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Sharp Announces 8K Consumer TVs Now That We All Have 4K (theverge.com)
Thuy Ong reports via The Verge: Now that you've upgraded to a shiny new 4K TV, Sharp has revealed its latest screen to stoke your fear of missing out: a 70-inch Aquos 8K TV. That 8K (7,680 x 4,320) resolution is 16 times that of your old Full HD (1920 x 1080) TV. Sharp calls it "ultimate reality, with ultra-fine details even the naked eye cannot capture," which doesn't seem like a very good selling point. Keep in mind that having a screen with more pixels doesn't buy you much after a certain point, because those pixels are invisible from a distance -- while an 8K panel would be beneficial as a monitor, where you're sitting close, it won't buy you much when leaning back on the couch watching TV. HDR, however, is something else entirely, and fortunately, Sharp's new 8K set is compatible with Dolby Vision HDR and BDA-HDR (for Blu-ray players). The lack of available 8K HDR content is also a problem. But there is some content floating around. The TV will be rolling out to China and Japan later this year, and then Taiwan in February 2018. Sharp is repurposing its 70-inch 8K TV as an 8K monitor (model LV-70X500E) for Europe, which will be on sale in March. There is no news about a U.S. release.
In flight simulators, especially in combat flight simulators 4K monitors are said to be below what the naked eye can do in real life. When you have to identify visually a contact at long distance actual screens are not enough.
I was watching a DVD the other day and noticing the pockmarks on the face of one of the characters. The jump from VHS to DVD quality was very noticeable. Anything beyond that and I stop caring - occasionally there are scenes when it makes a difference, but they're rare. 4K is nice for a monitor, because it makes text rendering a lot crisper (barely any antialiasing needed), but for video I don't care. 8K is probably more pixels than I can resolve unless the display is positioned such that I don't fit the entire thing in my field of vision at once.
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8k resolution is close to IMAX for detail. Not quite as good as 70mm film, but close.
You also have to remember that even if your eyes can't see individual pixels at that resolution (a good thing), what matters is the Nyquist frequency which is half the sampling frequency. That's why CDs sample at 44.1kHz, even though the human ear can't hear much about 20kHz.
Basically 8k reduces aliasing, which is something that the eye is quite good at spotting and makes the image look artificial. That's why most of the 4k demos you see are careful to select images that avoid aliasing.
8k isn't just resolution. When they start broadcasting in Japan for the 2020 Olympics, it will be 60Hz native format, and with a colour gamut beyond what current TVs can display.
8k isn't just a resolution bump like 4k was, where they mostly used the same equipment and some upgraded but fundamentally the same cameras as HD/2k. For example, manual focus is impossible with 8k. Until recently only extremely specialist, power hungry hardware was able to process an 8k video stream and save it to storage fast enough. NHK, the Japanese national broadcaster, has been working on it since the 90s and skipped over 4k to concentrate on it. It's not just incremental, it's a genuine attempt to make video almost indistinguishable from reality.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And heavily compressed to boot. Keep your money people.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
The lenses that collect the video also have limits and, no surprise, they are similar in spatial frequency resolution to the eye. So at some point, and I can't swear it's at 8K excatly, you just aren't collecting new information.
Thus the anti-aliasing also gets fixed at the collection step as well.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
8k resolution is close to IMAX for detail. Not quite as good as 70mm film, but close.
You also have to remember that even if your eyes can't see individual pixels at that resolution (a good thing), what matters is the Nyquist frequency which is half the sampling frequency. That's why CDs sample at 44.1kHz, even though the human ear can't hear much about 20kHz.
I would assume it has more to do with the Bayer Filter and demosaicing in particular, than Nyquist, however the point is well taken. At least as far as sampling is concerned. For example, you wouldn't shoot with the intent of displaying on a 1MP display with a 1MP sensor.
Keep in mind that one of the reasons you don't see a difference between 720p and 1080p is likely the content source. I work for a telco that also does IPTV, I talked to our engineers and learned that the streams feeding in to our network from the content providers are all 1080i with the exception of sports that are sent to us in 720p (on fast movement the effective faster refresh of the progressive scan is more important than the extra lines of resolution that you get on 1080) So even though most of our STBs are set to 1080p, you're still just getting one of those 2 resolutions, just upscaled. (VOD content is different, much of that is in actual 1080p, but only the newer stuff)
That said, I agree that the jump to 4K is basically pure marketing hype with 2 exceptions: 1) theatrical setups where the screen fills a fairly large portion of your field of view (quite rare in home setups, but some people do manage) and 2) computer monitors where you're sitting very close to the screen.
I always get a big laugh when I see 4K TVs in the 40" range, the odds of you using that as a TV, and being able to tell the difference between 1080p and 4K is about zero.
To be perfectly honest, there's only one reason 4K TVs even exist. Manufacturers loved the switchover from SD to HD. it was a once in a generation opportunity where everyone rushed out to replace their otherwise perfectly good TVs because there really was a visible improvement. That's basically over now as the market penetration of HD TVs is now extremely high and people have no reason to replace them. Manufacturers are willing to do anything to re-capture those glorious years. They have tried smart TVs, and 3D TVs, and nobody cared about either, so now they're trying 4K TVs, and some people are buying it. But once those reach saturation, what are they to do? well, apparently Sharp thinks that if resolution has worked for them twice, why not try a third time? But as others have pointed out, at some point you're not buying a better experience, you're just buying marketing buzz. No different than spending several hundred dollars on an HDMI cable, it won't improve your experience any, but you can try to convince people that you have the best one out there because you spent too much on it.
But PPI is an irrelevant metric when you don't count viewing distance. Computers and smartphones need high PPI because they tend to be used within a foot or two of your eyes. TVs tend to sit 10-20 feet away from you. That 70" screen at 68 PPI is probably more pixels than you can possibly see at the viewing distance you're actually watching it from.
You can't actually see the difference between even HD and 4K in the vast majority of home TV setups. The average setup is a 40-50" TV sitting 10-15 feet away from the viewer, at those distances and that size screen, you just can't see it. (I won't even discuss the poor lighting, glare, and viewing angles of your average home TV setup) Now if you actually have a more theatrical type setup where you have a screen that fills most of your field of view, that's a completely different matter, but that's actually somewhat rare in home setups, in those cases the difference from HD to 4K is noticeable (though not as major as you might think) but even there you're unlikely to notice a difference from 4K to 8K.
Now there is one place that 4K really does shine though, and that's computer monitors, a good 4K monitor is great, but that's because you sit so close to it in that application.