Speaker 1: Get technology with tech Stuff from stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm a senior writer for how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and as always I like to cover all
Speaker 1: things technical, technological, and otherwise techie on this show. Today,
Speaker 1: I thought we would explore the world of ultra high
Speaker 1: definition TV or u h D t V or four
Speaker 1: K TV. There are a lot of different names for it,
Speaker 1: and we'll also touch on other stuff like eight K
Speaker 1: t V. Which is it twice as good as four
Speaker 1: K TV? You'll have to wait and find out. But
Speaker 1: it's really this episode not so much about the technology
Speaker 1: behind what makes four K and eight K television possible,
Speaker 1: but rather to kind of explain what are the differences
Speaker 1: between the those the ultra high definition formats and our
Speaker 1: current high definition formats and even older standard definition formats.
Speaker 1: What has changed? Are those changes meaningful? Should you run
Speaker 1: out and buy a four K television set right now? So?
Speaker 1: I'll talk about times where u h D makes sense
Speaker 1: and times where it might not make sense, where it
Speaker 1: may be indistinguishable from an HD set. But be warned
Speaker 1: this episode shall also be fraught with opinions fraught, I say,
Speaker 1: and those opinions will be mine, but I'll do my
Speaker 1: best to maintain a semi objective point of view for
Speaker 1: the most part. Just keep in mind that some of
Speaker 1: this is based off my own observation, and your own
Speaker 1: experience could be probably not dramatically different from mine, but
Speaker 1: different enough to be significant. So, uh, this is a
Speaker 1: little more of an opinion piece than what I typically
Speaker 1: do for tech stuff unless I get, you know, my
Speaker 1: dander up about something like net neutrality. Now, if you
Speaker 1: were to be super super cynical, and I am not
Speaker 1: this person, but if you were super cynical, you might say,
Speaker 1: four k's just a technology that's being pushed on us
Speaker 1: by TV manufacturers because they need a way to generate customers.
Speaker 1: They need to find a product that appeals to customers
Speaker 1: so that they can sell stuff and make money, and
Speaker 1: four K is just the gimmick that they're hitching their
Speaker 1: cart to. This case, the gimmick is a four K horse.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, how do you convince your customers that
Speaker 1: they need to upgrade to a new television. You've got
Speaker 1: to come up with something that creates a new demand, right,
Speaker 1: because TVs tend to be fairly expensive. There might not
Speaker 1: be the most expensive thing that you purchase. A car
Speaker 1: is going to be more expensive, but they can be
Speaker 1: significantly expensive. So it's an investment. How do you convince
Speaker 1: people to cough up the dough to make an investment
Speaker 1: in a new television if their old TV is still
Speaker 1: perfect in working order. You have to come up with
Speaker 1: things that add value to the product. So if you're
Speaker 1: trying to convince people who are typically waiting several years
Speaker 1: between television purchases to upgrade, you gotta figure out, well,
Speaker 1: what what's the hook? Where do I get them? And
Speaker 1: in the past we've seen a couple of UH misfires
Speaker 1: from the television industry and trying to create the sort
Speaker 1: of value added features in televisions that haven't necessarily paid
Speaker 1: off the way the industry wanted it to UH like.
Speaker 1: About a decade ago, TV companies began to experiment by
Speaker 1: making television's smart, but those first few smart TVs were
Speaker 1: awfully dumb. There was an overreliance on widgets and those
Speaker 1: were mostly irritating not helpful. Over time, companies got better
Speaker 1: at implementing smart features, and today smart TVs are pretty
Speaker 1: standard in stores and there their features are a little
Speaker 1: more useful than the old ones were for the most part. Again,
Speaker 1: it all depends upon who's making the user interface and
Speaker 1: how it's implemented with the television and the remote control
Speaker 1: are a lot of factors that come into play. I
Speaker 1: still do not own a smart TV, despite being a
Speaker 1: lover of technology and the fact that I love new
Speaker 1: and interesting toys, I haven't purchased a smart TV. The
Speaker 1: last time I bought a TV, it was before the
Speaker 1: smart TV craze had really taken off. It it started,
Speaker 1: but you can still find plenty of televisions that were
Speaker 1: not smart TVs, and they were slightly cheaper, and I
Speaker 1: didn't really want any of the smart TVs that were
Speaker 1: on the market back when I was last purchasing and television,
Speaker 1: so I skipped it. Uh, these days, I might not
Speaker 1: skip it. But I'll get more into that a little
Speaker 1: bit later. Then, for several years, television companies were really
Speaker 1: trying to push three D technology, and this was one
Speaker 1: of those sort of transparent efforts to create a value
Speaker 1: for the customer that ultimately fizzled out. Customers just didn't
Speaker 1: respond to it. There was a lot of apathy on
Speaker 1: the part of consumers. We just didn't really see a
Speaker 1: huge need for three D television. Part of the problem
Speaker 1: was that without experiencing it, you can't really know whether
Speaker 1: or not that purchase is going to be worthwhile. So
Speaker 1: you would need to go to some place and try
Speaker 1: out at three D television with good three D content
Speaker 1: before you could decide is this for me? And that
Speaker 1: requires a lot more effort. It also, uh didn't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of content right Like, you couldn't find
Speaker 1: a lot of three D content. There were three D movies,
Speaker 1: so you could go out and buy blue rays or
Speaker 1: even get some streaming ones that were compatible with certain
Speaker 1: types of three D television's, but there wasn't a whole
Speaker 1: lot of content out there, so you felt like you
Speaker 1: were buying into an ecosystem without a whole lot of
Speaker 1: stuff to actually watch. It was kind of a worst
Speaker 1: case scenario for three D technology. And these days you
Speaker 1: don't see it touted as a major feature in television.
Speaker 1: Is there's still a lot of TVs that are three
Speaker 1: D capable, but often that's just one little bullet point
Speaker 1: on a list and is not being touted as the
Speaker 1: main feature of a television. It's rare that you find
Speaker 1: a TV that pushes itself as a three D television.
Speaker 1: And now let's talk about resolution. To do that, we're
Speaker 1: gonna start earlier than four K or even HD. This
Speaker 1: is all about laying the groundwork, which you longtime listeners
Speaker 1: of tech stuff. No, that's kind of how I like
Speaker 1: to do things. So to begin, we're talking about image
Speaker 1: sharpness or resolution. That is really the focus, no pun
Speaker 1: intended of this episode. This isn't exactly the same thing
Speaker 1: as image quality. They're not synonymous. It is a factor
Speaker 1: in image quality, but not the only one. Other factors
Speaker 1: also determine whether or not the image you see on
Speaker 1: a screen is good or isn't good. The resolution is important,
Speaker 1: but it's not the end all be all. Two other
Speaker 1: important things to consider would be color representation and contrast.
Speaker 1: For example, those are very important elements in picture quality,
Speaker 1: and without them, if you don't have very good contrast,
Speaker 1: or if you don't have good color representation, the images
Speaker 1: might be in really sharp focus, but they're still not
Speaker 1: gonna look as good as a television that has really
Speaker 1: good contrast and really good color representation. In fact, there's
Speaker 1: some people who argue if you were to get two
Speaker 1: sets together, and one of them is in four K
Speaker 1: and one of those in HD, and the HD one
Speaker 1: has really good color representation in contrast, but the four
Speaker 1: K has four times the resolution. Arguably that you would
Speaker 1: probably think that HD set is actually giving you the
Speaker 1: better picture because of that amazing color representation. More on
Speaker 1: that a little bit later as well. In a way,
Speaker 1: resolution really comes down to being a selling point, similar
Speaker 1: to the way megapixels are for digital cameras. Uh My
Speaker 1: producer Dylan could tell you that just because one camera
Speaker 1: might be advertised as taking images with a larger number
Speaker 1: of megapixels, it does not necessarily mean that those images
Speaker 1: are going to be more pleasing to the eye than
Speaker 1: a camera that has maybe fewer megapixels in the images
Speaker 1: it produces. There are other factors that matter a lot,
Speaker 1: but megapixels are an easy way to point at differentiation
Speaker 1: between two camera models. Right. If you're selling cameras, it's
Speaker 1: easier to say, well, this camera takes eight megapixel pictures,
Speaker 1: but this one takes twelve megapixel pictures, so it's four
Speaker 1: megapixels better. It's easier to make that a selling point,
Speaker 1: even though all the different factors that really determine the
Speaker 1: quality of an image are much more subtle than that,
Speaker 1: so the same thing is true. I would argue with
Speaker 1: high resolution televisions, it's easier to say four K is
Speaker 1: a higher resolution and therefore is better than HD than
Speaker 1: it does to dig down into all the particulars, which
Speaker 1: is what we're going to do today. If you listened
Speaker 1: to UH, there's an episode of tech Stuff called What's
Speaker 1: the Big Deal with Megapixels? We talked about this. This
Speaker 1: was back in two thousand nine, and that was Chris Palette,
Speaker 1: my former co host, and I. We sat down and
Speaker 1: talked about megapixels and why they aren't the end all
Speaker 1: be all in digital cameras. You could almost take that
Speaker 1: episode and do a search replace for megapixel to resolution
Speaker 1: and camera to television and have a very similar argument
Speaker 1: for this particular episode, but please don't do that, otherwise
Speaker 1: I'll be wasting my time for the next thirty five
Speaker 1: minutes or so that I record this now. And it's
Speaker 1: core resolution is referring to how many points of light
Speaker 1: or pixels if we're talking displays make up the images
Speaker 1: you see on screen. So if your television was just
Speaker 1: one pixel, you would just get one solid block of
Speaker 1: light as your picture. It would be whatever the color
Speaker 1: of light was being displayed at your one at that time.
