[Closed] Today I saw a 4K screen TV in John Lewis.

4k?

Jesus, you could buy 2 entry level bikes for that.....

im sure the picture was great but the speakers at each side would annoy the hell out of me!

Saw one in Curry a few weeks ago.
Sales guy says there is nothing at all out there to watch on it yet.
It doesn't upscale, not even a DVD player for it.
The box they were using to play the demo was over 4 weeks delivery.

Still excellent picture quality

I'm secretly looking forward to my child knocking our TV over. It's just a matter of time but will be the only reason we could justify getting something to replace it. Stupid old peace of crap with it's perfectly fine picture quality, just break will you!!

I'd be interested to plug a GoPro Black + thing into it and see what the 4k recordings are like

im sure the picture was great but the speakers at each side would annoy the hell out of me!

I found I tuned them out after a while. However, it was nice to see a decent set of speakers, it also came with a wireless subwoofer, fitted to a TV.

[url= http://www.johnlewis.com/samsung-ue55hu8500-curved-4k-ultra-hd-3d-smart-tv-55-with-freeview-freesat-hd-and-2x-3d-glasses/p1319153 ]The curved Samsung[/url], which was in the demo room as well would have been more for you...

John Lewis?

Ohhhh...how the other half... 😛

I don't get the curved ones – unless you sit 'in' the zone then surely they won't have any benefit?

Apparently they have a wider decent viewing angle than a flat screen, I suppose as you always get a good chunk of screen angled better for you.

Price of these £4k ones will drop with take up quickly enough. I remember when I 1st saw a 50" screen - seemed monstrous! But then a 32" CRT screen seemed big at the time.

Samsung has a demo booth at the Highland Show the other week. I wasn't prepared for quite how good they looked. The curved screen is very subtle, but it did make them look even better. It did have some clever upscaling tricks, and other things that made it look very vibrant, which I'm not sure you could live with, but it did look seriously sharp.

Sales guy says there is nothing at all out there to watch on it yet.

It's a bit like some conspiracy theorists claim 650b to be. Sony are massively pushing 4k, both getting cameras into studio's and TV's into houses because they want people to upgrade their TV's. Everyone else is a bit 'mehhh, we'll make the cameras if the market demands it' or 'why make a TV when there's nothing to watch on it'.

When I worked at BBC Research Dept 26 years ago they were working on HDTV which was analogue and 1280 progressive lines - it took 4 betamaxes recording digitally to record the picture.

That was seriously good - no digital compression rubbish in there.

Was going to be on the BSB satellite, but then they went bust and Sky bought them and used some lower power satellites.

Netflix are starting to do 4k broadcasts so long as you've got a 4k TV manufactured this year (older models don't have the required decoder built in) and a broadband connection no lower than 16Mbps. They're starting with Breaking Bad and House of Cards and gradually adding their own shows in 4K.

£3399 and they charge £9 to take your old telly away . Cheap barstewards !

Apparently they have a wider decent viewing angle

How does that work then? Surely if you are sat to one side, you will see less of the side closest to you due to the curve?

Netflix are starting to do 4k broadcasts

be better if the whole internet streaming at a lowly 1080P worked a bit more robustly...

Call that a TV, now this is a [url= http://www.costco.co.uk/view/product/uk_catalog/cos_1,cos_1.1,cos_1.1.7/142976 ]TV[/url] just a smidge over £4k!!

TurnerGuy - Member

When I worked at BBC Research Dept 26 years ago...

Kingswood?

be better if the whole internet streaming at a lowly 1080P worked a bit more robustly...

What's the issue? We use netflix through an appleTV pretty much every other night and have not had a problem for months.

Surely if you are sat to one side, you will see less of the side closest to you due to the curve?

Well yeah but the other side is really good 🙂 I think that's the point but dunno really.

Kingswood?

yep - used to live round the corner in Monkswell Lane, near the Well House Inn pub.

What's the issue?

resolution drops down sometimes, motion isn't fantastic - it is OK but not comparable to a blueray or something direct from Virgin.

There is scope for improvement, so why not make that improvement rather than mess around with the distraction that is 4K - a bit like this 3D rubbish, whereas higher resolution and better frame rates would have been preferable.

The world needed a new TV technology, my high def TV is just rubbish, I can see all I need to on it - but I WANT IT SHARPER AND BRIGHTER!!

I love new tech, but the 4k thing just isn't floating my boat at the moment, TV/cinema should have a level of smoothing and 'cinema' style to them, it adds to the effect.

