. "Consumers are showing a strong preference for 4K," which has four times as many on-screen pixels as HDTVs, Shapiro said. "It's faster and more robust than HDTV." By 2017, 4K UHD TV sales will hit 20 million a year in the U.S. That number will grow to 23 million in 2018, and 26 million by 2019, Shapiro said. The 2016 growth rate is 105 percent above the units sold for 2015.

Comments

Cool, and no 4K content

[Anonymous Coward]

TV is still 720. Movies are 1080. What's the point of 4K again?

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[bobbied]

If you build it, they will come....

As I understand this. 4K is what you get at many small theaters which use digital projection these days. There is some 4K material available, including streaming sources that actually have noticeable quality differences.

Will folks notice the difference? Unlikely... Or, as was the case when I saw my first 1080p resolution movie, I got very distracted by the background set and costume issues that now became oh so visible... Made the movie, an action adventure flick, almost unwatchable for me.

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[Carewolf]

TV is still 720. Movies are 1080. What's the point of 4K again?

Future proofing. And pretty cheap at that, with a FHD 50" TV selling at €350, and the 4K at €400, it is not that more to pay something that might come in handy in a year or two.

Re: Cool, and no 4K content

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is irrelevant. Manifacturers arent offering many non-4k options aside from low end stuff, so of course people are buying lots of 4k.

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[sdguero]

The upscaling is pretty impressive. A good 4k upscaler looks significantly better on the same 1080 source. That said, 1080p give a pretty sharp picture in it's won right. I don't think 4k is very noticeable in typical size family room (i.e. viewing from 10-14 ft away) unless you have a 75" or larger TV. Similarly, if you have 42" or smaller TV 720p is probably OK unless you are sitting 6 ft away from it.

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[Carewolf]

Future proofing? WTF? 4k TV would be only cheaper in the future....

I don't need a TV in the near future, I needed a new one now, and therefor bought the 4K screen, since my TVs last somewhere from 5 to 10 years.

I think a lot of people are in that situation, they need a new, or want a bigger TV. 4K sales are exploding because they have become very competively priced in the last year.

And even without the 4K content, the onscreen menus have much sharper rendered text. It is actually a bit painfull to look at TV text menus at 1080p after using them in 4K.

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[jcr]

Gaming.

-jcr

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you see 720p content on a 4K where it's an integer scaling instead of a fractional scaling, that 720p content looks a LOT better.

4K is a 'sweet spot' where 720p is perfectly tripled, and 1080p is perfectly doubled, so the scalers are a LOT better in general since they don't need to deal with 'fractional' scaling.

That's the main reason 1080p TVs don't have the "punch" claimed: There's sooo much content that's 720p, and it looks fairly rubbish due to the 1.5x upscaling.

720p content on a 4K UHD TV looks crisp and sharp, 1080p content looks crisper and sharper, native 4K content (which NetFlix and Amazon both offer quite a bit of actually) looks and in fact is better than most digital IMAX theatres right now. :)

- WolfWings, still too lazy to login

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[GrumpySteen]

8K would require actual improvements in technology. TV manufacturers will try to sucker people into paying extra for 3D, curved screens and other nearly useless features long before they actually improve anything.

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[Kjella]

As I understand this. 4K is what you get at many small theaters which use digital projection these days.

Yes, but cinema 4K is not the same as TV 4K. They use DCI 4K, either 4096x1716 for 2.39:1 or 3996x2160 for 1.85:1, while UHD 4K is 3840x2160 for 16:9. For extra confusion most 4K cameras capture at 4096x2160 and there's some speciality monitors in the 17:9 format too, but usually you'd crop down to one of the three above for delivery. Most of them frame/master for the DCI release, so what you get on TV is mostly an adaptation/rescale for UHD.

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[Plus1Entropy]

The content is coming. The Playstation 4 Pro, which comes out on November 10, has 4k and HDR capability.

Eventually, either the content or the medium has to move, otherwise both sides will sit around forever waiting for the other.

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[donaldm]

If you notice, one of the resolutions is a subset of the UHD 4k. The other one is only slightly sharper and it should be possible to downsample to UHD 4k with no loss of quality.

Not that most people would be able to tell the difference between a 1080p bluray and a 4k bluray...

Simply put it all depends on the viewer and the distance they like to view from as well as the screen size. The following information goes into much more detail and is well worth the read. As an example say you as the viewer have a preference for a 55" TV (I am not going to make a comparison just yet) and you prefer sitting at 2.4m (8ft) distance then providing you have reasonably good eyes you probably won' be able to tell the difference between a picture at 1080p on a HDTV to one at 2160p on a UHDTV (assuming identical quality). Obviously, as you sit closer the differences do become apparent.

Other factors also come into play as well. There is "High Dynamic Range" (HDR) that all newer UHDTV's support which does add to the crispness of the picture at the expense of latency (gamers take note), however you also have to consider there is a format war going on at the moment. Two HDR formats are on offer the first is HDR10 (open format, licence free) and Dolby Vision HDR (proprietary, requires licence fee) and if you are in the market for a UHDTV then you should be aware of this.

Currently 4K or UHDTV's (there are differences) appear to to be the next big thing in TV's, however there is also another display which will effectively sideline 4k to the equivalent of 720p compared to 1080p and that is 8K TV's which are only just now making an appearance and while they are very expensive they will rapidly come down in price (say 3 to 5 years). Of course, the distance to screen size calculation as per the URL is not going to change so to appreciate an 8K screen it would have to be bigger again and you would have to sit closer. Maybe a curved screen would help since you can sit closer but that may not be all that comfortable for some viewers.