Speaker 1: But that's it. You would have like red or green
Speaker 1: or blue or whatever it might be, or just white.
Speaker 1: That's all it would be able to show. Because it's
Speaker 1: one pixel, it's one point of light. It would just
Speaker 1: be a really big one. Pixels can come in different sizes.
Speaker 1: They can be teeny teeny tiny, or they could be larger.
Speaker 1: Very frequently, I use an analogy where I talk about
Speaker 1: imagine you've got a wooden frame and you've got some
Speaker 1: blocks that you can place within that frame to make
Speaker 1: different pictures. And each block is of a solid color.
Speaker 1: So you've got lots of different blocks to choose from,
Speaker 1: but you have a limited number that you can use
Speaker 1: at any given time because the size of the frame
Speaker 1: and the eyes of the blocks determine how many blocks
Speaker 1: you can use. So you've got this one frame and
Speaker 1: you get sixteen blocks, and it's your job to make
Speaker 1: a car out of those sixteen blocks, or rather the
Speaker 1: frame can hold sixteen blocks. You've got enough different colors
Speaker 1: to choose whatever you want. Well, you might be able
Speaker 1: to make something that's vaguely car shaped, and people might
Speaker 1: be able to figure out what you were creating based
Speaker 1: upon association, but it's not really gonna look like a car.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be really blocky. Well, let's say that I
Speaker 1: give you that same size frame, but now I'm giving
Speaker 1: you much much, much smaller blocks, and you have sixteen
Speaker 1: thousand of them instead of sixteen. Well, now you could
Speaker 1: make an image of a car that looks much more
Speaker 1: car like because these pixels are smaller, You've got more
Speaker 1: of them, the resolution is better. It's still gonna be
Speaker 1: a little jagged because you're still using blocks, but it's
Speaker 1: going to look much more like an actual car. Then
Speaker 1: let's say I give you a hundred sixty thousand blocks.
Speaker 1: They are even smaller, and you can use those to
Speaker 1: make your image of a car. Each time I'm reducing
Speaker 1: the pixel size, I'm also increasing the number of pixels
Speaker 1: that can fit within that frame. And each time the
Speaker 1: resolution increases, you get a better level of detail with
Speaker 1: each decrease in size and increase in number. So standard
Speaker 1: definition in the United States for the old four three
Speaker 1: aspect ratio TVs was it was seven hundred four by
Speaker 1: four hundred eighty pixels. You had uh a width of
Speaker 1: a screen that was seven hundred four pixels wide, and
Speaker 1: you had a height of the screen that was four
Speaker 1: hundred eighty pixels tall. This was really the video source resolution.
Speaker 1: When you look at the actual resolution of television screens,
Speaker 1: it's a little different, but that gets so complicated. We're
Speaker 1: gonna focus on the video formats the standards. So four
Speaker 1: eighty pixels tall, and that's how we would measure resolution.
Speaker 1: We looked at vertical resolution. How many pixels vertically do
Speaker 1: you have, So in the US it was four eighty.
Speaker 1: If you take those two numbers, the four tall by
Speaker 1: seven hundred four wide, and you multiply them together, you
Speaker 1: determine how many pixels are in that feed in the
Speaker 1: first place, and in this case you end up with
Speaker 1: a number that's three d thirty seven thousand, nine hundred
Speaker 1: twenty pixels. So even in my example of a hundred
Speaker 1: sixty thousand little blocks to create your picture of a car,
Speaker 1: that was about half of what standard definition television was
Speaker 1: capable of showing. Of course, it's never that simple, because
Speaker 1: the world is a complicated, messy place. For one thing,
Speaker 1: the center definition would be different in Europe than in
Speaker 1: the United States because the systems that Europe used were
Speaker 1: independent of these systems we used here in the US.
Speaker 1: So PAL and c CAMP systems spawned television sets with
Speaker 1: screens that had seven four pixels wide but five hundred
Speaker 1: seventy six pixels tall, which meant you ended up with
Speaker 1: a grand total of four hundred five thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: four pixels, so slightly different between Europe and the US. Now,
Speaker 1: I could also talk a little bit about horizontal scaling,
Speaker 1: but that just will delay us from getting to uh
Speaker 1: D even longer, and honestly, it's not really that important,
Speaker 1: so we'll move on to talk about high definition or
Speaker 1: h d TV. These sets were able to display more
Speaker 1: pixels on a screen than standard definition screens, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna stick to television's here because we could go down
Speaker 1: the rabbit hole of displays in general, like computer monitors
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing, but that's beyond the scope
Speaker 1: of this episode. We're really talking about four K t
Speaker 1: V s when you get down to it. So you've
Speaker 1: got three major types of high definition resolutions seven twenty
Speaker 1: ten A d P, and ten A d I. Now
Speaker 1: the two ten eight s have the same resolution but
Speaker 1: display those lines of pixels in different ways. So P
Speaker 1: stands for progressive scan meaning that it's showing all the
Speaker 1: pixels in every every run of a refresh. The I
Speaker 1: stands for an relays scanning. You're showing every other line
Speaker 1: with every refresh, but you're doing those refreshes frequently enough
Speaker 1: where the human I can't pick up ideally the fact
Speaker 1: that you're only getting half of the lines of pixels
Speaker 1: on any given instant. Uh So, again where it goes
Speaker 1: outside the scope of four K television's just know that
Speaker 1: you're seeing a lot more pixels than you would with
Speaker 1: standard definition. With seven twenty, we're looking at a video
Speaker 1: format of one thousand, two hundred and eighty columns of
Speaker 1: pixels versus seven twenty rows of pixels. So again we're
Speaker 1: looking at the height that vertical element vertical resolution seven
Speaker 1: twenty pixels tall, but you've got seven and twenty times
Speaker 1: one two hundred eighty that gives you more than nine
Speaker 1: hundred thousand pixels. In actuality, it turns out to be
Speaker 1: eight seventy six thousand. That's because of the way that
Speaker 1: television is actually display this information. So again it's a
Speaker 1: little bit less than what you would get if you
Speaker 1: just multiply those two numbers together, but in the same ballpark.
Speaker 1: Then you have ten e D resolution, which is one
Speaker 1: thousand eighty pixels tall. Again vertical resolution, but it has
Speaker 1: one thousand nine pixels wide. So you multiply those two
Speaker 1: numbers together, you get two million, seventy three thousand, six
Speaker 1: hundred pixels, though the real number is two million, five
Speaker 1: thousand fifty six for ten a d P and one
Speaker 1: million fived five thousand two d I because again it
Speaker 1: does that interlacing. So uh. The important thing to remember again,
Speaker 1: way more pixels than you would get with standard definition,
Speaker 1: but you really only enjoy the benefit if you are
Speaker 1: getting high definition content, and this is the same that
Speaker 1: is true for ultra high definition content, like you have
Speaker 1: to have the content to go on the set to
Speaker 1: actually be able to enjoy this boost in pixels. If
Speaker 1: the information is not there, then all you can do
Speaker 1: is perhaps up gale the image, which mostly involves a
Speaker 1: lot of guesswork. It doesn't magically convert standard definition to
Speaker 1: high definition video. If you get the upscaling, that typically
Speaker 1: involves an algorithm that's making a best guess what a
Speaker 1: non existent pixel in a video source would be based
Speaker 1: on its neighbors. So you get an incoming video source
Speaker 1: that standard definition that's set for a certain number of pixels,
Speaker 1: you're going to put it on a television that has
Speaker 1: effectively twice as many pixels, maybe more, And in order
Speaker 1: to fill in all that information that doesn't exist, the
Speaker 1: algorithm would essentially say, well, all the neighboring pixels for
Speaker 1: this one that doesn't exist, but should they're all read.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna make this one red too, because my
Speaker 1: guess is based upon the information I have it should
Speaker 1: be read. It does this over and over and over
Speaker 1: again for the entire picture. So these algorithms are pretty good,
Speaker 1: but they're not perfect. Also, they don't they don't talk.