There is scope for improvement, so why not make that improvement rather than mess around with the distraction that is 4K - a bit like this 3D rubbish, whereas higher resolution and better frame rates would have been preferable.

The problem is the TV companies don't control the amount or quality of your bandwidth. Take inconsistent stream quality up with the ISPs who throttle connections and refuse to upgrade backbone infrastructure as a means to leverage more cash our of tier 1 carriers.

Kenq38

Sales guy says there is nothing at all out there to watch on it yet.

Nudge, nudge.
Wink, wink.
Say no more!!

The problem is the TV companies don't control the amount or quality of your bandwidth. Take inconsistent stream quality up with the ISPs who throttle connections and refuse to upgrade backbone infrastructure as a means to leverage more cash our of tier 1 carriers.

well the fact is that is works like that now - so why try to shove 4k down the line as well - what's the point?

Once the backbones are upgraded, then everyone gets 4k tv, and the backbones need upgrading again, and so on, when a decent and consistent 1080P would have been good enough.

But people aren't concerned with quality are they - or they would all have complained about how poor freeview pictures are when it has nothing to do with them using PAL, just the broadcast companies compressing the pictures down as far as they can get away with.

There was one weekend years ago with some royal event where the picture quality got really bad and showed loads of mpeg artifacts - it turned out the BBC were turning up the compression to see how far they could go before people complained. I think Sky had done this previously but I didn't witness that one.

There is scope for improvement, so why not make that improvement rather than mess around with the distraction that is 4K

Broadband internet supply is a totally different industry to TV manufacture, so Sony can't do bugger all about it.

Some years ago my elderly grandparents went to a Sony store to pick up a new TV to replace their 15+ year old TV.

They had to go into the city so this was a big trip for them (they hated buying stuff online since they wanted to be able to see it before buying it). They told the shop assistant they wanted a large TV since the room they would be watching it in was large and their eyesight wasn't so good these days. They said they didn't know how much a good TV was these days, but that it would be for watching soaps and documentaries, so something "good for those sorts of things and definitely with a remote control"

I agreed to come round to help show them how to work it once it had been delivered.

I'll never forget walking into that room and there being a 70" MONSTER sat in the corner! 🙂

We all agreed that it was a bit big(!) and that it would have to go back.

However, the shock of the size of the screen was nothing compared to the shock of finding out how much a sale assistant charged my elderly and naive grandparents....£12k. They'd totally lost touch with the cost of a loaf of bread at their age, never mind technology!

I was seething and decided to head down the next evening for a chat with the manager. Needless to say, the 70" went back and they got a nice 42" TV with a 25% discount and an apology for being poorly advised first time round.

I saw the same demo recently. No doubt we will want 4K in the future but at the moment there isn't the content.

As for the internet comment it's interesting as in France people don't have satellite dishes in the cities, "cable" tv is delivered via the internet, what that means is the service is diabolical and in many cases the HD channels (720) aren't watchable ! I shudder to think how bad the service would be if they tried to stream 4k

@peterfile - that's a disturbing story, at leas the shop did the right thing. The original assistant should have been fired.

Meh.

1080p is too HD for me - most films look shit on my mates super sharp HD TV, they look like home movies.

be better if the whole internet streaming at a lowly 1080P worked a bit more robustly...

Netflix works great through Apple TV on my projector.

£9 to take your old telly away

Serious purveyors of big flat tellies tend to put the old one in the garden.

Was in Harrods last year and came across a £35k tv. But this comes from the store that also sells £5k furry toys. Stunning to see how the rich waste their money

We've got 4k monitors on some of the hot-desks in the office. I always try and get one of the 1920x1200 screens instead but today I used one of the 4k ones....

My eyes got used to it eventually and it was faff resizing fonts but the ability to have 4 VM's displayed at 1920x1080 each on the same screen was impressive.

Tomorrow I'm going in early to get one of the 1920x1200 screens, I can keep it a nice distance away!

Was in Harrods last year and came across a £35k tv. But this comes from the store that also sells £5k furry toys. Stunning to see how the rich waste their money

Or you could say they are paying through the nose for the latest technology while the bugs are still being ironed out and standards decided on so you can then pay a fraction of that a couple of years down the line for something better and that won't be obsolete. Without them paying up everyone else wouldnt benefit as quickly.

When I got my laptop 2 years ago I made sure I got the full HD 15.6" screen version and I love it. Now I see the current version of my laptop has a 15.6" 4k screen! How have we gone from normal CRT resolution for so many years to then have HD and then full HD and now 4k in such a small time scale? I remember the first colour mobile phones with add-on cameras and 120 pixel 256 colour screens. Now we have full HD in a 4" screen and will probably see 4k phones in the not too distant future.

