Can You Tell the Difference Between 4K and 8K?

In the past I began to feel, in a very real sense, the speed of recent technological advances. My roommate – actor – made it clear in his mind, perhaps through another player, that the 90’s video games look good on the ’90s radio show. This prompted him to keep one on Craigslist, which led me to help him climb the stairs. And that was just, let me tell you, a very difficult thing. I could not believe how heavy that TV was.

In the 25+ years between the start of the TV and the end of my living room, TV shows have changed the whole team. Now they are all flat, not really rich. As you might expect, screen technology has also improved considerably. Some high-resolution models offer 8K UHD views, double the previous 4K standard. Is 8Kwa TV resolution twice as good as 4K? At some point, are there any declining returns when it comes to image quality? About this week Giz Asks, we reached out to a number of experts to find out.

Professor of Psychology, University of California Berkeley, whose research focuses on visual acuity, curiosity and memory

The obvious answer is that it depends on (1) the size of your television and (2) how far you are watching it. The advantages of 8K will be easily seen on a large screen TV. It will be invisible on a small TV remote control. The same goes for modern 4K TVs and 2K TVs (1920 × 1080 pixels, “1080p”) – they work well with large TVs viewed at short distances.

Professor, Vision and Computational Neuroscience, MIT

Let’s deal with this with technical details: Good vision (which we often call vision 20/20) is associated with the ability to eliminate two dots separated by ‘1 minute arc.’ What does this mean? A person’s thumb, in length, is about two degrees wide, and the degree is 60 minutes. This means that if you can draw 120 dots along the line across your thumb, then the length of the arm you will not be able to see. At any viewing point, or with other dots, you can not distinguish between the dotted line and the continuous line. If we translate this calculation to TV, it would be that for a 60’s clear screen from 5 meters, the limit of our choice is 4K. At this point, we can differentiate between HD and 4K; but any increase beyond 4K (say, at 8K) cannot be seen. close proximity to the TV (something unusual) to distinguish the 4K screen from the 8K.

Assistant Professor, Optometry & Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley

We have all experienced experiences that push the boundaries of what our eyes can see. Maybe you have never read a piece of food or tried to identify your friend’s face in public. As astounding as the human eye, it has a wide range of boundaries that make some parts of the world seem unattractive. When it comes to designing, understanding the boundaries is important to understand if one display will look better than another.

The difference between 8K video footage and previous generation screens decreases with the increase in pixels. In the modern version of the radio video, many tiny, small objects are formed side by side in a group. Each pixel in the grid produces color, which creates the images you see on your video radio. When viewing your favorite app, you may want to see these images in uninterrupted detail and also see the same pixels. That is, you want the images to be clearly visible but the pixels to be invisible.

Has 8K radio video provided any change in these conditions? It depends on many factors, such as the contrast of the display, the size of each pixel, and the height you view – it depends on the type of image you are looking at and how the image changes. For example, if you watch a video that is too far away for each pixel to be smaller than your display might be, the pixels do not look like the display is 4K, 8K, or 100K pixels wide. If you pull out a measuring tape and remember your trigonometry, you can easily calculate the number of pixels on the viewing scale to see for yourself. If you are already above 60 pixels per degree, you will not be able to see the transition with 8K radio video of the same size (by comparison, one degree of view is approximately the width of your thumb held in arm’s length). On the other hand, a display with larger pixels can help you see more of a variety of shapes if the group is large or if you want to look closer. This, of course, all assumes that the original recording also has 8K or higher resolution.

Multiplication of pixels can bring benefits, but details of how you look, what you see, and where you see from will determine what is most beneficial to you.

Martin S. Banks

Professor, Optometry, Vision Science, Neuroscience, & Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

There are ideas on TV video options, mobile phones, and more. These concepts are usually based on a single factor, which is that the pixel renders a “1 minute arc” or less. “Minute of arc” is a technical term, and, even a “minute,” does not take long: only space is affected. Think of a moment of arc as a tiny speck of light coming to the eye. That’s the pixel on the TV, and it gets to your eye. One minute arc is the angle the cone forms from your eye to the pixel. HD TV has 2,000 pixels from left to right, UHD TV has 4,000, and here we are talking about 8,000. Many people in my garden think that the idea of ​​”one minute arc” is wrong – it must be small.

Seeing distance comes back in the equation here. To skip some math, it seems that if you have a 2K TV (HD), and it is 3 feet tall, you should be 9.3 feet or more to appreciate the resolution; if you are 20 meters away, there is no way you can tell the difference between your TV and the one with fewer pixels. If you have a 3K 4K long TV, you should be around 4.5 feet or closer to tell the difference, and no one is sitting that close. Go up to 8K, and now you have to stay two feet from a 3-meter radio video to appreciate. You need to be very careful to take advantage of this.

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