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4K Telly Discussion

Started by The Boston Crab, October 31, 2018, 10:40:22 PM

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wooders1978

Naturally the moment I finally get around to getting a 4K tv 8k gets announced

Shit Good Nose

I shouldn't worry too much about that - in the UK we're YEARS away from 8K becoming any kind of standard.

Aside from blu rays there's barely any proper 4K stuff out there at the moment, and nothing on regular broadcast (and, as some posts in the thread mentioned, our current broadcasting system isn't going to be able to handle 4K, let alone 8 - as it is it's struggling with standard HD).

There's also the "fact" that the human eye can't tell the difference between 4K and 8K on anything less than something like 100inch screen, but, on the other hand, they said the same about 4K vs full HD, but you can DEFINITELY tell the difference on even small screens, and my eyesight is fairly shit, so take as much salt as you want with that one

biggytitbo

I hear on the 8k tellys real life looks pixellated and washed out in comparison - is that true?

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on November 07, 2018, 02:17:02 PM
Aside from blu rays there's barely any proper 4K stuff out there at the moment, and nothing on regular broadcast (and, as some posts in the thread mentioned, our current broadcasting system isn't going to be able to handle 4K, let alone 8 - as it is it's struggling with standard HD).


I find it quite unlikely there will be another generation of broadcast (in the terrestrial or satellite sense). 4K VOD is done via Amazon and Netflix fairly regularly and the BBC did 4k streaming for the world cup in a limited capacity, why pay for shitloads of expensive infrastructure when you can use someone else's for nowt?

MojoJojo

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 07, 2018, 08:22:06 PM
I find it quite unlikely there will be another generation of broadcast (in the terrestrial or satellite sense). 4K VOD is done via Amazon and Netflix fairly regularly and the BBC did 4k streaming for the world cup in a limited capacity, why pay for shitloads of expensive infrastructure when you can use someone else's for nowt?

I have a friend who works for Sky. Apparently with even a small number of viewers (think like tens of thousands) it's cheaper to use satellite bandwidth than the internet - although this was a few years ago so the cost of unicast will have dropped, and I guess a lot of it is to do with sunk costs.

Anyway, the infrastructure is there and now it's all digital and pretty flexible so changing it to do 4k doesn't cost much, just lost channels. Also they have worked how to do "mixed" broad/uni casts where some data is broadcast and some comes over IP, which is an efficient way of doing things. Although the management don't like that.

Sebastian Cobb

The Sky Q system can be delivered entirely over IP and is in Germany because of decent broadband and the historic popularity of cable beating satellite there, but here they don't want to offer it so as not to compete with Now TV or step on the toes of their satellite operations, so you can only really get it if you live in a listed building or something.

If you're using people like Akamai and/or Brightcove for live streaming then you're only dropping it to a few nodes and everything is cascaded behind ISP's for the most part although you pay a fair bit for the service.

But the main thing is fewer people are watching television as it's broadcast these days and vod is way more convenient than time-shifting via a dvr which means running two networks.

I've ended up going for the Samsung NU8000. It's not OLED and it's not the full HDR experience but I simply read too much about burn-in to risk that much money on it. I also can't really justify those sums when this is half the price, which also precludes a proper QLED. It won't be as impressive in a dark room but it's meant to be excellent at upscaling for the Switch and non-4K content (most of what I will be playing) and runs like shit off a shovel with everything. Also, I'm using a seven year old telly so it'll be a demonstrable upgrade whatever. The motion stuff looks like it genuinely upscales 30fps content to looking like 60. Can't wait to see what it does for the likes of Bloodborne and BotW.

thraxx



Save a bit of money and get a 3.97k or 3.81k tv instead.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: The Boston Crab on November 19, 2018, 09:31:41 AM
I've ended up going for the Samsung NU8000. It's not OLED and it's not the full HDR experience but I simply read too much about burn-in to risk that much money on it. I also can't really justify those sums when this is half the price, which also precludes a proper QLED. It won't be as impressive in a dark room but it's meant to be excellent at upscaling for the Switch and non-4K content (most of what I will be playing) and runs like shit off a shovel with everything. Also, I'm using a seven year old telly so it'll be a demonstrable upgrade whatever. The motion stuff looks like it genuinely upscales 30fps content to looking like 60. Can't wait to see what it does for the likes of Bloodborne and BotW.

It's a good set, and good value for money I think.  The only problem, as someone else mentioned upthread, is that Samsung get very keen to stop supporting things at around the 3-4 year mark (compared to, say, Sony and LG who are both still supporting sets that are 10+ years old), so bear that in mind if you're hoping for something that lasts you a long time.  They stopped supporting the YouTube app on my previous set less than 2 years after I bought it and then removed it totally a short time after, and it had only been out for 6 months when I got it.  Massively annoying.

