Is your 4K TV worth it? Human eye resolution limits.

Actually, most TV watched now are via streaming services, which do broadcast 4K quite often.

I have issues with how the language is used in that article, misleading and easy to misinterpretation. If you're not an ophthalmology researcher, you really don't know what PPD actually means, thus meaningless to the lay person without explaining in detail what PPD really is. It's a theoretical measurement. Eyes don't see in pixels, it's not very well written article, IMHO. My former production company, and the TV station I used to work for, did some comparisons between SD, HD, and UHD, and the higher the resolution, the higher resolutions were very humanely noticeable by viewers. But this thread is about speculation, so, whatever. And the mention of eye charts, they're not printed in pixels, so that's 100% misleading.

BenB wrote:

I have issues with how the language is used in that article, ... it's not very well written article, IMHO.

Actually, I think the article is a reasonable explanation of the findings. Perhaps you expected a much more detailed and substantive explanation ... which may be found in this article -> Resolution limit of the eye — how many pixels can we see? For my part, the essential point is that it depends on your viewing distance and the unique qualities or limitations of your particular eyes.

In my own case, viewing a 46" 4K Sony Bravia TV at 6'-8' I don't see much difference between 1080 and 4K. In fact I'm astounded at how good 1080 looks. Yes, there is some qualitative visual difference ... just not as much of a difference as the 4K market hype would lead you believe.

In addition to the human eye "resolution" limitations, it's worth pointing out that very little tv content is even broadcast in 4K or higher. One may be "future-proofing" by buying a UHD tv, but then again maybe not.

For example, when bought, several years ago, a 1080p HD TV, it cost 800 euros. It is still going strong, but I could have paid half of that for a cheaper model, and then later buy a newer, brighter one (maybe even 4K) and spend less overall :-)

Not as cut and dry as it's being made out here. The TV set, the ambient light in the room, your distance from the set, there's a bunch of variables. But from a distance I can pick out the 1080 sets at Best Buy from the 4K when they're all side by side on that big wall.

Interesting article. Will have to measure my screen and plug it into the calculator.