4 Reasons Not to Get a 4K TV — Yet (Archive)

[Guest]

New TVs offer four times the resolution of HDTVs — at up to four times the cost — but skimp on color, smooth motion and material to watch.

4 Reasons Not to Get a 4K TV — Yet : Read more

 

[MajinCry]

Bwahahaha! Oh my. There is no mention of price. Can anyone say 'advert'?

Hell, I haven't even bothered getting a 1080p monitor; they cost way too much. I MIGHT pay £150 for a 1080p 40" TV. The current going is, however, in the realm of £400 and upwards. And that's just 1080p, nevermind 4k.

When the monitor and TV companies bring their prices down to Earth (which they won't), there will be reason enough to get one of these. As it stands now, there is none; unless you've got a large income to throw away.

 

[kawininjazx]

I have little interest in 4K, the reason is because they haven't even gotten 1080p right. Some movies and TV shows look amazing on my 1080p plasma, and some are grainy and inconsistent. If they could make everything as sharp as watching a Pixar movie, 1080p would be fine for me.

 

[hakesterman]

Too Expensive, Lack of Video's available in 4K are the only two real reasons you shouldn't bother with 4K TV yet.

 

[gm0n3y]

This isn't exactly news. Anyone buying the earliest models of a new TV tech tend to end up with sub-par specs compared to the mainstream models release a year or 2 later. Of course if you are able to throw $8000 on a TV today, then you can probably afford to spend another $3k a couple years from now to upgrade.

@MajinCry,

He does mention price a couple of times but doesn't bother to highlight it because everyone already knows that they are expensive.

 

[Avus]

The real reason to spend > $5000USD for a 4k TV is not because you want to watch 4k content. It is mainly because you can show off to your friends and families that you can spend sh!t loads of $$ for a TV.... Just like many people buying super/exotic cars...

 

[godfather666]

Well, one other reason is that you won't see that much difference compared to 1080p.
For a typical 42-inch 1080p TV, the display becomes "retina" once you're about 5 and a half feet away from the screen.
In other words, by sitting 5.5 feet away, 1080p is indistinguishable from 4K.

 

[Vorador2]

You know, most movies are filmed at 24 fps. HDMI 1.4 can work 4k at 24 fps. It's not that big of a deal.

Still, until there's an standard for 4k movies, i'm not buying. Sony recently said that they're working on 300 Gb disks that should work nicely for 4k video, but until then, i will wait.

 

[mark0718]

No mention of color gamut, so I assume that it is limited to some TV or Adobe standard, not
something that is a superset of the typical gamut of the human eye.

 

[antilycus]

oh yes. The TV. How much it's trying to be the "next graphics card" in mindset. Only problem is, that "constantly changing/upgrading" process pissed of GPU buyers as a whole and it's a MUCH smaller market than TV owners. All these industries are doing is promoting piracy because when people can't have what they want without selling the farm, they will "borrow" it permantely

 

[hyperanthripoid]

Still loving my 20" 360i tube tv. Been going strong for 30 years. The built in VCR broke and the rear coaxial connection fell off, but I still can connect my DVD player through the front RCA ports.

I have 0 need for a new TV. I use my laptop/phone/tablet to watch online content and use the TV for the occasional DVD or VHS (yes they look great on this TV).

 

[Thorfkin]

This is an excellent article. The right time to jump to 4k will be a a bit after the Ultra HD media spec officially starts rolling out. Sony and Panasonic recently announced they were working together on a 300gb optical disc. It seems likely to me that the resulting product will end up as the official Ultra HD physical media spec to replace blu-ray. By then they'll also likely have an updated compression standard ready to go with the increased data capacity. By the time we have 30 (random guess) or so decent movies available on this new standard, the price on 4k televisions will have fallen to a more reasonable level.

 

[DRosencraft]

Classic issue with new tech - when do you jump on it. If everyone takes the wait and see approach, it starts to look like there is no interest in the product and all plans for it might get scrapped. If it does take off, chances are you dropped far more money on a product than you needed to, which will all around be worse than the product you could of had if you waited a year or two, or even a few months longer in some cases. 4K is definitely the future, but someone has to be the unfortunate guinea pig that buys these things now to tell everyone what's wrong with them.

 

[g00fysmiley]

while i agree there is little reaosn to have one as a tv, i would say it is idsengenuous to say there is no reason to get one. for use as a large monitor for a computer where you have the graphics power to push content on that kind of screen, I am sure games will soon have this resolution built into their engines at which point pc gamers will again be rewarded with being 5-10 years ahead of console gamers

 

[bambiboom]

Gentlemen?,

An interesting article. It appears though that from a consumer perspective, the hardware is advanced ahead of it's need. But, there is a solution, that is to make 4K monitors affordable and put them in the hands of content creators.

In my work- architecture, industrial design, that involves graphic design, rendering. and writing, I am constantly dissatisfied by 1920 x 1080 resolution on a 27" HP 2711x.

It's not a bad image- there is good contrast, sharpness, gamma, and color balance, but it appears to me as a grainy grid of dots and what may surprise some, it's not images or video that are not satisfying as much as text. The problem is that when displayed at the scale of reading on a page, serif text can not display the thick and thin subtleties of the fonts. Constant zooming in is not entirely useful as it's necessary to see the overall composition of the page. Does anyone else- especially graphic designers- experience this?

My thought was that during the time 4K lacked material that can take advantage of the resolution, it might be first put in the hands of content creators in the form of monitors- this could include graphic designers, CGI animators, game designers, studio / broadcast and the video monitors of super resolution video and even Panavision cameras. If the content creators are exposed to the very fine resolution, perhaps then the movies and games in 4K will appear.

There are workstation video cards supporting 3,840 X 2,160 resolution- the Quadro K2000 (2GB, $450) does, and there are 4K monitors, like the 32" ASUS PQ321Q, but at $3,500 it's disproportionately expensive. Yes, a Quadro K5000 is $1,800, a 6000 is $3,600 and the 12GB Quadro K6000 is likely to be in $5,000+ range (guessing) , but the monitors will need to drop noticeably- (at least 50%?) in price before they become mainstream in imaging businesses, not to mention in homes.

Still, remember the first large- I think it was 40"- plasma TV by Philips that when first released cost $15,000?

Cheers,

BambiBoom

 

[phillipw]

Change the numbers to 1920*1080, and it could be a cut-n-paste from 1995. The same was being said (and written) about HD.

I can give one good reason not to bother with reading this article; it brings nothing to the table.

 

[phillipw]

"The built in VCR broke and the rear coaxial connection fell off, but I still can connect my DVD player through the front RCA ports. "

Hyperanthopod,
While true, even a DVD looks like garbage when watched via composite signals.

 

[ethanolson]

Yo @bambibom, I'm a total resolution whore myself because of exactly what you're saying. I pixel peep everything and I want things to be ultra-sharp and smooth without aliasing. Microsoft's ClearType technology in Windows 8 is amazing, but it still can't replace actual resolution.

 

[tomfreak]

Raise the fps to 60fps. I can really see the frame shutter in 24fps blu-ray.
Raise the 24/32bit color into Deep color = 40-48bit color. Look at the smokes u can tell there isnt enough grey color to correctly display the color.

 

[IQ11110002]

All I am asking for and have been waiting years for is a 24-27inch monitor that does above 1080p@120hz!
Been stuck on 1080p at 120hz for way too long, As a hard core gamer I don't mind spending hard earned on latest tech, The problem is what I and many others are after just doesn't exist.
Give us 120hz on resolutions above 1080p THEN worry about 4k resolutions!