Speaker 1: I I said talking to make a point, but they
Speaker 1: don't actually speak because they're algorithms. Now, I think it's
Speaker 1: safe to say that most people think of ten A
Speaker 1: D as the basic high definition set these days rather
Speaker 1: than the seven twenty unless they're looking at smaller TVs.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's really important with high definition
Speaker 1: and also ultra high definition is the screen size. At
Speaker 1: ten a D t V with a forty screen has
Speaker 1: just as many pixels as a ten A D t
Speaker 1: V with a seventy screen. So if you've got two
Speaker 1: televisions and one is and is much larger than the other,
Speaker 1: but they're both at the same resolution, they both have
Speaker 1: the same number of pixels, the smaller set crams those
Speaker 1: pixels together much more closely. They're smaller than the larger
Speaker 1: set is. Now, usually the difference in size isn't so
Speaker 1: great that you can actually pick up on the difference,
Speaker 1: like being able to actually see the pixels unless you're
Speaker 1: right up there on the screen. So it's not like
Speaker 1: you necessarily notice it if you're watching the television from
Speaker 1: a good viewing distance. And we'll talk about that a
Speaker 1: little bit more later on too. If you get really
Speaker 1: close to a screen, or you start looking at seriously
Speaker 1: huge screens at lower resolutions, then you're gonna start noticing pixels.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about ultra high definition television specifically. Now
Speaker 1: this includes four K, but we'll also talk about eight
Speaker 1: K sets. That's uh the concept televisions that, if they
Speaker 1: ever do come to market, are going to be further
Speaker 1: into the future. I mean, you could pour out a
Speaker 1: ridiculous amount of cash and get an eight K television set,
Speaker 1: but it would make no sense because there's nothing to
Speaker 1: watch on it, not at eight K resolution, not unless
Speaker 1: you're also paying people to make eight K content for
Speaker 1: you to watch on your eight K TV. And if
Speaker 1: that's the case, I'm I'm amazed, and I want you
Speaker 1: to adopt me because it sounds like you're loaded. But
Speaker 1: when we talk about ultra high definition, most people are
Speaker 1: actually talking about four K. UH. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of different terms uh D, ultra definition four K TV
Speaker 1: that all have been used interchangeably, and it's confused the
Speaker 1: market a little bit. In fact, four K alone is
Speaker 1: a confusing term. But some of you might say, well,
Speaker 1: whatever happened to two K? Like, why did we go
Speaker 1: from ten A D to four K? What happened to
Speaker 1: two K? I heard about two K video cameras. Why
Speaker 1: don't we have two K television sets? Well, you do
Speaker 1: have two K projectors. Those do exist. So if you
Speaker 1: want to get a projector and use a projection instead
Speaker 1: of a classic television, you can get a two K projector.
Speaker 1: But there are also two K t V s. Technically,
Speaker 1: you can make an argument that ten A D h
Speaker 1: D television sets are actually two K t v s.
Speaker 1: And all of this has to do with the way
Speaker 1: we changed our perspective on television resolution by nine D degrees.
Speaker 1: So what do I mean by that? Well, remember a
Speaker 1: ten A D h D television has a resolution of
Speaker 1: one thousand, nine twenty picks wide by one thousand eighty
Speaker 1: pixels tall. So we always talked about vertical resolution, but
Speaker 1: we don't do that with Ultra high Definition. We we
Speaker 1: did it with standard definition. Standard definition we defined by
Speaker 1: vertical resolution. High Definition we defined by vertical resolution. So
Speaker 1: we should do the same with Ultra high Definition TV, right,
Speaker 1: you would think, but that's not the case. Instead, we
Speaker 1: turn our perspective ninety degrees. Now we talk about resolution
Speaker 1: by horizontal resolution, not vertical, so we're looking at how
Speaker 1: many pixels are there from left to right, not from
Speaker 1: top to bottom. Why. I don't know. Someone made that decision,
Speaker 1: and it's frustrating because it is inconsistent with the way
Speaker 1: we've described televisions in the past. However, using this new
Speaker 1: way of looking at resolution, where we're looking at horizontal
Speaker 1: rather than vertical, we can look at ten eighty TVs
Speaker 1: as being two K because the resolution for a ten
Speaker 1: A D set is one thousand n twenty pixels wide
Speaker 1: by one thousand eighty pixels tall. Well, if we look
Speaker 1: at that nineteen twenty wide and we round up, you
Speaker 1: get two K. And rounding up is perfectly legit because
Speaker 1: that's what companies are already doing with four K and
Speaker 1: eight K sets. They don't actually have four thousand pixels
Speaker 1: wide horizontal resolution or eight thousand pixels wide horizontal resolution. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's less than that, but they round up. So if
Speaker 1: they can round up, then we can round up. So
Speaker 1: now you're ten a D set. Congratulations, it just got
Speaker 1: upgraded to a two K television. Nothing about it changed technologically.
Speaker 1: We just change the way we measure resolution by looking
Speaker 1: horizontally instead of vertically. And if it sounds like I'm
Speaker 1: a little snarky about this, it's probably because as someone
Speaker 1: who tries to communicate things about technology and science, it
Speaker 1: is really frustrating when people change up the way you
Speaker 1: measure stuff. So four K resolution, let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: A four K set or u h D set has
Speaker 1: a screen resolution of three thousand, eight hundred forty pixels
Speaker 1: by two thousand, one hundred sixty. So again, neither of
Speaker 1: those numbers are four thousand, But now we're looking at
Speaker 1: that three thousand, eight hundred forty pixel wide that horizontal
Speaker 1: resolution number, and we're we're rounding up to four K. Also,
Speaker 1: real TVs don't have that exact resolution, but again that's
Speaker 1: the case across the board. That's the standard. However, that
Speaker 1: has been set. It is not the standard for four
Speaker 1: K that was originally set by Digital Cinema Initiatives. Uh.
Speaker 1: They set a four thousand pixel wide standard ages ago,
Speaker 1: but no one actually makes TVs that follow that standard.
Speaker 1: That standard, by the way, was specifically four thousand, ninety
Speaker 1: six pixels. It wasn't four thousand, even Scoff. Scoff said
Speaker 1: the TV manufacturers, and that's why we get the three thousand,
Speaker 1: hundred forty by two thousand, one hundred and sixty nonsense.
Speaker 1: But here's the good news. The difference in resolution between
Speaker 1: what four K actually is and what it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be based upon Digital Cinema Initiatives proposal is about
Speaker 1: and at that percentage it is imperceptible to the human eye.
Speaker 1: So if you were to switch that three thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred forty pixels wide to four thousand ninety pixels wide,
Speaker 1: no one would notice. It's too small a change for
Speaker 1: it to be uh perceptible. So or perceivable, or any
Speaker 1: of those words you wouldn't notice, is my point. This
Speaker 1: did mark where we started looking at horizontal resolution instead
Speaker 1: of vertical though, so that has changed the industry. Uh
Speaker 1: If you multiply those numbers together, by the way, and
Speaker 1: you're wondering how many pixels would be in a four
Speaker 1: K image, you're talking about eight million, two four hundred pixels,
Speaker 1: so you do get around four times the number of
Speaker 1: pixels on your screen as you would with ten eight sets.
Speaker 1: So that probably also adds more confusion. With the four K.
Speaker 1: People might think, oh, four K doesn't really mean four thousand,
Speaker 1: it means four times the resolution of ten eight. That's
Speaker 1: not exactly true either. Besides which you wouldn't call it
Speaker 1: four K, you'd call it four x and if that
Speaker 1: were the case, But it does have the benefit of
Speaker 1: making people more confused. So yeah, now, just like HD,
Speaker 1: you would have to get u h D content onto
Speaker 1: your television set in order to really enjoy that higher resolution.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you're really looking at more examples of upscaling, where
Speaker 1: you're taking in a lower resolution image and adding more
Speaker 1: information into it in order to display it in a
Speaker 1: uh D format. Meanwhile, you probably heard of eight K sets,
Speaker 1: which don't get me started on those is they're really
Speaker 1: in the concept TV stage at the moment, so you're
Speaker 1: not gonna have a whole lot of opportunities to buy
Speaker 1: one unless you have a ridiculous amount of money. We're
Speaker 1: talking like a hundred thousand dollars for a television set
Speaker 1: that has nothing to show on it. Um. Also, uh,
Speaker 1: you would probably just end up watching four K content
Speaker 1: or or less on it, so you wouldn't really be
Speaker 1: able to enjoy the full benefit of it. You could
Speaker 1: have an enormous TV at that size and sit really
Speaker 1: close to it and not notice any pixels. That's one benefit,
Speaker 1: but uh, without having stuff to watch on it, you
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't really appreciate it very much. However, the technical
Speaker 1: specs for right K involve a resolution of seven thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred eighty by four thousand, three D twenty pixels.
