4K TV - worth bothering with?

[apelike]

To be honest I would not bother with 4k as its just another way to sell you an expensive TV that will hardly be use in 4k mode. A bit like HD content, where only a handful of programs out of many are broadcast in HD despite it being 10 years old and a bit like 3D which is hardly ever used.

[Bruno]

I bought a iMac which is 5k screen but not watched anything on it as yet.

[L00b]

Back in October I bought a Samsung 4K TVs and now feel like I wasted my money as you can't really get any 4K programmes. Even the new films coming out won't be 4K because of th costs involved in making them.

I suspect you're talking about media discs (4k BluRays)?

 

Just FYI, movies have long, long been produced with frames at a 4k resolution (with the end result distributed to theaters is 4k or less) The source LOTR sample frames that I saw at a post-prod software developer 15 years ago were already 4k (according to the devs).

 

I'm not sold on 3D or curved screens (gimmicks) at all, or 4k yet (dearth of sources, as amply mentioned). Most current 4K sets are not "true" 4k either, but a lower native res (commonly 3840 x 2160 pixels) with upscaling. In the same way as e.g. early "HD" sets were not "Full HD" 1080p, but "HD ready" 720p/1080i (there is a noticeable difference, on a reasonably large screen).

 

But OLED? Hell yes, next big TV upgrade will be an OLED panel.

Edited January 5, 2016 by L00b

[Berberis]

It's Sky who are struggling at the moment, they can't even broadcast/stream in 1080p let alone 4k.

 

Sky are putting their money into a new set top box system called Sky Q. If it works as advertised, its going to be very good.

 

http://www.sky.com/skyq/

[sgtkate]

The real next leap in TV picture is High Dynamic Range. Currently most of our colours we see on our TVs are manipulated and 'ruined' by contrast settings and so on. HDR works just like on your phone camera in that you get 2 pictures (or more) taken with different brightness settings and then those pictures are merged to get the best overall 'brightness' across the entire image. Blacks will have low brightness and light colours high as a basic example. Currently BT are testing this with the hopes of it being out on the UHD service later on this year.

 

A better explanation than I could give:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/hdr-tv-high-dynamic-television-explained

 

And the links about BTs testing (this says 2 years, my sources say less than that! ):

https://recombu.com/digital/article/bt-sport-ultra-hd-4k-hdr-trial

[JFKvsNixon]

Sky are putting their money into a new set top box system called Sky Q. If it works as advertised, its going to be very good.

 

http://www.sky.com/skyq/

 

It looks interesting, but it doesn't look like it'll surpass Netflix or Amazon Prime. I'd rather Sky concentrated on bringing a consistent true HD 1080p picture without the compression artefacts than jumping head to 4k and charging me loads extra for it.

[PeteMorris]

I suspect it will end up much like the 3d TV's which are basically a white elephant...

 

My TV is a 1080 HD TV, and the issue I have, is if you watch something in HD on a 'normal' channel (Say BBC news), I really can't tell much difference from the none HD channel, plus the fact, I get a message across the screen telling me they're not broadcasting 'my' local news in HD...So you end up having to switch back from HD to the non HD channel. I can't be arsed with the channel hopping, so I rarely if ever watch an HD channel, and I suspect that the 4k ones will suffer much of the same problems.

[Berberis]

It looks interesting, but it doesn't look like it'll surpass Netflix or Amazon Prime. I'd rather Sky concentrated on bringing a consistent true HD 1080p picture without the compression artefacts than jumping head to 4k and charging me loads extra for it.

 

I think it depends on the channel. Each has a set bandwidth/compression which effects the quality of the end picture.

 

On the subject of Sky Q, I agree, its interesting but you can see them moving slowly towards the whole on demand platform. Their bread and butter is live TV (namely sports) which is the driving force behind the retention of such an old format. Netflix, Amazon Prime and iTunes are all very good services and will eventually rule, but while we have people paying a fortune to watch a bunch of pre-madonnas' kick a bag of air around for 90 minutes, there will always be live TV broadcasts.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Berberis

[apelike]

On the subject of Sky Q, I agree, its interesting but you can see them moving slowly towards the whole on demand platform.

 

I think that will eventually be how the BBC will operate especially when most of the country will eventually be superfast.

[the_bloke]

Blu Ray and other physical media is a dying format, everything is moving towards streaming or store-style downloads.

 

In the future new picture formats will be released far quicker as people won't need to replace physical collections of media, you'll just need to buy a new screen to take advantage of it. The limiting factor will be the ability for Joe Public to download things fast enough to watch it properly.

 

There is already 8k screens being previewed at trade shows.