New Jack

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on November 19, 2018, 10:03:49 AM
It's a good set, and good value for money I think.  The only problem, as someone else mentioned upthread, is that Samsung get very keen to stop supporting things at around the 3-4 year mark (compared to, say, Sony and LG who are both still supporting sets that are 10+ years old), so bear that in mind if you're hoping for something that lasts you a long time.  They stopped supporting the YouTube app on my previous set less than 2 years after I bought it and then removed it totally a short time after, and it had only been out for 6 months when I got it.  Massively annoying.

Oh yeah. My little Samsung telly had a dropbox tie-in where I could stream media from a linked dropbox account, which went well with them giving me tons of space. While I am retroactively surprised such a piracy-friendly feature ever made it at all, they zapped it last year with nary an explanation other than it's "not supported".

The YouTube app though? Bloody hell

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: New Jack on November 19, 2018, 10:06:23 AM
Oh yeah. My little Samsung telly had a dropbox tie-in where I could stream media from a linked dropbox account, which went well with them giving me tons of space. While I am retroactively surprised such a piracy-friendly feature ever made it at all, they zapped it last year with nary an explanation other than it's "not supported".

The YouTube app though? Bloody hell

It did coincide with the time the YT app had a major overhaul, but I'm pretty sure every other manufacturer just reworked their respective apps to take into account the change, whereas Samsung just stopped support and then canned it.  They were about to stop supporting the 5 OD app when I replaced it a few weeks ago, and updates for the general web browser were stopped earlier in the year, so you won't be able to browse the web on it before long.

It was an excellent TV, but their poor long-term support was annoying and not an isolated instance.

Cheers, dudes. It won't be an issue for me as I'm literally never going to use any of their apps or change the input from HDMI 1. Best of all is that I can justify it to my wife because it's a much more reasonable price and I won't have to live in fear of her searching the model name and number.

biggytitbo

if you have a PS4 or similar device that can run apps connected to the HDMI-CEC port on your telly you can start it up and control it using your standard TV remote, so you don't really need to use the built in apps at all.

Yeah, exactly. Much more convenient for me.

Dex Sawash

I sort of need a new TV. Mine has a speaker buzz and I'm not buying a soundbar for 1/3 of the price of a new tv as a workaround. Using computer speakers for now. Will push the soundbar cash toward a new set.

Will probably go 60" or so, which are almost all 4K now. How much fucking with settings do you have to do to make 1080p video look right? Do you have to fiddle around depending on what the type of show is? They never have 1080p sources avaialable to view in the store.

Sebastian Cobb

Usually some nerd posts the calibration/optimum settings for sets on avforums.

hedgehog90

All this talk of upscaling 1080p to 4K makes me wonder, do 4K tellys bilinearly interpolate the color between each pixel?
Given the insane pixel density I assumed that most would simply do the nearest-neighbour, 1px = 2px type scaling.
I'd imagine the latter would look better, particularly for gaming where hard-edge crispness between pixels is a positive.

Eitherway, the issue of 'bad' upscaling should only apply when the output resolution doesn't factor into the display resolution.
1080p content on a 4K telly should look fine (2160/1080 = 2), even 720p shouldn't look too bad (2160/720 = 3), it's the stuff in between that will always look rubbish, upscaled.

Endicott

Quote from: Dex Sawash on November 22, 2018, 11:39:27 PM
I sort of need a new TV. Mine has a speaker buzz and I'm not buying a soundbar for 1/3 of the price of a new tv as a workaround. Using computer speakers for now. Will push the soundbar cash toward a new set.

If they don't sound better than a flat screen TV, they must be really shit computer speakers.

NU8000 is an excellent upgrade over my old telly. Did all right on the price in the end, too. Only shiter is my soundbar doesn't appear to pass 4K HDR shit on but I always listen on headphones anyway so fuck it. Lights now look like lights, intense and then naturally dimming. It's cool.

MojoJojo

Quote from: hedgehog90 on November 23, 2018, 05:29:30 PM
All this talk of upscaling 1080p to 4K makes me wonder, do 4K tellys bilinearly interpolate the color between each pixel?
Given the insane pixel density I assumed that most would simply do the nearest-neighbour, 1px = 2px type scaling.
I'd imagine the latter would look better, particularly for gaming where hard-edge crispness between pixels is a positive.

Eitherway, the issue of 'bad' upscaling should only apply when the output resolution doesn't factor into the display resolution.
1080p content on a 4K telly should look fine (2160/1080 = 2), even 720p shouldn't look too bad (2160/720 = 3), it's the stuff in between that will always look rubbish, upscaled.