Christ. Watching 1080p on my TV now....eurgghhh.

I have been seen the face of God, and nothing can be the same again 😡

The porn industry will probably lead the way with content.

You'll be able to do a sperm count from each facial... 😯

the point of 4k is for 50"+ screens. You watch 1080 on a 60 inch or a 90 inch screen and you soon see its limitations. For upto 50" there is no point, just like there is no point in 1080 below about 40" - unless you're sat about a foot away. The idea of 4k is you can get super sized screens in normal sized houses - ultimately with internet telly's we will have lots of window's and content on screen at the same time showing different things so we will want much larger screens than we're used to.

Panasonic are offering 12 months free Netflix access as that is currently the only 4k content you can get. Disc players are being developed but it is likely we will be streaming 4k content via the internet rather than a hard format. And they do upscale. I was demo'd a Panasonic 58" screen that was upscaling from Blu-Ray and it was stunning. Also the latest home cinema amps have 4k pass-though so when we do get 4k content going through your amp it is passed through direct to the TV.

Curved TV's are just daft.

just like there is no point in 1080 below about 40" - unless you're sat about a foot away

Disagree with that. Obvious difference betwen SD and HD on our 40" telly and we're sat 3m or so away. Of course, if you sit closer still, you see much more, and the difference is greater.

Meh.

1080p is too HD for me - most films look shit on my mates super sharp HD TV, they look like home movies.

That's because he has a flash telly and doesn't know how to set it up. Turn the motion processing off and it will look 10x better

I'm secretly looking forward to my child knocking our TV over. It's just a matter of time but will be the only reason we could justify getting something to replace it

I was waiting 4+ years for that to happen..
Never did, so just 'gave in' and got a new telly!!

DrP

just like there is no point in 1080 below about 40" - unless you're sat about a foot away

1080p is far superior to SD on our puny 32" Sony.

I think the point was that 1080p HD is overkill on a 32" panel, when compared to 720p.

I could be wrong.

the problem comes when the film companies have to author the 4k movies, the computing power/time and expense need to handle 2+ hours of uncompressed 24/60/100 fps 3840 x 2160 images will be the limiting factor.

I too had this experience in John Lewis a few weeks ago.I just stood there, mesmerised, for ages. Watching all the olympics slo-mo replays on it would have been fricking awesome!

So how big will a 4k film be file wise?

Will they fit on a blu-ray?

Excuse my ignorance, but we're still watching on a 32" CRT with a normal DVD player; not even Blu-Ray!

My GF watches Jeremy Kyle on my 55" top of the range Sony in SD and couldn't care less about picture quality. Drives me absolutely crazy!

So how big will a 4k film be file wise?

Will they fit on a blu-ray?

Excuse my ignorance, but we're still watching on a 32" CRT with a normal DVD player; not even Blu-Ray!

Well this is the problem isn't it. The industry on the one hand wants us to move away from physical media to the point that your film collection is cloud based. Then on the other hand they want you to buy kit that would require 40GB files to be streamed...

I think compression technology has some way to go before most of us can have our cake and eat it as it were. Mind you, I remember quite a few mates rushing out and buying the latest 50" plasma's with surround sound only to sit there watching poor quality pirate films 🙄

Will they fit on a blu-ray?

Depends on how compressed the movie is and what sort of disc you're using. A typical feature length film with reasonable compression would be around 60GB. Standard 2 layer BluRay (the one used for most current films) holds 50GB so it wouldn't fit on that unless you compressed the movie to a greater extent than would be ideal. Triple and quad layer BluRay discs are available which hold 100GB and 128GB respectively although I think these are currently only used for data storage devices rather than consumer playback devices. But the technology exists to fit a 4k film on a disc so I'm sure with the right motivation it could be made into a consumer unit.

As for streaming, I'd quite happily wait for a film to download if it meant having it at 4K with minimal compression. I know eventually we'd be pushing for streaming but downloading could be a temporary stop gap. Given the choice I'll always pick a high quality download over a lower quality stream.

There is little point in a UHD screens under 60", the physical limitations of the nodes in our eyes cannot take in the detail. Under 60" yes the picture will looks pin sharp but you will not be able to see the detail. Go view the same material on an 80"+ screen and get the viewing distance correct and the picture comes alive, your find yourself looking all over the screen.

Is this like the whole super expensive hi-fi issue, where it was kinda pointless due to the quality at which most CDs were recorded at?

...although that may be a poor analogy now with the advent of streaming music etc.

