Study Claims 4K/8K TVs Aren't Much Better Than HD To Your Eyes

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨artifex@piefed.social⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://hothardware.com/news/scientists-claims-4k-and-8k-tvs-arent-noticeably-better-than-hd-to-the-human-eye

A new study published in Nature by University of Cambridge researchers just dropped a pixelated bomb on the entire Ultra-HD market, but as anyone with myopia can tell you, if you take your glasses off, even SD still looks pretty good :)

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Quazatron@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Sony Black Trinitron was peak TV.

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Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
This discussion drives me crazy because it’s the EXACT SAME FUCKING discussion that happened when 1080p screens became available in the 00s. So many people argued “oh it depends how far away you sit but you don’t really notice it” and “oh if the screen size is small your eyes can’t tell”

NO monthafucka if you have halfway decent eyesight there’s NO WAY you won’t notice a huge change in quality from 720p to 1080p even on a 6” screen. 1080 to 4k is noticeable on almost ANY size screen (we all just skip 1440p, don’t we?) and as the size of the screen goes up and up, it just gets more and more noticeable.

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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I don’t remember that discussion at all… I remember people being super excited for 1080p, but annoyed that there was no content for it because DVDs were still 480p and TV content was similar. Blurays were 1080p, but weren’t really a thing until the late 00s.
  
  We’ve had 4k for a decade, and there’s still not much content for it. When there is, the difference w/ 1080p isn’t so significant as to be worth the cost, as it’s usually just upscaled 1080 content. 4k makes a lot of sense for a monitor that’s 30" or larger, but for a TV where you’re 10 feet away it doesn’t make nearly as much sense.
  
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  - Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I forgot to mention, I sold TVs when 1080p was popularized and HD-DVD and Blu Ray came out hahaha. That’s mostly where I heard the “you can’t tell the difference between 720p and 1080” BS. There was plenty of 1080p stuff by the end of the ‘00s and people were still making that argument.
    
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- magguzu@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Diminishing returns.
  
  480 to 720 was massive, and 720 to 1080 was big too. 1080 to 4K is definitely not always noticeable and 8K is well beyond worth the file size.
  
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  - Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Agreed with 8k file size for now, but 1080p to 4k is still hugely noticeable to me.
    
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- JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  And I’m sure most of those people were comparing VHS tapes or regular analog cable TV, or hooking up their DVD player with composite.
  
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  - Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I don’t doubt that for a second. It’s like in the early 2010s when tons of people on Reddit were like “30FPS is all you need, you don’t need more especially in a strategy game or RPG” and I’m seething because my neurospicy ass cannot handle the choppiness of 30FPS and they’ve probably never even seen 120, 144, 165FPS…
    
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- iopq@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I cannot tell 4K because my TV is 50’’ and I sit three meters away
  
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0ndead@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I think the real problem is that anything less than 4k looks like shit on a 4k tv

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- __nobodynowhere@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  1080p can linearly scale to 4k
  
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ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

Here’s the gut-punch for the typical living room, however. If you’re sitting the average 2.5 meters away from a 44-inch set, a simple Quad HD (QHD) display already packs more detail than your eye can possibly distinguish.

That seems in line with common knowledge? Say you want to keep your viewing angle at ~40º for a home cinema, at 2.5m of distance, that means your TV needs to have an horizontal length of ~180cm, which corresponds to ~75"

For a more conservative 30° viewing angle, at the same distance, you’d need a 55" TV. So, 4K is perceivable at that distance regardless, and 8K is a waste of everyone’s time and money.

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michaelmrose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Please note at 18-24" with a 27" screen 4K does not max out what the eye can see according to this very study. EG all the assholes who told you that 4K monitors are a waste are confirmed blind assholes.

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- M0oP0o@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  They are a waste of time since the things with enough fidelity to matter run like shit on them without a large investment. Its just a money sink with little reward.
  
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  - michaelmrose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Are you talking about 8K or 4K? Not only can you game in 4K with a cheap card depending on the game the desktop and everything else just looks nicer.
    
