4K gaming and viewing review

It's great to hear that broadcasters are pushing for higher framerates.

Also stage 3 is actually 8K.

 

Very cheap chinese 4k tvs are hitting the market, on amazon for as little as $799. Colleague of mine is seriously thinking about getting one. Would certainly be interesting to hear people's experience with it - but it shows that the cost may make 4k a viable hardware proposition a lot sooner than I thought. And Netflix is already starting tests with it, apparently.

I want low-lag and decent image as a priority and don't have much, so I won't be parting with my set anytime soon, but it's certainly an interesting development.

 

There are concerns about those cheap displays giving the format a bad name.

You'd probably have to rely on displays to upscale content at this point and how good could they be on such a low priced product?

Plus whatever codecs are supported by 4k content probably hasn't been baked into silicon yet.

 

I truly don't understand the point except to sell to the ignorant masses who think bigger numbers == better, and will believe their current content on a 4k set (probably with lousy performance) looks better due to placebo technology. There's no point in buying a 4k set unless it provides an improved picture, which means needing content for it (that isn't compressed to death) and a panel that actually can handle the content without being a smeary grey mess or having low colour precision and poopy viewing angles.

 

There needs to be Netflix-like snail mail services, but instead of shipping DVD they would send a 2.5" hard drive with the movie on it.
Now you get enough bitrate. Even Bluray (100GB version or not) would have trouble because it needs to spin fast?

I'm sure 4K viewing can be done in a useful manner.. But it's more "private theater" rather than "home theater". If you build a big dedicated room, with a movie-grade projector and gigantic screen, $10K worth of audio gear and as much on seating, hire a cooking chef and a butler for the evening.. Then you can barely make the difference out I think.

 

You should tell him to save his money; There is not enough content and those cheap displays are likely rubbish.

 

Heard that 80% of 4k displays sold last year were these no-name sets sold in China.

There may be a chance that whatever 4k standard is set will look at improving color and other picture quality metrics beyond the resolution increase.

 

There are a myriad of potential issues when you start going with the cheap Chinese displays. Color uniformity, viewing angles, backlight uniformity, light bleed, scaling quality, build quality, real contrast ratio, blurring in high motion scenes, etc.

Not to say you can't luck out and get a decent one, but the chances are better than not that you'll get something not terribly good in one or more of the above.

And that still doesn't address the issue that in your average household, at average living room viewing distances with typical HDTV sizes, that the majority of viewers won't notice a difference from a good 1080p HDTV unless they sit a meter or so away from the TV.

Personally, I've been far far more impressed with what OLED brings at 1080p than any 4k TV I've seen. Now, if we're talking about a desktop PC display, that's an entirely different proposition.

Regards,
SB

 

I do see the pixels still on my 42" 1080p TV, but I sit at only about 2.5m.

Do definitely agree with you about the OLED though. First time I saw that in the store, it really stood out and despite being relatively tiny, it was more impressive and attractive than the huge 4k TV.

But would definitely like the Retina like experience on my TV someday.

 

Here's a recent side by side comparison of some 4k tv's along with an oled and plasma model:

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/result-201406013793.htm

Amusingly the "dead technology" Panasonic plasma won, with the review noting:

Looks like I'll be in for a long wait before getting a 4k tv. Makes one kinda sad that plasma died, but so it goes.

 

I'd invite you to the "kinda sad that CRT died club", but we can't admit people who prefer inferior display technologies, sorry.

 

My last 20" CRT finally died. I'm a bit of a sad puppy, but I've mostly gotten used to LCDs.

The only display tech currently on the horizon that has me even a bit excited is OLEDs. Gorgeous picture quality that exceeds the best that LCDs can produce. Would love to get one in house for extended testing, but the price is still .

Regards,
SB

 

The only OLED device I have is the Vita and I love the display, even compared to expensive LCD devices I have like the iPhone 5S, Retina iPad Mini and Retina MacBook Pro.

As soon as I can bag a good Samsung/Sony 42" OLED for less than £2500, I'm bagging one. Unfortunately Sony have reportedly given up on OLED in favour of 4k LED and Samsung are more interesting in leveraging their flexible LCD technology. I don't need or want a curved set, nor do I care about 3D or 4K. A 4K set without 4K content has little appeal and the BDA have been quiet on extending Blu-ray to include 4K.

Frustrating

 

Check Amazon, 4k blurays are already available (and players)

 

Aren't all those "4K blurarys" simply mastered in 4K? The resolution of the image is still 1080p isn't it?

 

I didn't think to question it, I just assumed that they'd be as advertised. Do you have info to suggest they're not native?

 

There isn't a 4k optical disc format.

Meanwhile Japan is starting trials of 4k broadcasts.

Main hang up will be getting media companies to release 4k content. Here's some trivia, the CEOs of companies like CBS and Viacom make several times the CEO of Chase, which has much higher revenues and profits.

Greedy media will hold out for a king's ransom.

We'll probably get low bit rate streams of 4k which is barely better than Blu ray, if at all.

 

They can't be 4k native because there is no Blu-ray standard for 4K. What you're likely seeing (a link would be helpful) is a range of Blu-ray movies that Sony has remastered at 4k, but the resulting movie is still 1080p.

 

If you go to amazon.com and search for "4K bluray" all the discs are "mastered in 4K" or "filmed in 4K". There's a bit of waffle in the descriptions that try to suggest they've been "optimized so that 4K Ultra HD TV owners can take full advantage of the new 4K upscaling technology" although to be honest that sounds kind of hand-wavey to me.

 

I believe the studios have 4k masters which they made in prep for Blu Ray releases.

So for several years, they've been collecting them, including digitizing some old prints of old movies, to preserve thm as well as re-release them.