Speaker 1: This ups the pixel count tool whopping thirty three million,
Speaker 1: one seventy seven thousand, six hundred pixels yeasa, But again,
Speaker 1: you'd have to have that a K video source to
Speaker 1: really enjoy that. So let's say you've heard all this,
Speaker 1: but you're thinking about getting a four K television set
Speaker 1: where do you get your content? And how big of
Speaker 1: a television should you get? And how close should you
Speaker 1: sit to the screen. We're gonna answer those questions in
Speaker 1: our next section, but first, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. All Right, So let's say you're
Speaker 1: in the market to buy a new television, and chances
Speaker 1: are in your area four KSE sets are dominating your
Speaker 1: search because they're the flagship products for many manufacturers out there.
Speaker 1: Their prices have been coming down in recent years, so
Speaker 1: they're no longer in the realm of just like the
Speaker 1: wealthy or the bleeding edge adopters. They're no longer like
Speaker 1: two thousand or four thousand dollar sets, although you can
Speaker 1: certainly find some there in that price point. You can
Speaker 1: find some now that are less than a thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: You can still find h D sets in a few places,
Speaker 1: although that are becoming more challenging to find there being
Speaker 1: phased out slowly by the market. You can make a
Speaker 1: whole lot more money selling four K sets than you
Speaker 1: can with HD sets. HD sets, the prices have come
Speaker 1: down enough so that the profit margins are pretty narrow.
Speaker 1: Four K sets that hasn't totally hit the bottom of
Speaker 1: where where those prices are going yet, So there's an
Speaker 1: incentive on the part of retailers to carry four K
Speaker 1: sets to make more money and to up sell you,
Speaker 1: to convince you that the four K experience is better
Speaker 1: than the HD experience. Uh So, if you want to
Speaker 1: look at four K, it's brand new relatively speaking, the
Speaker 1: companies have an incentive to sell it to you. What
Speaker 1: do you watch on it? Let's say that you want one,
Speaker 1: you decided to buy one. What do you actually watch
Speaker 1: on your four K set? What's available? Well, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be cable television because cable TV doesn't carry any
Speaker 1: four K content. That means you're out of luck if
Speaker 1: you're hoping to pull down ultra high definition versions of
Speaker 1: your favorite shows on cable. Now satellites a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Direct TV and Dish Network have both done a little
Speaker 1: bit of broadcasting in four K, but it's only been
Speaker 1: a little bit. Like it's it's again not widely available
Speaker 1: across all their programming. So that means to really take
Speaker 1: advantage of four K you need to do a couple
Speaker 1: of other things. One thing you could do is get
Speaker 1: a four K Blu Ray player and some four K
Speaker 1: Blu Ray titles to play on it. If you get
Speaker 1: a four K Blu Ray player and play a normal
Speaker 1: Blu Ray on it, you won't enjoy the four K resolution.
Speaker 1: You have to get the actual discs that were encoded
Speaker 1: in four K. Some devices like the Xbox one X
Speaker 1: can play four K Blu Ray discs and tend to be,
Speaker 1: you know, of a comparable price than two two four
Speaker 1: K Blue ray sets. Four K Blue ray set that's
Speaker 1: dedicated might be a couple hundred dollars cheaper than say
Speaker 1: an Xbox one X, So it becomes one of those
Speaker 1: things you weigh, do you save a couple of hundred
Speaker 1: dollars by getting the dedica Blu Ray four K player,
Speaker 1: or do you shell out a little more money and
Speaker 1: get an Xbox one X that's also a video game
Speaker 1: console and a media center on top of being a
Speaker 1: Blu Ray player. Uh. But you also have to keep
Speaker 1: in mind there's a limited amount of four K titles
Speaker 1: that are on optical discs in the first place, so
Speaker 1: not everything is available in four K resolution. Uh. They
Speaker 1: do have an advantage when it comes to four K
Speaker 1: optical versus four K streaming optical discs. You're gonna run
Speaker 1: into fewer artifacts. Artifacts are essentially the visual element that
Speaker 1: is similar to noise in audio recordings. You get these
Speaker 1: things that can be very distracting. You can notice some
Speaker 1: jagged edges or other issues from compression algorithms. That's because
Speaker 1: streaming video you have to compress it in order to
Speaker 1: have reasonable transfer times. You're sending so much data across networks.
Speaker 1: If you want to make sure that the person receiving
Speaker 1: it is getting a decent experience, you have to compress it. Well.
Speaker 1: The more you compress it, the more chances there are
Speaker 1: inserting artifacts into the signal. You don't run into that
Speaker 1: as much. On optical disk encoding. It can happen, especially
Speaker 1: with like a manufacturing error, but you were less likely
Speaker 1: to run into it. So if you go out and
Speaker 1: you start buying discs again, you'll be able to watch
Speaker 1: in glorious four K resolution. You can get four K
Speaker 1: feeds from several popular streaming services, though, as I just mentioned,
Speaker 1: they use compression algorithms, so you might run into the
Speaker 1: occasional artifact, and you do need a decent Internet connection
Speaker 1: to really take advantage of them. But they include Amazon Video, Netflix,
Speaker 1: Voodoo YouTube, PlayStation Video Ultra Flicks, and the few others
Speaker 1: that all offer four K content. In some of these cases,
Speaker 1: in order to get access to the four K content,
Speaker 1: you have to pay a premium to the service, so
Speaker 1: you would have to step up a tier. In Netflix,
Speaker 1: for example, you have to pay a little bit more
Speaker 1: per month in order to have access to the four
Speaker 1: K titles. And again it doesn't cover all the titles
Speaker 1: that Netflix has, but only some of them. And typically
Speaker 1: if you wanted to buy a four K title or
Speaker 1: rent a four K title on a streaming service, they
Speaker 1: tend to be a little more expensive than high definition versions,
Speaker 1: which in turn tend to be a little more expensive
Speaker 1: than standard definition versions. Essentially, the more data that has
Speaker 1: to be pushed to you, the higher the cost is
Speaker 1: going to be to you. And if you don't have
Speaker 1: that decent internet connection, then it's going to be a
Speaker 1: miserable experience and you probably don't want to be streaming
Speaker 1: four K content in the first place. If you're a gamer,
Speaker 1: many video games for the PS four Pro and the
Speaker 1: Xbox one X are going to include four K content,
Speaker 1: although the PS four Pro is really more of a
Speaker 1: slight upscale than Xbox one X is Xbox one X
Speaker 1: can do true for hey, so you'll be able to
Speaker 1: gain in four a K. That is going to continue
Speaker 1: to change over time. You're going to see more and
Speaker 1: more titles adopt four K technology, as well as more
Speaker 1: shows and movies and other experiences will be upgraded to
Speaker 1: four K as time goes on. The same thing was
Speaker 1: true for HD back in the day. I remember when
Speaker 1: the only HD channel you could get showed things like
Speaker 1: sunrises and sunsets, and nature scenes and underwater scenes, stuff
Speaker 1: that had a lot of vibrant colors and a lot
Speaker 1: of detail. Those were the things that were featured on
Speaker 1: this channel that would run for twenty four hours. It
Speaker 1: would just do these things on a loop. It was
Speaker 1: really impressive to look at, but there was no real
Speaker 1: narrative there, and after a while you just kind of
Speaker 1: give up on the plot ever moving forward, but obviously
Speaker 1: over time we've seen HD content blossom both literally and figuratively,
Speaker 1: so that we have a lot more to choose from.
Speaker 1: The same thing will will be true with ultra high definition,
Speaker 1: but we're not quite there yet. We're still seeing that
Speaker 1: develop over time, so you might not have a whole
Speaker 1: lot to watch or play on your four case set
Speaker 1: once you get it initially. But that's only one thing
Speaker 1: that you have to consider. How far away are you
Speaker 1: going to sit from your television. That's an important question
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. Every television has a range
Speaker 1: of distances at which it is best to view content,
Speaker 1: and it also depends on the type of content that
Speaker 1: you're watching. If you get closer to the television than
Speaker 1: that ideal range, you'll find that the set takes up
Speaker 1: so much of your field of view that it can
Speaker 1: create an unpleasant experience. If you sit too far back, well,
Speaker 1: you would have the same effect as watching a smaller
Speaker 1: screen closer up. So if you buy a seventy in
Speaker 1: television but you're sitting twenty five feet back, you might
Speaker 1: as well have had a smaller TV and set closer
Speaker 1: to it. You'll get the same effect. And honestly, it
Speaker 1: might even be difficult or even impossible for you to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between an HD set and a u
Speaker 1: h D television set, each running their respective video sources,
Speaker 1: unless you get really close to them, and then you
Speaker 1: might be able to notice the change the difference in
Speaker 1: pixel sizes, but at the optimal viewing distance, they might
Speaker 1: be indistinguishable from each other. Now, generally speaking, higher resolutions
Speaker 1: become more noticeable when you are closer to larger screens.