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  - null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Subjective obviously.
    
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vortexal@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
This is why I still use 768p as my preferred resolution, despite having displays that can go much higher. I hate that all TVs now are trying to go as big as possible, when it’s just artificially inflating the price for no real benefit. I also hate that modern displays aren’t as dynamic as what CRTs were. CRTs can handle pretty much any resolution you throw at them but modern TVs and monitors freak out if you don’t use an exact resolution, causing them to either have input lag because the display has to upscale the image or a potential performance hit if the display forces the connected device to handle the upscaling.

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iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
The difference between 1080p and 2160p is night and day to me.

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Pringles@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I don’t like large 4k displays because the resolution is so good it breaks the immersion when you watch a movie. You can see that they are on a set sometimes, or details of clothing in medieval movies that give away they were created with modern sewing equipment.

It’s a bit of a stupid reason I guess, but that’s why I don’t want to go above 1080p for tv’s.

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MilitantAtheist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’ve been looking at screens for 50+ years, and I can confirm, my eyesight is worse now than 50 years ago.

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Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
The main advantage in 4K TVs “looking better” are…

HDR support. Especially Dolby Vision, gives noticeably better picture in bright scenes.

Support for higher framerates. This is only really useful for gaming, at least until they broadcast sports at higher framerates.

The higher resolution is mostly wasted on video content where for the most part the low shutter speed blurs any moving detail anyway. For gaming it does look better, even if you have to cheat with upscaling and DLSS.

The motion smoothing. This is a controversial one, because it makes movies look like swirly home movies. But the types of videos used in the shop demos (splashing slo-mo paints, slow shots of jungles with lots of leaves, dripping honey, etc) does look nice with the motion interpolation switched on. They certainly don’t show clips of the latest blockbuster movies like that, because it will become rapidly apparent just how jarring that looks.

The higher resolution is just one part of it, and it’s not the most important one. You could have the other features on a lower resolution screen, but there’s no real commercial reason to do that, because large 4K panels are already cheaper than the 1080p ones ever were. The only real reason to go higher than 4K would be for things where the picture wraps around you, and you’re only supposed to be looking at a part of it. e.g. 180 degree VR videos and special screens like the Las Vegas Sphere.
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kossa@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I just love how all the articles and everything about this study go “Do you need another TV or monitor?” instead of “here’s a chart how to optimize your current setup, make it work without buying shit”. 😅

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- vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Selling TVs and monitors is an established business with common interest, while optimizing people’s setups isn’t.
  
  It’s a bit like opposite to building a house, a cubic meter or two of cut wood doesn’t cost very much, even combined with other necessary materials, but to get usable end result people still hire someone other than workers to do the physical labor parts.
  
  There are those “computer help” people running around helping grannies clean Windows from viruses (I mean those who are not scammers), they probably need to incorporate. Except then such corporate entities will likely be sued without end by companies willing to sell new shit. Balance of power.
  
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Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It does make a difference for reading text like subtitles or navigating game menus.

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- Nalivai@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  If my quick calculations are correct, the 70 inches screen at 1080p has a pixel size of about 0.7 mm give or take, where 4k would be about 0.1-0.2.
  0.1mm is a smallest size of a thing a human could potentially see under very strict conditions. A pixel smaller than a millimeter will be invisible from a meter away. I really, really doubt its humanly possible to see the difference from the distances a person would be watching tv.
  
  The thing is, the newer 4k tvs are just built better, nicer colour contrast, more uniformed lighting, clearer glass, and that might be the effect you’re seeing
  
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  - michaelmrose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Basically you are in a study which calculated for you what people ought to be able to see and you insisted on redoing the calculation yourself incorrectly. The study says people factually can distinguish up to 94 pixels per degree. a 70" screen at a meter away is 24 PPD. You yourself could have easily eye balled 2 screens and come to the correct conclusion but are instead asserting nonsense.
    
