For me at least the ever increasing DPI increases have just not been worth the extra expense, I see 4K is better than my 1080 TV but i don’t care enough about it to spend the money to upgrade. I imagine the dirt cheap DVDs are more preferable to people than the more expensive Blu-rays, I get the same amount of entertainment from both for most movies that aren’t really focussed on the visuals alone.
The jump to 1080p from 480p is very, very noticeable— I own Firefly on both DVD and Blu-Ray, and I accidentally watched a few minutes of an episode on the DVD version before being like.... wait, what? and then realizing what had happened and switching discs.
However, IMO the jump from 1080p to 4K is way more marginal. It's definitely better, but it's just not that much better than what your TV's built in upscaler can do, nevermind some future AI-powered DLSS-type upscaler.
There's a problem though when studios mess with the original to do the Blu-Ray release. For example, The Wire went from 4:3 (DVD) to 16:9 (Blu-Ray) and introduced some problems[1]. There are worse cases like the infamously bad Buffy Blu Ray release[2].
Blu Ray releases would be great if they didn't mess with the source material. But this seems to happen all the time. I'll take the flaws of 480p over that kind of stuff any day.
Wow, it's really amazing these crappy remastered versions were ever released in these states.
It doesn't have to be this way, as long as you don't assume your audience to be complete idiots (as apparently The Wire's owners do). Go watch the new versions of Star Trek (the original series): it looks beautiful. Luckily, it was all shot with real film, so it looks fantastic in HD, but they didn't do something stupid like changing the aspect ratio, they just left it at the standard 4:3. They did redo all the FX shots since those just weren't going to work in HD, but they look good.
Star Trek: TNG on the other hand has a few problems, though nothing as bad as this other stuff. There's a few places where things that wouldn't have been visible now are, such as one of the early episodes (probably the pilot) where there's an extra piece of carpet under Data's chair. The old rounded screens wouldn't have shown this, so they just left it in on the original TV version, but in HD with rectangular screens it shows up. The other problem is that, with HD resolution, you can see the black cardboard they strategically stuck on the control panels on the bridge to prevent reflections from lights. It would have been nice if they had done a little more digital editing to fix these minor issues.
> It doesn't have to be this way, as long as you don't assume your audience to be complete idiots (as apparently The Wire's owners do). Go watch the new versions of Star Trek (the original series): it looks beautiful. Luckily, it was all shot with real film, so it looks fantastic in HD, but they didn't do something stupid like changing the aspect ratio, they just left it at the standard 4:3. They did redo all the FX shots since those just weren't going to work in HD, but they look good.
They also included versions with the original VFX upscaled in case you don't like the new VFX. I agree that that was a great release, same with TNG really even with the small nits you mentioned.
Unfortunate that DS9 and Voyager are (and will be for the forseeable future it seems) stuck on crappy interlaced DVD (or streaming rips for pirates) if you want an offline copy. I'd be happy with just a 720p non-interlaced and professionally cleaned up release.
I'd say the jump from 480 to 720 is huge, and to 1080 is quite nice. 4K is already fairly marginal to my eyes and I can't imagine shopping for an 8K TV. Perhaps at a wall size TV, but I'm still quite well served by a 42" 1080p Sony TV I got in 2009 or 2010 (can't remember exactly).
Definitely fair— I'm rocking a 60" 1080p panel that was left by the previous occupants of the house, and it's perfectly adequate to my needs; I expect it is of similar vintage, in any case.
I haven't felt any appetite for picking up a 4K unit, particularly if it means having to navigate the whole world of "smart" TV apps, figuring which stuff I want to use vs disable, and how to go about doing that.
For my money, 720p is more than enough for any movie except visually compelling movies. For things like LOTR, Star Wars, and some of the super-hero series I really appreciate that 1080p. My eyesight isn't good enough to discern 4k.
At about 8' distance from my 65" 4K TV I don't notice the difference between 720p and 1080p. At 5' distance I do notice. Even at 5', though, the visible difference between 1080p vs. 4k is tiny. And it's practically impossible to sit much closer than that and still have room to walk between the TV and front row. Maybe if I ever get a projector with an 80" diagonal screen or something, it will matter.
My screen does HDR but it's not oled so the benefit to hdr sources is barely noticeable, and anyway you can get high-quality 1080p downsample rips that retain the hdr data.
I’ve got a projector with a 100” screen, still using a 1080p projector. My 1080p projector of choice was under $1k, while good 4K projectors are in the $5k range. I’d be willing to pay like 20% more for a 4K projector, not 400% more.
For someone with 20:20 (6:6) vision SD means your screen should fill 20 degrees of your viewing angle, HD 30, and UHD 40.
Recommendations for most viewing is 30 degrees, but for the fully immersive THX/Theatre style viewing you want 40 degeres.
That means for watching your 70" TV you should be about 8' away. If you are watching UHD then that's great, you won't see any resolution artifacts, but with HD you will see a difference.
However if you're 9' away from your screen you won't get any uhd resolution benefits.
(That's setting aside other UHD features, especially HDR)
Of course maybe you have better than 20:20 eyesight.
The thing these discussions invariably miss for awhile until someone points it out — I see this on art cinema forums all the time — is that all of the resolutions are functionally bottlenecked by things having nothing to do with the disc.
The size of the screen, for instance, how far you're sitting from it, your actual visual acuity, and so forth and so on. Because these things tend to be suboptimal more than they are optimal, the benefits of higher resolution have diminishing returns, because you have to increasingly have everything "just right" for it to matter.
There's been studies showing that in actual typical viewing conditions for most actual people, higher resolution formats are overkill.
My preference is for blu-ray for instance but we have a small screen by today's standards, which we really don't have any desire to replace in size.
The Panasonic plasma has state of the art upscaling silicon for it’s time, especially since plasma became prevalent when 480p sources were still common.
Your MacBook probably doesn’t attempt any sophisticated upscaling.
Honestly I agree with you, but I was one of those people who mostly cared about high definition TV because the sound was better. I think we're something of a rare breed.