Speaker 1: The smaller the screen, the further back you are, the
Speaker 1: less noticeable the difference between different resolutions. There's a site
Speaker 1: called r T I n g S is essentially Ratings
Speaker 1: but without the a that does television reviews. They also
Speaker 1: have some really great articles up about viewing distances, particularly
Speaker 1: for different types of televisions. They've done a lot of
Speaker 1: work to look at various TV viewing distance options and
Speaker 1: suss out which ones are the best ones for different
Speaker 1: types of experiences. So I'm gonna rely on their system
Speaker 1: very heavily. But if you want to check out their site,
Speaker 1: which I have no connection to, I don't know anyone.
Speaker 1: Oh we're there and they don't know I'm talking about them.
Speaker 1: So this is honestly Jonathan's resource that he goes to
Speaker 1: for his own use. Uh. It is www dot r
Speaker 1: T I n g S dot com, and I think
Speaker 1: it's a pretty handy resource. So happy to throw those
Speaker 1: guys from traffic because they do good work. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing our teams concentrates on is the field of you.
Speaker 1: Something that's important to create a positive viewing experience. So,
Speaker 1: for example, sports can be a little disconcerting. They can
Speaker 1: even induce nausea if you if it's taking too much
Speaker 1: of your field of view while you're trying to look
Speaker 1: at one specific point uh in the the the image.
Speaker 1: So let's say that it's a football game and you're
Speaker 1: concentrating on the quarterback, but a lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: is going on around it, around you, and some super
Speaker 1: high resolution and it's taking up a lot of your
Speaker 1: field of view. That can actually make you start feeling
Speaker 1: motion sickness, So you don't want to have it take
Speaker 1: up so much of your field of view. That's giving
Speaker 1: you a negative uh experience. And it's also partly because
Speaker 1: sports tend to be really fast paced, so you end
Speaker 1: up having to look around a lot, maybe even move
Speaker 1: your head, depending on how close you are to the television.
Speaker 1: If it's taking up so much of your frame of
Speaker 1: view that you actually have to turn your head in
Speaker 1: order to follow what's happening, you're probably too close to
Speaker 1: the TV. It feels like you're sitting in that front
Speaker 1: row in a movie theater. That's really too close to
Speaker 1: be a good viewing experience. You sit there, and you
Speaker 1: think the only reason these seats exist is so the
Speaker 1: theater can sell them. It doesn't have any benefit to
Speaker 1: the viewer. You don't want to be in that first
Speaker 1: row or maybe the first two rows, depending on the
Speaker 1: movie theater you're in. UH. But let's say you know,
Speaker 1: you want to figure out what is the ideal viewing
Speaker 1: area for your particular television and you want to take
Speaker 1: all these factors into consideration television screen size as well
Speaker 1: as its resolution. What do you do? Luckily, you can
Speaker 1: learn all about this over at that side I was
Speaker 1: talking about. According to the site, the average human viewing
Speaker 1: angle takes up about a hundred thirty five degrees. So
Speaker 1: that's what you start with. You have a hundred thirty
Speaker 1: five degrees viewing angle just from human vision. Our teams
Speaker 1: suggest that if you want your television UH to display
Speaker 1: cinematic content, like you're gonna watch a lot of movies
Speaker 1: on your TV, maybe look at around of that field
Speaker 1: of view being taken up by your television. If you
Speaker 1: want mixed usage, so you've gotta use your TV to
Speaker 1: watch TV shows and sports and all sorts of different content,
Speaker 1: maybe video games as well. You want to go closer
Speaker 1: to thirty degrees. You want to decrease the amount of
Speaker 1: space it's taking up in your field of view. Uh,
Speaker 1: because bigger is not always better, It doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: you're going to have a more pleasant viewing experience. So
Speaker 1: the size of your TV is going to help determine
Speaker 1: what you need to do, like how far back you
Speaker 1: need to sit from it. If the size of your
Speaker 1: TV and the distance you sit from it means it
Speaker 1: takes up fifty degrees of your field of view, it's
Speaker 1: going to start feeling like you're sitting in that super
Speaker 1: close theater seat. That's totally unpleasant. So let's say you
Speaker 1: live in a modest apartment and you have limitations on
Speaker 1: your space. You just don't have a whole lot of
Speaker 1: space to work with your chair or couch or bean
Speaker 1: bag or I don't know, your faithful servant on all
Speaker 1: fours his positions, so that you sit six ft away
Speaker 1: from the television that you're watching. So if you're sitting
Speaker 1: six ft away at that distance according to the R
Speaker 1: Team's site, you have a size distance calculator, you'd be
Speaker 1: best served with a television that's got a forty three
Speaker 1: inch screen, So six ft away screens perfect ohen Remember
Speaker 1: these screen sizes are measured on the diagonal. They're not across,
Speaker 1: it's it's from one corner to the other corner, uh,
Speaker 1: diagonally across the screen. Now, could you buy a bigger
Speaker 1: screen for your place? Yeah, but it might not actually
Speaker 1: give you a better viewing experience. So let's say that
Speaker 1: you've been doing really well for yourself, and now you've
Speaker 1: got a nice large home theater room and you've got
Speaker 1: your diamonds studded lazy boys at up about ten point
Speaker 1: nine ft or three point three one meters from your television,
Speaker 1: and you plan on watching the Stanley Cup finals. So
Speaker 1: how big a television will you need? Well, at that distance,
Speaker 1: you need a screen that's eighty inches to take up
Speaker 1: thirty degrees of your field of view. So you're looking
Speaker 1: at an eighty inch television screen. Huge, right, But will
Speaker 1: you actually notice the uptick and resolution if you're using
Speaker 1: a four KSE set and getting a four K feed
Speaker 1: of the hockey game versus an HD set with an
Speaker 1: HD feed of the hockey game. Our things did this
Speaker 1: work too. If the screen is small and we're sitting
Speaker 1: far away, we cannot perceive a distance or difference rather
Speaker 1: in resolutions. You won't be able to tell the difference
Speaker 1: between standard definition, High def aisition and ultra high definition
Speaker 1: because you're looking at a screen that's too far away
Speaker 1: and too small for those details to be perceivable. It
Speaker 1: does take this idea to the extreme, however, because if
Speaker 1: you're looking at s D versus HD versus uh D,
Speaker 1: you have to be really far away before those differences
Speaker 1: no longer register with you. So let's say you've got
Speaker 1: a forty inch screen, it's a decent sized television. How
Speaker 1: far away must the TV B so that you cannot
Speaker 1: tell the difference between standard definition and high definition video sources?
Speaker 1: You'd have to have a fourteen feet away or four
Speaker 1: point three meters. That's pretty far. Most people I know
Speaker 1: don't set up a television fourteen feet away from where
Speaker 1: they're going to view it. So this tells us that
Speaker 1: the jump between standard definition and high definition is big
Speaker 1: enough in quality to be perceptible at normal viewing distances
Speaker 1: with your typical televisions. So if you're not gonna sit
Speaker 1: closer than fourteen feet, then it doesn't matter. But chance
Speaker 1: is are you are, so high definition would make sense.