So tempting! My AMP and my XB1 are both 4k supported. Still, lack the access to content as others have pointed out.

Is this like the whole super expensive hi-fi issue, where it was kinda pointless due to the quality at which most CDs were recorded at?

Not really.

I'm surprised anyone can tell a difference between an sd and HD signal on any HD capable TV as the TV will be up scaling the sd picture. If you've got a half decent HD capable TV it will have very good up scaling.

I have a 42" plasma as my main TV and the HD picture is superb, but only marginally better than an up scaled sd picture and no different if you compare a kids animated film upscaled DVD vs BR. The 4k telly I saw demo'd was easily noticeably better, especially close up, and I mean an order of magnitude better. I know nothing about eye nodes but it seems to me our eyes can easily tell the difference between 1080 and 4k on a 58" screen at least. I think our eyes can take whatever is to come after 4k. But 4k comes into its own when sitting close to large screens. The same principle as IMAX. Sit close to a chuffing big screen so it fills your field of vision. No point to it, so stop trying to justify it with logic. It's purely for the sheer hell and fun of it. Most people people are overbiked so why not be over-tv'd?

4k is great, and internet TV, and 3D and curved screens since I could buy a very cheap 40" LED TV the other day for peanuts because it had none of the above, it just supported good old HD (1080p for BluRay/AppleTV and 1080i for local TV) with enough HDMI ports for what I needed.
Unless there is a major shift to internet based TV content to support the broadcast of 4k content (and lets face it, most content is still via digital Ariel or satellite) then it will go the way of 3D.
Also, that resolution is pretty pointless on a big screen as your eyes would not be able to differentiate from a distance, however for close in tasks such as gaming it is great.
Anyway, the Japanese are working on 8k now......

@arnie
Was in Harrods last year and came across a £35k tv. But this comes from the store that also sells £5k furry toys. Stunning to see how the rich waste their money

@wobbliscott
Most people people are overbiked so why not be over-tv'd?

I'm surprised anyone can tell a difference between an sd and HD signal on any HD capable TV as the TV will be up scaling the sd picture. If you've got a half decent HD capable TV it will have very good up scaling.

I'm surprised that you're surprised. Not saying it's night and day, but SD and HD look quite different to me.

I saw a demo of the 150" panasonic 4K plasma a few years ago, they were sending it a cd's worth of data a second from hard drive players!

And once again, meh.

A good film in SD is still good, a shit film in 4k is still shit. All this obsessing over the medium of delivery is getting silly.

It's like wanting more and more megapixels on a digital camera, but forgetting about taking well composed photos of interesting things.

That's because he has a flash telly and doesn't know how to set it up. Turn the motion processing off and it will look 10x better

Interesting...

@grum HD has made today's big screen TV's "must have", I was a late adopter but I'd never go back now. 720/1080 is pretty similar for me but I can see 4k is the next step. I don't have to have it now but I will get it eventually, when a 4k TV costs what a 1080 one does today or possibly less. We are not obsessing over it just saying we can see a difference.

muppetWrangler - Member

As for streaming, I'd quite happily wait for a film to download if it meant having it at 4K with minimal compression. I know eventually we'd be pushing for streaming but downloading could be a temporary stop gap. Given the choice I'll always pick a high quality download over a lower quality stream.

I just put 60Gb into a 'dowload time calcluator' online and unless i got my numbers completely wrong, it will take at least 45hrs to download over my (maximum) 3Mb connection that TalkTalk have furnished me with.
Even if we got the 6Mb that they reckon is potentially possible, it would still take 23hrs!
Hardly feasible for a quick decision of what film to watch on a Friday night!!

A good film in SD is still good, a shit film in 4k is still shit. All this obsessing over the medium of delivery is getting silly.

Who is obsessing? Nice telly was nice, and I probably will get one in 3-4 years when prices are reasonable.

It's like wanting more and more megapixels on a digital camera, but forgetting about taking well composed photos of interesting things.

There will still be interesting things, they will just look amaze-balls.

All this obsessing over the medium of delivery is getting silly.

It's like wanting more and more megapixels on a digital camera, but forgetting about taking well composed photos of interesting things.

So true. And what's thos obsession with huge tvs? Anything much above 42: in an average sized living room is daft. Our 32" tv sits in the corner being relatively unobtrusive. Anthing much larger wold seriously impose on the whole room.

If you've got a half decent HD capable TV it will have very good up scaling.

I'm not sure you quite understand the concepts here. Upscaling makes fewer pixels into more pixels by spreading out the existing detail over more pixels. If something's been filmed in HD there will be more details to begin with, so you get more detail. The TV can't create detail when it upscales.