    Did you notice that FHD tvs larger than 40" literally don’t exist in stores? If people literally couldn’t see more than 24 PPD than at the more typical 10 feet viewing distance a 70" screen at 640x480 would be just as good as a 70" 1080p was at a meter away! For a 50" you could go down to 320x480! Still 24PPD
    
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  - Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Uh… Hol up. So if we can maybe see down to 0.2 mm and the 1080p screen has 0.7 mm pixels… That’s pretty much what I’m saying. 1080p is noticeably grainy.
    
    The text in 4k looks crisper. I concur I can’t count individual pixels, but reading game menus in 1080p feels rougher and makes me squint. Reading in 4k feels more like reading on print paper or a good e-eeader.
    
    This and yes, the build quality of newer screens also contributes.
    
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- Soup@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  This is literally the only truly important part after a certain threshold. I have a 34”, 1440p monitor and the text is noticeably better than any 1080p screen. It’s entirely legible and 4K would not provide a new benefit except maybe a lighter wallet. It’s also 100Mhz which is again beyond the important threshold.
  
  The only time I can see 4K being essentially necessary is for projectors because those screens end up being massive. My friend has a huge 7’ something screen in the basement so we noticed a difference but that’s such an outlier it should really be a footnote, not a reason to choose 4K for anything under 5’(arbitrary-ish number).
  
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gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
i can confirm 4K and up add nothing for me compared to 1080p and even 720p. As long as i can recognize the images, who cares. Higher resolution just means you see more sweat, pimples, and the like.

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oppy1984@lemdro.id ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I have friends and family with good eyesight and they can tell a difference. Sadly even with Recent prescription lenses I still can’t see a difference. Eh, at least I can save on TV’s since 1080p is cheaper.

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etchinghillside@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Shhh – the ISPs need a reason to sell bigger data plans. Please think of the ISPs…

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- b34k@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Except everyone uses crap bit rates and compression on their streaming content and it really doesn’t look that much better than 1080p. UHD Blu Rays tho are a totally different story, absolutely outclassing lower res content.
  
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ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Isn’t it just a limitation of human vision? No matter how much resolution we can create, the human eye will only ever see a certain level of resolution … anything beyond that is imperceptible to us. I think I remember reading that 4K is the maximum we can realistically appreciate and anything beyond that is impractical because no one would ever notice the difference.

The only way higher resolutions work is if you start blowing up the size of the image itself. A 20" wide image at 720p looks good but the same image blow up to 60" becomes noticeably pixelated. A 20" wide image at 8K looks sharp and blown up to 60", it still looks sharp.

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- frongt@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Some displays really are that big, which is why they are trying to make denser panels. But for the “TV in a living room” use case, yeah, we’re already at the point of diminishing returns. That’s why they’re developing other things, like higher resolutions, OLEDs, and 3D.
  
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  - FauxLiving@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    There’s an e-ink display tech (just published in Nature, so very much in the lab) that has a pixel density >25,000 PPI and it can operate at up to 200FPS. It’s on a scale where 1 pixel to 1 retinal cell is possible.
    
    The color gamut isn’t as wide as sRGB but it’s 100x the gamut of color electrophoretic displays (‘e-Ink’, like in the Kindles).
    
    here: www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09642-3
    
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Solitaire20X6@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I think age makes a big difference, too. I’m over 50 and I’ve never been able to really tell between 720p and 1080i and 1080p, much less higher resolutions. And I’m nearsighted.

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- michaelmrose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Do you wear glasses?
  
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  - Solitaire20X6@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Yep, nearly all my life, or contacts.
    
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brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It’s all about the baseline.

Cinematic, Blu Ray bitrate 1080p vs 4K is not too dramatic.

Compressed streams though? Or worse production quality? 4K raises the baseline dramatically. It’s much harder to stream bad-looking 4K than it is 1080p.