Speaker 1: But what about seven twenty high definition versus ten eighty
Speaker 1: high definition. How close would you need to be to
Speaker 1: this forty inch television to be able to tell the
Speaker 1: difference between those two Well, you'd have to be about
Speaker 1: eight feet away or two point four meters, so almost
Speaker 1: half the distance as the previous jump, So the seven
Speaker 1: twenty entry level high definition. Once you hit eight feet away,
Speaker 1: you would notice the difference between seven twenty and ten eight. Still,
Speaker 1: you might very well have your chair set up within
Speaker 1: eight feet, like you might be closer than eight feet
Speaker 1: when you have a forty inch television set. In fact,
Speaker 1: the ideal viewing distance for a forty inch television screen
Speaker 1: is five point six feet, So if you followed that guideline,
Speaker 1: you definitely be able to tell the difference between the
Speaker 1: seven twenty and a ten eight resolution screen. But what
Speaker 1: about ultra high definition? So now we're looking at ten
Speaker 1: eighty versus four K. The ideal viewing distance to see
Speaker 1: the difference in resolution for a forty in ultra high
Speaker 1: definition television is two point three ft or point seven
Speaker 1: one less than a meter away. That's that's for you
Speaker 1: to get to a point where you start noticing the
Speaker 1: resolution limitations. So chances are. You're not gonna be sitting
Speaker 1: that close to your television. You're probably not saying within
Speaker 1: two point three ft of your TV, which means that
Speaker 1: there's not any real difference between the HD quality and
Speaker 1: the uh D quality as you perceive it because the
Speaker 1: limitations of the human eye. This has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the technology. The differences are there, we just can't
Speaker 1: see them because our eyes don't pick up detail at
Speaker 1: that level. So while the technology makes it possible, we
Speaker 1: can't really enjoy it unless we're sitting uncomfortably close to
Speaker 1: our televisions. Now, obviously that's forty in television. That's not
Speaker 1: in the realm of the big, big screen TVs. It's
Speaker 1: a decent sized tele vision, but you know they get
Speaker 1: much larger than that. What if we were looking at
Speaker 1: a seventy inch television, If you had a seventy in
Speaker 1: uh D television, you'd have to sit closer than four
Speaker 1: point four feet or one point three five meters before
Speaker 1: you hit its resolution limitation. So my point is is
Speaker 1: that in most viewing cases, you're not likely to see
Speaker 1: a big jump in picture quality on resolution alone unless
Speaker 1: you're sitting right up on your screen. But one thing
Speaker 1: you will get with a four K or U h
Speaker 1: D t V is the freedom to sit at whatever
Speaker 1: distance you prefer from your television without it affecting your
Speaker 1: perception of the resolution. So you open up a lot
Speaker 1: more options with your home theater system. If you're going
Speaker 1: four O K, you don't have to worry about, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this seat is a little too close because I can
Speaker 1: actually see the the pixels here. You're not gonna have
Speaker 1: that happen with four K unless you set the chair
Speaker 1: where you can reach out and touch the screen of
Speaker 1: the TV, which I do not recommend you do, particularly
Speaker 1: with a seven inch television. Um So, it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that the experience is going to be measurably better.
Speaker 1: You might notice it occasionally, depending upon the feed, but
Speaker 1: it's not as big a jump from h D to
Speaker 1: U h D as it was from s D to
Speaker 1: h D as far as our perception is concerned. Anyway,
Speaker 1: technologically it was a huge jump. Now, it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean this picture is going to leap out at you
Speaker 1: with lifelike quality. If you've seen four K demonstrations and
Speaker 1: stores and you've noticed a huge difference between four K
Speaker 1: and ten eight, and you thought well, Jonathan, you're crazy.
Speaker 1: I've been to a television store and I've seen the
Speaker 1: four K sets and the quality is amazing. And then
Speaker 1: I looked at the h D sets that are running
Speaker 1: the same video, of the qualities nowhere near as good.
Speaker 1: It is demonstrably better with four K. This could be
Speaker 1: an example of a store gaming the system. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying all stores do this. I'm saying lots the stores
Speaker 1: do this. So there's more money to be made selling
Speaker 1: four K TVs than h D t v s. There's
Speaker 1: an incentive to move those four K televisions. To do that,
Speaker 1: you need to show that the four K sets are
Speaker 1: much better than the ten e D sets, at least
Speaker 1: until the standard is shifted enough so that the ten
Speaker 1: sets are pretty much no longer an option in the
Speaker 1: first place, so you only have four k's to choose from.
Speaker 1: One way you could do this is by stacking the deck,
Speaker 1: by making sure the video feeds going to four K
Speaker 1: sets are true four K video. So you've got true
Speaker 1: uncompressed four K video going to these TVs. That's gonna
Speaker 1: give you the best quality video at least as far
Speaker 1: as resolution is concerned on those sets. Meanwhile, you might
Speaker 1: use highly compressed high definition video sent to the high
Speaker 1: definition sets. So while it is technically HD content, it
Speaker 1: has been compressed and therefore has introduced artifacts and some
Speaker 1: other elements that make it less ideal. So you can
Speaker 1: notice the difference between four K and HD, but in
Speaker 1: part because it's been manufactured, it's that it's not playing
Speaker 1: on a level field. The one set is getting the
Speaker 1: absolute best equipment and the other sets getting the worst
Speaker 1: or at least substandard. So that's a possibility. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying every store doesn't. I'm saying a lot of stores
Speaker 1: do do it, though, so you might run into that. Also,
Speaker 1: when you're looking at televisions in a store, chances are
Speaker 1: you're going to be standing a lot closer to the
Speaker 1: TV than you typically would at home when you're viewing
Speaker 1: it in your home theater space. As you are closer,
Speaker 1: you will notice differences in that quality. The higher resolution
Speaker 1: when you're closer is going to hold up better than
Speaker 1: a lower resolution. But again, once you get into the
Speaker 1: viewing conditions of your home, you may be far enough
Speaker 1: back where that difference doesn't play up so much you
Speaker 1: can't really notice it. So keep that in mind as well,
Speaker 1: and I think this is a good place for me
Speaker 1: to relate a personal anecdote. I remember going to C
Speaker 1: E S a few years ago when four KSE sets
Speaker 1: were still in the concept phase, kind of the way
Speaker 1: eight case sets are now. I remember walking up to
Speaker 1: a company. I won't name the company, but they weren't
Speaker 1: the only one. Several companies were doing this where they
Speaker 1: had two different television sets side by side, running the
Speaker 1: same loop of video next to each other, and one
Speaker 1: of them was a four case set and the other
Speaker 1: was a high definition set. And I remember walking up
Speaker 1: and as I walked up, looking at the two and thinking,
Speaker 1: I can't tell the difference. If they did not have
Speaker 1: the signs there, or if someone put one sign over,
Speaker 1: like if they swapped the two signs with each other,
Speaker 1: I still wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have said, Wow,
Speaker 1: this HD actually looks better than that ultra high definition.
Speaker 1: To me, they looked almost identical. It wasn't until I
Speaker 1: got very close that I started to notice the differences.
Speaker 1: But then I was beyond where I would normally be
Speaker 1: watching the television. I would have been further back had
Speaker 1: this actually been in my living room, so it was
Speaker 1: largely lost on me, and at first I thought maybe
Speaker 1: it was just my limitations of my vision, but a
Speaker 1: lot of other people felt the same way. Now I
Speaker 1: think there might have even been a bit of a
Speaker 1: bias for some folks, because if you tell them this
Speaker 1: one's got a higher resolution than that one, they might
Speaker 1: believe they perceived that higher resolution, even if it's not
Speaker 1: within human levels of perception. You've got this in biases
Speaker 1: all the time, and in various experiments and studies. You
Speaker 1: have to be extra careful to build in for that
Speaker 1: so that way you don't uh you don't skew the results.
Speaker 1: So if you have the option, you should do a
Speaker 1: double blind test, which means neither the people running the
Speaker 1: test nor the people taking the test know which display
Speaker 1: is HD versus which one is u h D, And
Speaker 1: if you could still tell the difference at normal viewing
Speaker 1: distances between the two, that tells you that uh D
Speaker 1: has a demonstrably better resolution if it's perceptible, But otherwise
Speaker 1: you would just say, well, you really can't tell the difference.
Speaker 1: The same thing, by the way, is true of the
Speaker 1: eight case sets I've seen. Actually, I would argue it's
Speaker 1: more true even though you've got way more pixels with
Speaker 1: an eight KSE set than you do with a four
Speaker 1: case set. Those changes in details are so subtle to
Speaker 1: the human eye as to be impossible to tell the difference.
Speaker 1: So while I think you could probably tell the difference
Speaker 1: between HD and four K if you're close enough, you
Speaker 1: have to be real, real close to an eight case
Speaker 1: set before you can tell the difference between an eight
Speaker 1: K and a four K. I just don't think that
Speaker 1: leap in pixels, as impressive as it is, has any
Speaker 1: real benefit. I do remember seeing a demonstration of an
Speaker 1: enormous one eight K television set in which I was
Speaker 1: invited to take a magnifying glass and walk right up
Speaker 1: to the screen so that I could finally see the
Speaker 1: individual pixels with the help of magnification, which was an
Speaker 1: impressive display pun intended, but it was not really practical
Speaker 1: for any everyday use. I mean, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: a hundred inch television. I definitely don't have a space
Speaker 1: where a hundred inch television would fit and make any sense.
Speaker 1: Some people do, I guess, but I can't imagine a
Speaker 1: situation where that eight K would actually result in a
Speaker 1: noticeable difference in quality, at least not unless you had
Speaker 1: your nose pressed up against the screen. So the question
Speaker 1: is am I completely opposed to four K and higher resolutions.
Speaker 1: We'll find out in a second, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a break to thank our sponsor. All right, bottom line,
Speaker 1: do I think four KTVs are worth it? If I
Speaker 1: were shopping or television right now, I would probably look
Speaker 1: at four K sets since they're starting to come down
Speaker 1: in price and it will help me future proof my TV.