Anything much above 42: in an average sized living room is daft.

If we bought a new TV it'd be 46 or 50, instead of 40 now, and it wouldn't really be obtrusive because of where we have it - wall mounted, centre of large wall. A new TV however would be a lot thinner and closer to the wall so would probably even be less obtrusive.

Who doesn't have a cinema room these days? Do you not even watch Grand Designs?

So true. And what's thos obsession with huge tvs? Anything much above 42: in an average sized living room is daft. Our 32" tv sits in the corner being relatively unobtrusive. Anthing much larger wold seriously impose on the whole room.

So because your telly fits nicely in your front room, there is no need to produce anything bigger?

Seems a bit unfair on those with the room to have a bigger TV.

My 50" plasma fits just fits into an alcove at one end of the sitting room - far less obtrusive than the 28" CRT it replaced. The room could take more inches but as the alcove couldn't doubt I'll go bigger.

Massive super high res displays are for people to watch shit like Transformers on, not proper cinematic films. Sharpness is massively over-rated.

I have a 72" 'screen' on my (720p) projector. It looks great.

Unless you have a separate TV room that's not your sitting room then having a massive telly just dominates the room and looks shit.

So because your telly fits nicely in your front room, there is no need to produce anything bigger?

No sily; read:

"Anything much above 42: [b]in an average sized living room[/b] is daft."

If you live in an enormous mansion, then go buy a 150" tv. Sticking a massive telly into an average sized living rom, as many people do, is daft.

No sily; read:

This is STW, you don't expect me to actually read other posts properly?

What should be the TV to room size ratio then? Not sure what average room size is or when a TV is deemed big.

Certainly I have seen big TVs in small rooms which did look pretty silly.

Hi all,
Well I was at media city the other week with regards to 4K and to be honest there is very little content out at present, sports (as usual) will eventually lead the way with regards to 4K but it will be another premium channel I think.

In your living room depending on the size of it, of course you will see very little difference in quality of content. We were watching content on a 4K projector in a studio projected at (approx) 20 feet wide and even still the HD stood up very well against the 4K footage. The detail in 4K is stunning though

I think what may/is happening everything will be shot in 4K (or 6 or 8 TBH) and then finally sent out at HD for a whlie which means before everything is 4K your HD will start to look VERY VERY good.

We are capturing 4K at present which is making storage and post a bit of a nightmare with regards to file sizes but all the commercial stuff is still at a HD final output.

Oh and UHD is not TRUE 4K just like 1280 was never TRUE HD 🙂

Is there some sensible, scientific explanation for why some people see the difference between image quality more than others?

For example I don't see a big enough difference in image quality to justify the extra cost of a Retina Macbook vs a Macbook Air. I can't see a significant difference on my 42" plasma between a broadcast in SD and it's equivalent in HD.

I wondered if the fact I'm shorts-sighted and astigmatic (and mildly colour blind) means I don't see the huge difference that others do even when wearing my glasses.

Even if we got the 6Mb that they reckon is potentially possible, it would still take 23hrs!
Hardly feasible for a quick decision of what film to watch on a Friday night!!

Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well. The 60GB would be the size of the film if it were stored at very low compression on a disc format such as 3 or 4 layer BluRay. A downloaded or streamed film would typically have a much higher compression applied to it and would probably be around 11GB for 90 minutes based on the 4k streaming that netflix currently do which is around 7GB per hour. So on your 3Mbps connection you'd still be looking at around 10-11 hours but on any connection over 25Mbps that time comes down to less than an hour.

So my point was that I would be happy enough to have some level of compression between the two (streamed and physical copy) and wait 2-3 hours for the download. If it meant the it looked awesome.

I appreciate that not everyone has access to faster broadband which as has been said above is probably the limiting factor to the take up of 4K TV's.

Sharpness is massively over-rated.

not even a DVD player for it.

How very amusingly last century.

The new LG OLED TVs interest me. Better blacks than plasma.

This is why you need big screens -

[img] [/img]

the picture comes alive

...aaaaaand bingo!

we've found the 650b of the audio visual world.

IMO what 4K will be good for is driving hardware advances for gaming. The Xbox One and PS4 won't really be able to push that kind of resoloution and it does make a nice if somewhat smaller difference than antialiasing in terms of jaggies.

Is there some sensible, scientific explanation for why some people see the difference between image quality more than others?

^ but is there a relationship between those who wear glasses and those who find HD TV not as "wow" as others? I remember my old boss raving about HD TV when they first came out and she wore glasses (and was a lot older than me).