A New Study Shows That Most People Are Unable to Perceive the Difference of 8K on a Smaller Screen Unless They Are Extremely Close to It

Peter_Brosdahl

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8K has had about as much popularity as a lead balloon since its arrival around ten years ago, but for those still interested in it, the basic rule is to go big or go home.

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This reminds of the stupid misconception that was widespread in the 90s / 2000s. That if you buy a larger TV you must sit proportionally further away from it. Which ofc. would completely defeat the purpose of the larger screen. There were even charts for this nonsense, that said how many feet further you have to move for every inch of screen size or something like that.
 
This reminds of the stupid misconception that was widespread in the 90s / 2000s. That if you buy a larger TV you must sit proportionally further away from it. Which ofc. would completely defeat the purpose of the larger screen. There were even charts for this nonsense, that said how many feet further you have to move for every inch of screen size or something like that.
Yeah, back when standard definition 480x720 was a thing. The larger the screen the larger those pixels became the worse it looked up close.
 
This reminds of the stupid misconception that was widespread in the 90s / 2000s. That if you buy a larger TV you must sit proportionally further away from it. Which ofc. would completely defeat the purpose of the larger screen. There were even charts for this nonsense, that said how many feet further you have to move for every inch of screen size or something like that.
It's not nonesense, it's about field of view.
 
Yeah, back when standard definition 480x720 was a thing. The larger the screen the larger those pixels became the worse it looked up close.
Except individual pixels weren't really discernible on a CRT or a Projector screen. And the distances were ridiculous like 10 feet for a 27" and such.
 
Yes they used FOV to justify it and it was / is nonsense. Think about it. What is the benefit of a bigger screen if you view it from a distance so it appears the same size as a smaller one?
You sit closer you would need to pan your head to watch the whole screen. and no, it wasn't 10ft for 27"


 
Depends on the size of the display.

I have both 1440 and 4K 32" monitors. I've played games on both. I can't tell a difference other than lower FPS on the 4K
I've got 27" 4K's right now... I dunno if I could tell between 1440 and 4k, I've never tried that... but I can definitely tell between 1080 and 4k.
 
Except individual pixels weren't really discernible on a CRT or a Projector screen. And the distances were ridiculous like 10 feet for a 27" and such.
27" used to be a giant massive cabinet of a TV though. I can remember my first TV was a 27" Trinitron and it weighed like 300 lbs and seemed absolutely ~massive~ in my living room.

I kinda miss that TV.
 
The limit of human vision at whole-screen distances is somewhere between 1440p and 4k; we can err toward 4k just due to the absolutely batty sub-pixel arrangements used by OLED makers, but really, you're not getting much more out of it.

And not just because your eyes can't see it, again at comfortable whole-screen viewing distances, but also if you could see the content on a per-pixel level, you wouldn't be able to pay attention to it at all. This is why good 1080p content is almost indistinguishable from low-bitrate 4k content, for motion content at least.

It's a little different on computer monitors, both for desktop use and for gaming. Here you are close enough to focus on a small area of the screen and details matter. But we'd still put 8k down as the upper limit of single-user single-screen scenarios*, as the extra resolution does nothing for the user aside from requiring more horsepower to run.

(*once you start having multiple screens, with or without multiple viewers, more resolution can be helpful, but really only at larger sizes and closer than full-display viewing distances, where essentially viewers are cropping into the viewable area)
 
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