Speaker 1: So as much as it sounds like I've been bad
Speaker 1: mouthing four K, I'm really just trying to build the
Speaker 1: case to explain why that higher resolution is not necessarily
Speaker 1: the selling point you should look at. You should not
Speaker 1: look at that number and think this number is bigger
Speaker 1: than my old TVs number. Therefore this television set is
Speaker 1: better than my old TV. It is more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: But I would look at four k's if I were
Speaker 1: buying a television right now. When they first debuted, they
Speaker 1: were costing thousands of dollars. I am not in that
Speaker 1: tax bracket. I am not going to be able to
Speaker 1: spend five grand on a TV. That's just not who
Speaker 1: I am. It's not I don't make that kind of money.
Speaker 1: If someone wants to make me an offer, let me
Speaker 1: hear it. Otherwise, I'm going to buy televisions that are
Speaker 1: more in my price range and only when I really
Speaker 1: need to upgrade. I don't think that four K on
Speaker 1: its own is enough to push you to upgrade to
Speaker 1: a new television if you're old television is working well,
Speaker 1: If your old TV is still displaying a good picture,
Speaker 1: and you're satisfied with the way it performs and it
Speaker 1: works with all of your other equipment, I do not
Speaker 1: see a reason to upgrade right away. If you are
Speaker 1: looking to upgrade, four K is probably the way you
Speaker 1: should go rather than trying to find h D. The
Speaker 1: differences in price have have come down to a point
Speaker 1: where it just makes more sense to look at four
Speaker 1: K than to keep looking for HD. So just don't
Speaker 1: expect it to be an enormous leap in picture quality
Speaker 1: from resolution alone anyway over an HD. Uh, It's not
Speaker 1: as big a leap from HD to four K as
Speaker 1: you noticed from s D to HD. So instead of
Speaker 1: fixating on resolution, I would actually look at other factors
Speaker 1: to help guide me to purchase the right television set
Speaker 1: for me, for example, is just smart TV. This might
Speaker 1: surprise you, because if the answer is yes, it's a
Speaker 1: smart TV that actually makes me pause when it comes
Speaker 1: to buying the television set. I want to know what
Speaker 1: those smart features are, and I want to know how
Speaker 1: they are implemented in the television set. Is the television
Speaker 1: potentially going to compromise the security of my home network
Speaker 1: if it's an attack vector for a hacker, I don't
Speaker 1: want it Not. Everyone incorporates smart technology in a smart way,
Speaker 1: meaning a way that prevents outside attackers from getting some
Speaker 1: sort of access to your network. Now, a hacker might
Speaker 1: not be able to access everything on my home network
Speaker 1: through my television. It may be that that's just not possible,
Speaker 1: but they might be able to turn my TV into
Speaker 1: a bot for a bot net and send traffic to
Speaker 1: some other poor, unsuspecting web server out there. I don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen. So I need to know that
Speaker 1: the smart TV technology has been implemented in a way
Speaker 1: that is safe, which means doing research. I don't, off
Speaker 1: the top of my head know how all the different
Speaker 1: implementations are, so I couldn't just rattle off which brands
Speaker 1: are are good and which brands might be less good
Speaker 1: at security for your home network system. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: I also want to know what features are in there.
Speaker 1: Are there any voice activation features? If so, how does
Speaker 1: that voice activation work? And is it constantly monitoring me?
Speaker 1: Is it something that could potentially record conversations? Again, whether
Speaker 1: a hacker attacks it or someone on the back end
Speaker 1: of things flips the switch. I don't want that. I
Speaker 1: want to maintain my privacy. So in those cases, I
Speaker 1: would say, let's not get that smart TV because it
Speaker 1: ultimately could compromise my own privacy and security. So I
Speaker 1: don't jump immediately on the smart TV bandwagon. Even though
Speaker 1: I love technology, I love getting the new toys with
Speaker 1: all the new bells and whistles, I don't want to
Speaker 1: jump on that wagon at the expense of my own safety.
Speaker 1: So I I would probably be a little cautious about
Speaker 1: buying a smart TV, unless, of course, I researched it
Speaker 1: and saw that either the application was really really safe
Speaker 1: or that the features that were involved are such that
Speaker 1: it's not likely to be a privacy risk in the
Speaker 1: first place. However, I've got a lot of other equipment
Speaker 1: that already allows me to access lots of streaming services,
Speaker 1: web browsing, that kind of thing that are already connected
Speaker 1: to my entertainment system, so I don't really need my
Speaker 1: television to do it too. But it would just be
Speaker 1: a redundant system on top of the other ones I
Speaker 1: already have, unless its implementation is so much better than
Speaker 1: the experience I get on my various consoles and other
Speaker 1: equipment that it just makes sense to switch, because that
Speaker 1: could happen. If a TV interface is somehow better than
Speaker 1: whatever other equipment I'm using, then I would switch, but
Speaker 1: again it would have to meet that level of privacy
Speaker 1: and security that I require before I adopt that technology.
Speaker 1: Then there's refresh rate. This tells you how frequently the
Speaker 1: television creates the image, How quickly does it paint with pixels?
Speaker 1: How many times per second does it refresh the image
Speaker 1: that you are looking at. Old standard definition televisions in
Speaker 1: the US had a refresh rate of sixty hurts, which
Speaker 1: was sixty frames per second. The really we're talking interlaced,
Speaker 1: so really it was thirty lines of pixels refreshed every
Speaker 1: second and thirty other lines of pixels refreshed every second,
Speaker 1: with the two alternating each second, so or multiple times
Speaker 1: each second, so all the odd lines would be displayed.
Speaker 1: Then all the even lines would be displayed, then all
Speaker 1: the odd lines displayed again, then all the even lines
Speaker 1: displayed again, and both both sets would refresh thirty times
Speaker 1: a second with the full array of pixels. Uh being
Speaker 1: you know, that's where you get your sixty. You can
Speaker 1: take the thirty times too, That's where you get your
Speaker 1: sixty hurts. But nowadays you can find refresh rates at
Speaker 1: a hundred twenty hurts or two hurts, or even higher
Speaker 1: than that. Now does that bigger number mean better? In
Speaker 1: my opinion, no, It's very similar to resolution, except in
Speaker 1: this case I would argue that the bigger numbers are
Speaker 1: actually creating a less enjoyable viewing experience, at least for me.
Speaker 1: This again is personal preference. The higher refresh rates create
Speaker 1: a smoothing effect, so you reduce motion blur, you get
Speaker 1: smoother transitions, you can follow fast moving action much more clearly.
Speaker 1: It's very good for stuff like sports. Let's say you've
Speaker 1: got a really fast sport event that's on display on
Speaker 1: your television. With a high refresh rate, you can really
Speaker 1: follow the action easily. But to me, that same quality
Speaker 1: makes certain television shows and movies almost unwatchable. It creates
Speaker 1: what people have referred to as the soap opera effect,
Speaker 1: this feeling that you're watching a digital video soap opera.
Speaker 1: That feels a bit uncanny, right, It doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: you're watching film or movies, or or television or anything
Speaker 1: like that. And I personally don't like that effect. So
Speaker 1: I would not be looking at any sort of television
Speaker 1: that has a refresh rate of two forty hurts. Hurts
Speaker 1: would be the top level that I would look at.
Speaker 1: The tricks used to create those refresh rates can smooth
Speaker 1: things out so much that again, it just becomes this
Speaker 1: negative experience. And I always talk about the Hobbit forty
Speaker 1: eight frames per second version that I saw. I hated
Speaker 1: that effect. I had a very negative reaction to it.
Speaker 1: I know there are filmmakers who love it. I despised it.
Speaker 1: There's also other things to consider. The way the television
Speaker 1: is back lit is important. So you've got to have
Speaker 1: light coming from behind the television screen in order for
Speaker 1: you to see the displays that your television shows. Right like,
Speaker 1: you won't see any picture if there's no light coming
Speaker 1: from the TV. But some televisions use light that is
Speaker 1: called edge lighting. Edge lighting creates columns of light across
Speaker 1: your television, So that means that the color and light
Speaker 1: representation is going to be more accurate within those columns
Speaker 1: than it will be at the edges of those columns,
Speaker 1: and it's not as good as a fully backlit television
Speaker 1: that has what is called full array local dimming. If
Speaker 1: you have full array local dimming with a backlit television,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna be a more convincing image. In general,
Speaker 1: the colors are going to be more accurate, and the
Speaker 1: lighting will be more accurate as well, and it can
Speaker 1: provide lots more gradiations in light intensity, so you can
Speaker 1: have more subtle differences between various say darkly lit scenes. Uh.