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[donaldm]

The upscaling is pretty impressive. A good 4k upscaler looks significantly better on the same 1080 source. That said, 1080p give a pretty sharp picture in it's won right. I don't think 4k is very noticeable in typical size family room (i.e. viewing from 10-14 ft away) unless you have a 75" or larger TV. Similarly, if you have 42" or smaller TV 720p is probably OK unless you are sitting 6 ft away from it.

Not this again? Listen, not everyone lives in the burbs in a huge house with a "family room". Many live in condos downtown where a TV cannot be 10-14 feet away so a 55" 4k TV is noticeable.

Rather than rant please take a look at this which is a distance to size calculator and the average size family room may allow a 1.2m (4ft) to 3m (10ft) distance from face to screen, unless you are living in a cardboard box and if this is the case I think you have more to worry about than the purchase of a 4K TV.

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[houghi]

I have a 55" at the end of my bed. I do not notice any difference between 720p and 1080p. when I run them next to each other. I do see some difference when I run 480p, but not all that much.
I have a 4K 28" monitor and I do not see any difference in running 4K and 1080p and even 720 is not really noticable, unless I run it at the same time.
The reason I have the 55" 1080p is because it was cheap when I bought it. 500EUR including all taxes. The 4K screens I bought because I needed to replace my 2 1920x1200 VGA screens and buying 1920x1200 again would be about the same price.

There is a difference between computer usage and e.g. movies. For a computer I really like the minor difference in sharpness. With a movie I do not care that much as it all moves all the time anyway.

A great way to compare resolutions is Tears of Steal where you can download several versions. Bonus point if you make a script that plays things at random AND you are looking if the quality bothers you or not, not if you are looking if you know the quality.

Re:Cool, and no 4K content

[DuckDodgers]

I think the critical difference has less to do with the advantages of 4k over 2k and more to do with the fact that 4k prices are dropping rapidly. I waited a long time to get a 37 inch 1080p television because for a long time it cost more than twice as much as a 37 inch 480p television. Today the price premium for 4K is already only 30-40%, sometimes less.

Not surprising.

[Mal-2]

When 1080p TVs hit the market, I wasn't all that excited. I was already using monitors with better resolution than that.

With 4k, however, I could replace my entire Wall O'Displays with a single 4k TV. I'm actually looking forward to doing exactly that. One 43" screen mounted to the wall would be much nicer and much more aesthetically appealing than what I have now. I would continue to use the older monitors with other machines, I don't expect my Chromebook (hacked though it may be) to drive a 4k display.

Reasons

[Zan Lynx]

They look amazing even upscaled. They make great PC monitors. They're affordable. I recently saw several that were on sale cheaper than 1080 models.

Great!

[twistedcubic]

Hopefully by Black Friday there will be $300 4K monitors. My eyesight will be very pleased.

duh, they are cheap

[known_coward_69]

in 2003 a 40" HDTV cost you right around $3000. You can get a nice 4K unit for less than half that in 2016 with Netflix, youtube and all kinds of other features built in and game consoles that already support it.

in 2003 cable companies either didn't have many HD channels or charged extra $$$ for them. and blu rays didn't come out until around 2006 so there wasn't much reason to buy a HDTV unless you really wanted one just to sit around, read the blogs and be ready for whenever it was supported

Re:duh, they are cheap

[geek]

I've held off simply because I don't want to deal with hitting my bandwidth cap every month streaming 4K.

Sort of stupid actually

[keltor]

The 4k TVs basically directly replaced the HDTVs, as in they just replaced the same model that was $899 last year with a new $899 model that is now 4k. Instant 4k Adoption. You're also probably getting some generational effects where people with older 480p and 720p flat screens suddenly need new TVs because they hit that magic it's 10 years OLD effect.

Surprise?

[markdavis]

>"Now this may surprise some: "

Why is this a surprise? It is what the manufacturers are pushing. Consumers have no idea that 99% of them won't notice ANY difference on their TV's from normal viewing distances between 4K and 2K. They won't know there is little 4K content, anyway. They will just by the one that is "better".

Same thing with the bluray players. You could say "new- supports popsicle mode for enhanced viewer" and other marketing speak and they will buy it.

No, what is stupid is upgrading from HDTV TO OLED

[aristotle-dude]

I have seen uninitiated consumers tricked into buying last year's inventory of 3D or OLED HD 1080p sets for the same price as a 4k TV. They are convinced by the salesman that the they should spend over 1k on a slightly better picture (OLED) or gimmicky 3D TVs that will only work with 3D bluray discs. They are that you cannot see the difference in 4k because there is no content. There is 4k Netflix, 4k Youtube and 4k Bluray already and most sets now do a great job upscaling 1080 content.

If you have a small condo in the city, you do not need a 60 inch TV and if you are getting one, you should not be getting a 1080p model at this point regardless if it is OLED or curved. You are better off with a 4k model now. I have a 55" 4k samsung that I am still happy with even though it is a year old model with 4k Netflix but only 1080p youtube. I can use my laptops to drive it to 4k and watch Youtube that way. My 4k Samsung is an awesome 4k monitor.