Latest TVs Are Ready for Their Close-Ups (wsj.com)

An anonymous share a WSJ article: The latest televisions have more pixels than ever. But can your eyes detect the difference? The answer is yes -- if you sit close enough. Old TVs had 349,920 pixels. High-definition flat screens bumped up the total to 2 million. Ultrahigh-definition sets inflated it to 8 million. And manufacturers are now experimenting with 8K TVs that have an astounding 33 million pixels. More pixels render hair, fur and skin with greater detail, but the benefit depends on viewing the screen from an ideal distance so the sharpness of the images is clear, but the tiny points of illumination aren't individually distinguishable. According to standards set by the International Telecommunication Union, that ideal distance is 3 times the height of an HDTV screen, 1.5 times the height of a UHDTV screen and .75 times the height of an 8K screen (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; here's a PDF copy of the newspaper). Given those measurements, viewers should sit 6 feet away from a 50-inch HDTV with a 24.5-inch tall screen. But they should sit just 3 feet from a UHDTV of the same size, closer than most Americans prefer.

Comments

Dumb

[AmiMoJo]

This entirely misses the point of 8k. It's not just a resolution bump, it addresses multiple use-cases:

- Very large screens / projectors
- Computer monitors that people typically sit much closer to
- 120Hz native for ultra smooth, realistic motion
- Much higher dynamic range and more accurate colour rendering
- Comfortably exceeding the capabilities of your eyes in all situations

If you want a perfect picture, like looking out of a window, this is what you need. Most people haven't even seen 8k in real life, and when they have it's often on an early model TV that doesn't support the full colour range or 120Hz.

8k is supposed to be the ultimate, the final form of 2D television. NHK, the people behind it, skipped over 4k because it's just a stepping stone to perfection. If anything is to blame here, it's 4k being a half measure and 8k not arriving quickly enough.

Re:Dumb

[Kjella]

You sound like an audiophile that think people can hear 96KHz/24bit audio. People don't even notice that cinema movies create less than 4K masters and blow them up on screens the size of a wall. And that most movies are shot in 24p because people want them to be. The biggest shortcoming of current screens is the contrast level and backlight bleeding, if you could get a screen that went from max HDR to perfect black that would be the biggest improvement. The second biggest improvement is color and there rec. 2020 is just huge compared to rec. 709, bigger than even reference monitors can provide. And despite stretching it for HDR the granularity of 10 bit color over 8 bit is also pretty huge. Oh yes and also the color volume, being able to do not only intense whiteness but also intense color.

Basically, if people saw a well-mastered 4K BluRay on a laser projector (which is as close as we get to a "perfect" image right now) I doubt anyone would care about 8K/12bit/120fps. The problems we have are far more mundane. And that goes doubly so for OTA broadcast, streaming or other bandwidth limited media. Personally I'm hoping for the "real" electroluminescent QLEDs to steal the show, not Samsung's latest quantum dot-enhanced LCDs but OLED-style perfect contrast with LED intensity and QD color accuracy. The first working early prototype was shown in May, at least a few more years out.

Re: Another thing about old TVs

[Malc]

My 32" 8 year old HDTV suits me fine. Given the amount of compression artefacts and detail loss in the signal I receive, I see little point in replacing it with something better until it dies.