While 4K is awesome up really close, when you think about sight lines, our visual acuity, the field of view from the seated distance we wish to obtain, the overall ambient light in our viewing environment, and our source material it may be significant overkill. When you take your viewing distance and acceptable screen size for your room into account, you probably don't need much over 720p  - 1080p tops on a 55" screen.

BAND'OH! wrote:

Jeff wrote:

When I went to see the 55 inch Avant, I took my BluRay of "Blade Runner" to watch. It looked a fair amount less impressive than what the dealer was showing on it.

That's equally worrying since I am considering an Avant 55" (2014 Gen 1)! Maybe I need to get the BV12? Sounds like this is the only option for excellent picture quality (assuming I could forego 4k and HDR) which I think I might have to! The majority of my viewing is older SD stuff such as Columbo, Hart to Hart, Quincy, Kojak, Streets of San Fran, Avengers, Mission Impossible, Return of the Saint, Westerns, British and American comedies etc. All the older stuff that I grew up with! The more I think about it I am not sure I even need 4K or HDR because there's nothing on it!

I'd suggest that before you buy it you try it out with not only BR sources but with SD old TV shows (lately I've been on a late 50s/early 60s TV binge, Peter Gun, Mr. Lucky, etc. so I understand completely). Often the higher the resolution of the panel the worse lower res sources look, even if it has a very good upscaler there's only so much it can do. To me, personally, the single finest BV out there for image quality is the BV12. The video processing on that may have made it look better even than my VT Panasonic, and to my eyes my Panasonic is the single best TV I've ever seen. I tend to watch a lot of movies that are often dark, and the B&W  presentation is amazingly good. One of the ways I judge TVs is also to watch B&W shows, that will really show up gray scale linearity and color temp issues.

DMacri wrote:

While 4K is awesome up really close, when you think about sight lines, our visual acuity, the field of view from the seated distance we wish to obtain, the overall ambient light in our viewing environment, and our source material it may be significant overkill. When you take your viewing distance and acceptable screen size for your room into account, you probably don't need much over 720p - 1080p tops on a 55" screen.

Dom

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DMacri wrote:

While 4K is awesome up really close, when you think about sight lines, our visual acuity, the field of view from the seated distance we wish to obtain, the overall ambient light in our viewing environment, and our source material it may be significant overkill. When you take your viewing distance and acceptable screen size for your room into account, you probably don't need much over 720p  - 1080p tops on a 55" screen.

You make an excellent point. People usually don't watch a 55 to 65+ inch screen from inches away, you sit back, which is why the Imaging Science Foundation listed resolution fairly far down the list of importance. And also why I never understood curved screens. When I bought my first flat panel set about 11 years ago (which still works), I took some DVDs and went shopping. I wound up with a Panasonic plasma that wasn't even HD, it was an EDTV, which meant vertical resolution was 480p. Had and advantage as no scaling was required as DVDs are 480p. Other advantages, at the time HD was 720p, was more expensive, and didn't do blacks as well as the EDTV set. I sat far enough away, about 10 or so feet, that my eyes couldn't discern the pixel size, plus it looked sharper. There's a thing I learned about in photography called accutance. In that, at times if you're far enough away from a print to not see the grain distinctly, a grainer/lower resolution photo will appear sharper and clearer as your eye, while not seeing the grain, seems to see more edge definition, so the technically "better" photo doesn't look as good. Always been fascinated by human perception things, ears, eyes, etc.

Saw the LG 65" C7 today, priced at £2999. It was showing demo footage of action scenes of Pacific Rim in 4K - I'm not sure if was the source material or that I was only stood about 5ft away from the screen but I wasn't blown away! It still looked like ragged edges during fast motion etc., something I wasn't expecting to see.

I only spent 5 minutes watching so it could be a complete Red Herring!

Try searching the archive forum for debates regarding screen sizes beyond the 32" Avant/ 42" BV5. All the same arguments as in this thread.

I agree with Jeff that at normal viewing distances you cannot tell the difference between screen resolutions, and that your brain does somehow take account of (i.e. ignore) all sorts of image problems. In fact certain problems, like edge lighting differences, only become annoying or noticeable after your attention is drawn to them in a technical test and you then start looking for the 'fault.'

In a normal viewing situation very high resolutions are completely unnecessary unless you want to read small print with your face up aganst the screen.

With our BV11 we often just watch SD rather than the equivalent HD channel... and no one ever notices the difference when viewing from 10ft away.

Graham

I agree vikinger about it being easier to not see things until you're made aware of them, often true. When DLP rear projector sets were a thing, I hadn't noticed the rainbow artifacts until I read about them and went to a store and deliberately tried to see them. After that I couldn't stop seeing them!

Sandyb wrote:

While I agree that HDR upgrades are not essential, and that the new OLED screens aren't any better at Bluray and HD, there are differences I resolution that you should / I can notice

 

 

Sky Sports SD is quite a bit worse than its HD equivalent, and I sit about 11-12 feet away

 

 

But yes, there may be diminishing returns going up from there...

 

 

When Sky introduced their first HD box there was a noticeable reduction in quality of the SD version on the same box - why would that be do you think?

I have the previous Sky+ box and hung on to it for ages because I refused to pay the premium for sky HD channels and the Freeview HD channels were available on my TV - Skysports SD on the Sky+ box was very noticeably better than on the HD box! Don't assume all picture differences are due to the resolution, they could equally be the provider trying to squeeze extra channels into the same bandwidth (i.e. ITV vs BBC) or else some unscrupulous provider trying to persuade you to part with extra cash!