Speaker 1: I always think about the Batman films when I talk
Speaker 1: about this level of of quality for television. If you
Speaker 1: think about Batman movies, particularly the ones that were made,
Speaker 1: you know, in the nineties and up to present day,
Speaker 1: they often have action sequences that take place in the dark.
Speaker 1: Batman often is lurking in the shadows. But if you
Speaker 1: don't have a really good display that's able to show
Speaker 1: these gradations in and uh similarly colored items on screen,
Speaker 1: like things that are dark gray versus black, everything gets lost.
Speaker 1: You can't make out any detail, so you need to
Speaker 1: have that subtle change in lighting to be able to
Speaker 1: make out what's what's actually happening. Otherwise you might as
Speaker 1: well just be watching a black screen and play the
Speaker 1: movie soundtrack on on the stereo. Then there's contrast ratio,
Speaker 1: which is related to this. You want a really good
Speaker 1: contrast ratio, but there's a problem. There's no standard of
Speaker 1: measurement for contrast ratio. Contrast ratio is something that a
Speaker 1: lot of manufacturers talk about, but there's no simple metric
Speaker 1: to point at where you can you can judge one
Speaker 1: television versus another just using that metric. It doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: What you want is the ability for your television set
Speaker 1: to display true black colors as as close to true
Speaker 1: black as possible, and true white colors as as close
Speaker 1: to bright white as possible, with as many different gradations
Speaker 1: between those two extremes as you possibly can get. The
Speaker 1: more gradations you get, the more accurate you can represent
Speaker 1: different colors in different levels of light. So keep in
Speaker 1: mind that if you go to a store to check
Speaker 1: out these televisions, because really the only way you can
Speaker 1: get an idea of a television's contrast ratio is to
Speaker 1: see one of the TVs showing something. You need to
Speaker 1: watch the TV so you can see what the contrast
Speaker 1: ratio looks like like. Do the dark portions of the
Speaker 1: screen actually look dark? Do they look charcoal gray because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of light bleeding through. You need to
Speaker 1: actually be there in person and view it. The problem
Speaker 1: is if you go to a store and you go
Speaker 1: and watch these TVs, they may not be calibrated properly,
Speaker 1: which means you might not be seeing the television at
Speaker 1: its best example right. It might be miscalibrated. So it
Speaker 1: may require multiple trips to multiple stores to get an
Speaker 1: idea of which sets are have the best contrast ratio.
Speaker 1: Or you can rely on review sites that have people
Speaker 1: who calibrate these sets and do measurements and they try
Speaker 1: their best to say which ones have the best contrast ratio.
Speaker 1: That's your other option. I do highly recommend doing that
Speaker 1: research because contrast ratio does make a big difference, especially
Speaker 1: if you like to watch movies in a dark room,
Speaker 1: It's gonna make a huge difference. This is getting a
Speaker 1: little calm implicated, but that's the way good televisions are.
Speaker 1: And now there's high dynamic range or HDR. This isn't
Speaker 1: about resolution, but this is about color replication. It can
Speaker 1: also contribute to better contrast ratios if you have HDR. Now,
Speaker 1: HDR is a technology, it's a set of standards, which
Speaker 1: actually it's a competing sets of standards as it turns out,
Speaker 1: but it's starting to shake out now. But like four
Speaker 1: K resolutions, in order to enjoy the the technology of HDR,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to have content that was shot or
Speaker 1: processed in HDR. In other words, if you just play
Speaker 1: any old video on an HDR television set, it's not
Speaker 1: like the colors are going to suddenly turn magical and
Speaker 1: feel like you're right there. You have to have HDR
Speaker 1: content to take advantage of this technology, just like you
Speaker 1: don't have to have a four K video to take
Speaker 1: advantage of four K resolution. Now, if that is the case,
Speaker 1: if you do have HDR content and you have an
Speaker 1: HDR set, you're going to enjoy a much more subtle
Speaker 1: palette of colors than one that does not have HDR.
Speaker 1: Images are going to appear more vibrant, they're going to
Speaker 1: the brightest colors are going to have very subtle changes
Speaker 1: in them. So it looks very realistic, to the point
Speaker 1: where if you have a really good high resolution television
Speaker 1: with HDR, they might look like you're looking at a
Speaker 1: window into another scene. So if it were a garden,
Speaker 1: it might look like you're looking at actual physical plants,
Speaker 1: and the television is really just a portal that leads
Speaker 1: you in there. So it gives you an amazing sense
Speaker 1: of depth. It's not three D the way we traditionally
Speaker 1: think about like we think of three D is stuff
Speaker 1: coming toward us from the screen, But this is three
Speaker 1: D in the sense of depth, Like it feels like
Speaker 1: you could step into the screen and go further into
Speaker 1: the scene itself. That's how effective HDR is when it
Speaker 1: is properly implement it. There's always a qualifier because you
Speaker 1: can do bad HDR and it won't make it won't
Speaker 1: make it look magical, it'll just look bad. So UH
Speaker 1: is pretty powerful stuff, though, so I highly recommend that
Speaker 1: if you're going television shopping you look at HDR. So
Speaker 1: if I'm buying a television today, i'd look for something
Speaker 1: around the fifty inch range because that's about what I
Speaker 1: have now. Maybe go up to sixty inch because I'm
Speaker 1: tempted to. I know that sixty inch is probably too
Speaker 1: large a television for my living room, but I kind
Speaker 1: of want to make that mistake anyway. My wife, however,
Speaker 1: being the voice of reason, keeps me grounded, sometimes literally
Speaker 1: grounds me. But that's a concept for a totally different
Speaker 1: type of show. So I'd probably stick somewhere in the
Speaker 1: fifty range. I'd want HDR because even though it's early
Speaker 1: days of HDR and there's still not a huge amount
Speaker 1: of content out there, the difference is really noticeable, more
Speaker 1: so than four K resident Suan, So I would definitely
Speaker 1: want HDR to be part of the television. It probably
Speaker 1: would be a four case set. I don't think I
Speaker 1: would find an HDR HD set out there, or I
Speaker 1: don't know that I would necessarily want one. Might as
Speaker 1: well go to four K if I'm gonna go with HDR,
Speaker 1: and it probably would not be a smart television and
Speaker 1: it would have a true refresh rate of twenty hurts
Speaker 1: at most. Otherwise I would not be interested. Now if
Speaker 1: some company out there is saying, Jonathan, you're totally off base.
Speaker 1: You have miss misrepresented these technologies are televisions are amazing.
Speaker 1: You will definitely tell the difference between this ultra high
Speaker 1: definition resolution and whatever you're currently using, we can guarantee it.
Speaker 1: Here's how we can prove me wrong. Just send me
Speaker 1: the television and I'll be happy to give it a
Speaker 1: full test drive and report on it and let you
Speaker 1: know what I thought, because Dad, he needs a new TV.
Speaker 1: This never works. By the way, years ago, I mentioned
Speaker 1: on an episode of Tech Stuff that I really wanting
Speaker 1: to go on a helicopter ride. And there are a
Speaker 1: couple of helicopter pilots who are out there who are
Speaker 1: tech Stuff fans, including one who works around Atlanta, and
Speaker 1: I have not been in a helicopter yet, so I
Speaker 1: anticipate I will not magically be the recipient of a
Speaker 1: four K hd R TV anytime in the near future.
Speaker 1: But a guy could dream, right, And it was my
Speaker 1: birthday just the other day, all right. More seriously, guys,
Speaker 1: that wraps up this discussion. Is four K resolution really
Speaker 1: worth it? It's debatable. I side on the probably not
Speaker 1: for most cases. But at the same time, if I
Speaker 1: were buying a television today, I would get a four
Speaker 1: case set because that there are other options that are
Speaker 1: frequently bundled with four K that make a very real difference,
Speaker 1: and who knows, it may be one of those times
Speaker 1: where I would notice a little bit of a difference,
Speaker 1: and sometimes a little bit is enough. If you guys
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, or
Speaker 1: you just have something you want to tell me, send
Speaker 1: me a message. My email address is tech Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or you can always drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: the show is text Stuff h s W. Remember you
Speaker 1: can watch me record this show live on twitch dot
Speaker 1: tv slash tech stuff every Wednesday and Friday. Just visit
Speaker 1: that U r L to see the show's schedule. You'll
Speaker 1: get to see me. The people who watched this stream
Speaker 1: also got to see the guys from Stuff. They don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. They stopped in and chatted for
Speaker 1: a while. Uh. That did not make the final podcast,
Speaker 1: but it did make the live stream, so you can
Speaker 1: always join in and see. You never know who's gonna
Speaker 1: show up or what sort of mistakes will happen. All
Speaker 1: sorts of shenanigans happened today. I hope to see you
Speaker 1: there and I'll talk to you again really soon for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com,