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elver@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
You know what would sell like hot cakes? A dumb TV with Dolby Vision support. I went down the rabbit hole of finding a large HDR monitor and adapters to trick end devices to output player-led Dolby Vision to a HDR monitors, because I don’t need my TV to have a complete OS with streaming services and adverts integrated.

In the end I couldn’t find anything that didn’t have drawbacks. It’s something that could easily exist but there are no manufacturers bold enough to implement it.

Streaming tech moves so fast, I want to add it to my TV through hardware like a fire stick, not to become dependent on the TV manufacturer putting out updates until it’s ‘Out-of-support’.

I went with a TV and disabled as much of the junk as I could with a service remote and just never connected it to the internet, but jumping through these hoops seems so silly.

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- the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  So dont give your tv internet access and plug in a pc.
  
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- glitch1985@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  All tvs are dumb tvs if you don’t connect them to the internet.
  
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  - elver@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I get where your coming from, and I have done that, but I get constant popup reminders that “You are not connected to the internet, would you like to set this up now to access exciting apps and features?” And on top of that, I’ve had to switch to a universal remote, because the one that comes with the TV activates a cursor on screen when it senses movement which is a “feature” you can’t switch off. I just want a remote with on/off, input, and volume control 😭
    
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SculptusPoe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
8k is a little high. I feel like 4k is a significant change, especially if you use your screen as a computer monitor.

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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yes, as a monitor, if it’s over 30" or so, 4k makes sense. If it’s a TV, 4k doesn’t make much difference given how far most sit from their TV.
  
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caboose2006@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’ve been saying this for years.

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CCMan1701A@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
HDR 1080p is what most people can live with.

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Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Given how much time I spend actually looking at the screen while the show/movie is on, it might as well be in ca. 2000 RealVideo 160x120 resolution.

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- partofthevoice@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I’m supposed to be watching Haunted Hotel right now. It’s on, but here we are…
  
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SpacePirate@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
If you’ve ever connected a laptop or PC to a television as a monitor, the benefit of 4K for text readability is incredibly apparent.

If this isn’t your use case, and you’re not right up against your screen, 1080p is more than good enough; not like most content is coming down on 4K unless you’re paying extra, anyways.

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- shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  My PC is on a 40" TV at 1920 x 1080. Looks great to me, and my eyes aren’t so hot.
  
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givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
They did get around to saying it’s pixel density at the end…

But still, it’s human variation. Everybody is gonna be different. I’m not a resolution snob, but anything under 100fps pulls me out of the experience. So usually I just run at 1440, when I have fps to spare I’ll put all the settings up rather than go to 4k.

Other people would rather 30fps at 4 or even 8k

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bobaworld@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I know I am a display tech nerd, but can people really not tell the difference? Even going from a 1440p to a 4k monitor to me was a very noticeable improvement to clarity. And there’s a huge difference in the way that games look on my living room TV in 1080p compared to 4k.

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nyan@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
The question for me isn’t whether or not there’s a difference that I might be able to see if I were paying attention to the picture quality, it’s whether the video is sufficiently bad to distract me from what I’m watching. And only hypercompressed macroblocked-to-hell-and-back ancient MPEG1 files or multiply-recopied VHS tapes from the Dark Ages are ever that bad for me. In general, I’m perfectly happy with 480p. Of course, I might just have a higher-than-average immunity to bad video. (Similarly, I can spot tearing if I’m looking for it, but I do have to be looking for it.)

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utopiah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Me getting 480p videos for my video projector : “Oh… no really?” ¯\(ツ)/¯

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BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It depends on how far away you sit. But streaming has taken over everything and even a little compression ruins the perceived image quality of a higher-DPI display.

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victorz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Nah man I can tell 4K from FHD pretty easily, if it’s proper quality. Having a 4K TV helps. :P

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- ragepaw@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I have terrible sight, and on my TV in my living room, I can tell the difference. But I also don’t cheap out.
  
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  - victorz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Exactly. With the right equipment, you should be telling the difference, IMO.
    
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