Yesterday I took my Macbook Pro to a dealer for a couple of tests.
We connected it to the "external" HDMI 6 input at a resolution of 1080p.
Unfortunately I had to use VLC as a player instead of Plex, which I normally use in the living room.
I wanted to test a Blu-ray remux of The Dark Knight Rises and a high-quality 720p encode of Game of Thrones, which pretty much sum up the videos I play at home, in terms of standards.
The Dark Knight picture was absolutely stunning. The upscaling to 4K performed by the TV seemed flawless to me. I was particularly impressed by the clarity of the picture, considering there was plenty of sunlight in the room (something that makes it impossible to watch pretty much anything with dark tones with my current BV10 at home).
On the other hand, I was disappointed by the picture of the 720p file. It might be due to the "double upscaling" (Mac upscales to 1080p, TV upscales to 4K) and VLC might not be the best player out there.
We were sitting at ~2 meters from the TV and I had to distance myself more from the screen to reduce the grainy effect. Still, it was sub-par. But I definitely need to try with Plex which usually does a much better job.
Have any of you conducted similar tests, and what were your results?
About the audio: The Dark Knight has a DTS-HD MA track. The TV detected it as DTS 5.1. I have no idea if the Mac does something to the audio or if the TV can actually play it (VLC was set to passthrough the encoded audio to the HDMI port).
Also, 4K test files played via DLNA are played as 1080p.
If you play the same files from an external 4K player they play natively. This was "confirmed" by the fact that the TV does not allow you to access the menu - user and service - when a 4K source is connected. Playing 4K from DLNA displayed 1080p in the service menu (because there is still no way to check the source resolution with a standard menu, unlike the sound).