I think it's all a bit more complicated that nowadays, it's all fourier transforms and stuff.

Benevolent Despot

Yeah, not sure of the science but I don't think upscaling 1080p to 2160p is simply 1 pixel = 4 pixels. There's some interpolation going on and also colours change a bit and who knows. For perfect clarity you should match source to display resolution.

OK, I actually set this up properly now with the correct calibration and game mode settings and fuckin state of Forza Motorsport 7 through this. Absolutely mad. Breath of the Wild also looks like it runs at 60fps in Game mode. Insane how good motion and lighting and colours are now.

Shit Good Nose

#52
Quote from: Dex Sawash on November 22, 2018, 11:39:27 PM
How much fucking with settings do you have to do to make 1080p video look right? Do you have to fiddle around depending on what the type of show is? They never have 1080p sources avaialable to view in the store.

It's moved on a little bit from a few years ago where, in addition to the main settings, you had to spend weeks microscopically tweaking stuff like the white balance, flesh tones, gamma and all that - those tend to be already properly optimised now and you can set up most sets within half an hour or so.  You still need to switch things off (motion settings always seem to be on by default for some reason) and adjust to suit your personal viewing environment, but a quick Google search on the AVForums or rtings.com will get the main bits done for you so all you're left with is those few subjective settings.  Took me the best part of a year before I was happy with our previous Samsung set due to those endless tweakings, but our new LG was pretty much fine out of the box once I took it out of store mode and switched off all the motion settings - I only had to play with the basic settings (although you do have to apply them to each source individually - no set I demoed correctly applied the same settings automatically despite having the option to do so, but that's probs just a firmware thing).

I don't bother with upscaling stuff - always looks a tad artificial to me.  Like Benevolent Despot, I watch it in whatever resolution it's supposed to be in.

Sebastian Cobb

Unless you're watching 1080p with the images only taking up roughly half the screen, some form of upscaling is taking place.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 25, 2018, 12:17:39 PM
Unless you're watching 1080p with the images only taking up roughly half the screen, some form of upscaling is taking place.

What I mean is I don't opt for the extra upscaling settings, like I don't bother with the motion smoothing etc - for example on our new LG there's an option to upscale HD to 4K (both from an external source and broadcast TV), but beyond a quick demo I haven't bothered with it at all.

Dex Sawash

I'm ok with fiddling with it at setup. Just don't want to bother each time I switch channels if the shows were shot on different sorts of media/framerate or some other thing I think exists but maybe dossn't. I suppose I should look at liquidation places for a big 1080p set at a bargain price, won't be adopting 4k until most live stuff goes 4k.

Sebastian Cobb

The tv has to support it and I imagine most do, but something I find important that my bluray player and raspberrypi does but my firestick doesn't is change framerates to match the source video file - eg 24fps for films, 30 or 60 for US tv (although surprisingly a lot of US single-camera tv seems to be using 24p 'filmic' these days if the online rips are anything to go by) etc.

wasp_f15ting

https://www.rtings.com/

Have a read of the reviews here, they are fairly comprehensive.

I'm now realising that while the resolution bump is impressive, and HDR can be really spectacular with certain games (Tetris Effect, Forza Horizon 4, Spiderman, AC Odyssey and Horizon Zero Dawn are particularly gorgeous), it's the response time and the motion handling which are most significant to me. Playing Street Fighter 3 or Garou Mark of the Wolves or Ikaruga or BlazBlue even on the Switch, they genuinely look like new games and they feel incredibly good. Like, I'm playing Ikaruga stage one which I've done over and over for like twenty hours and while my muscle memory plays the game without thinking, it's genuinely like I'm seeing it for the first time. I can see the crisp outlines and details on enemy ships and my own ship feels much faster and more responsive. It's pretty remarkable. All the Neo Geo and Zero Div arcade ports look and feel tremendous. Now I understand the kind of wank who buys some shit house monitor.

Benevolent Despot

Yeah it's good to go over old games on a new TV. Some original 2002 Xbox games are compatible with the One X with a 4K patch, plus the double frame-rate of the TV, it's pretty great what you can get out of old games. I'm still toying with the settings. For the 4K gaming I sit about as close to the TV as I would a monitor. Going to try out my Dreamcast on it soon. Will have to get a VGA to HDMI converter box though since TV manufacturers now assume time started yesterday and don't include analogue inputs any more. Also of interest I got my 2012 laptop outputting 4k onto the TV even though it's not supposed to. Here's the method: https://communities.intel.com/thread/56530 - it's only possible up to 25fps but an interesting novelty. You could use it to play 4K films from your computer or for photo viewing/editing. The only game on my laptop that could really run at 4K is Age of Empires 2. Maybe I'll try some of the 90s PC games as well. Quake 2 4K?