Earlier this month, we set out to investigate if the extra resolution offered by 4K over 1080p is visible at normal viewing distance, as part of an Ultra HD and OLED television showcase event organised by British retailer Richer Sounds. A 55-inch 4K UHD (ultra high-definition) TV was lined up alongside a 1080p HDTV of the same size, each displaying content that’s 1:1 pixel-matched to its native screen resolution. Both TVs had their identities masked by custom-built cabinets which were spray-painted black. Standing 9 feet away (enforced using crowd control posts), attendees were then asked to pick out the 4K television after sampling the displayed material.
The results are now in, and an overwhelming majority of participants correctly identified the 4K TV, indicating that there exists a perceptible difference even from as far as 9 feet away on a 55in screen. Out of 49 attendees who submitted their pick to enter a prize draw, only one thought that the 1080p set was the 4K display.
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| Left: Samsung UE55F9000 4K TV. Right: Samsung UE55F8000 HDTV |
While we’d like to claim that we’ve provided the definitive answer to the great 4K vs 1080p debate, there are a number of caveats. First, the 4K videos we served from a media PC were high quality, which included a demo clip from Chimei Innolux, as well as the Blender Foundation’s excellent open-source movie projects Tears Of Steel and Sintel. Critics may argue that this is unrealistic, since the native 4K material that may become available in streaming format will probably be compressed to a heavier degree. However, our intention was to demonstrate the difference – if any – between the best of 4K versus the best of 1080p. After all, if you wanted to show off your HDTV to your friends, you would use the most pristine Blu-ray movies, instead of softer HD content or (gasp) Netflix, wouldn’t you?
Second, we had some difficulty matching the displays such that resolution was the only difference, even with full calibration. We opted to use the Samsung UE55F9000 and UE55F8000 for the 4K vs 1080p comparison because of their excellent onboard SPVA LCD panels which we had hoped would be similar, but then we discovered that the retail units supplied by Richer Sounds featured slightly different black level and gamma response between each other, which is understandable given that one’s a 4K panel and the other one isn’t.
Armed with our trusty Klein K10-A meter and CalMAN 5 video calibration software, we managed to dial out most of the discrepancies, but when you’re comparing two displays side-by-side specifically looking for a difference (which is the whole point of the exercise), even the slightest discrepancy gets magnified. Whether or not this made it easier for attendees to spot a difference between the TVs remains unknown, but at least the result was consistent, with more than 97% of participants correctly pinpointing the 4K television.
Third, although most attendees succeeded in identifying the 4K Ultra HD TV, we have no idea of how they arrived at their conclusion. For all we know, it could have just been a fleeting shot which looked marginally sharper that clued them in, out of 30-odd minutes of video playback time per loop. For what it’s worth, to our eyes the native 4K content on the Samsung F9000 consistently presented more detail, particularly on faraway objects in a long shot. The difference was not night and day, but we could tell even from 9 feet away. Major disclaimer: we were not blinded, and knew which television was the 4K one from the outset.
Last but not least, resolution is only one of the many attributes of picture quality, and not the most important one. Amongst the swarm of 4K televisions on exhibit, it was actually a full HD 1080p set – the LG 55EA980W OLED TV – that hogged the attention of those attending the event, largely due to its ability to render true 0 cd/m2 blacks, contributing to an unrivalled contrast performance (which most video enthusiasts agree is the principal determinant of image quality). Ok, its unfathomably slim panel and subtly curved design probably turned more than a few heads too.
Samsung’s mammoth 85-inch S9 UHD display also impressed, with its full-array local-dimming LED backlighting working effectively to deliver deeper blacks and brighter whites on the same scene without introducing significant halos. Ultra high-definition footage looked utterly gorgeous on the 85S9 which dripped with the sort of fine detail we didn’t even know existed until we laid eyes on the TV – the gigantic screen size obviously helped. The Samsung S9 calibrated like a dream too, but that’s a story for another day.
So there you have it: the superior resolution of 4K over 1080p is visible on a 55″ screen from 9 feet away, provided the content is up to par. The difference is not big unless you move closer – only you can decide if this is worth the higher prices currently commanded by Ultra HD 4K TVs.
Regardless of what anyone (and that includes us) say or think, 4K TV is coming, with or without widely available native 4K content. Eventually the price premium between a 4K set and a 1080p HDTV will become negligible, and the latter will go the way of 720p, HD-ready displays into the scrapheap of phased-out technologies. Our only plea to TV manufacturers is to not ignore other aspects of image quality in pursuit of resolution (4K OLED to the fore, please), and we hope that it won’t be too long before consumers can get their hands on high-quality 4K content such as 4K Blu-ray to take full advantage of UHD televisions.
Intereesting article w/appropriate qualfiers but not that Katzmeier etal at CNET found that 4K TVs slightly degraded 1080p content during upscaling. While your testing may work for pristine 4K sources, your premise that this is the reason people buy these TVs is dubious. If your TV can’t improve 95-99% of all sources today, ie 720/1080p and might in fact make it appear softer, then its not a good purchase. I would have liked to see your blind comparision done on HD source material such as cable TV or bluray.
hmm.. i couldn’t understand the purpose of the test.. i think it would be more appropriate conclusion, if you could compare not only Samsung 55″ UHD vs FHD, but also 55″ products from Sony, Panasonic, LG, Philips, Toshiba, Hisense (if they have 55″ UHD and FHD at the same time).. that would have given us the real leader in this sphere.. just a thought..
I don’t believe in this marketing bonanza. The motion resolution is still just 300 and needs heavy processing techniques, that increase god awful input latencies. 1/5
The elephant in the room for any new generation technology is user acceptance. The take up rate for 4K TV will depend firstly on cost and perhaps more importantly at how quickly broadcasters and the entertainment industry adopt the technology as standard. If manufacturers keep upgrading and changing tech to future proof their own commercial interests it will not encourage consumer confidence who will mostly accept the tried and proven.
feed me more pixels and youtube videos will be blu-ray quality .
look the first picture, if you put a lot of text to compare, there is not a fair test of real life situations. put a movie with grain and after we talk.
I’d love to see 4k vs OLED and see what consumers pick in a blind test.
This is interesting but fails real world testing on today’s materials which are consumed the most
Whether it be cable of ADSL (type) or Netflixs I bet there would be a different thought on the out come when votes were placed. Another question when looking at the two sets would you pay the premium for the quality of picturewhen watching day to day content Most channels today are still not 1080P by a long shot. High definition we still pay a premuim for so it can’t be considered standard. I find this will be ever so much like when 1080P first came out. Bluray in stores consumed little space on the shelf. Now people opt for streaming…good luck with that for 4k without have fibre. Then what happens when it is delivered compressed, I am sure it will have not be as good as Native. I don’t even think that the new ps4 or xbox one will handle 4 k
Test with games!
The motion resolution and input latency will disappoint you.
I am sick of this investor ass licking. I have bought many ‘reference level’ TVs that are actually useless in normal, every day, living room use.
Start using your own eyes and especially your own mind, the popular is usually not the best for you…in fact, it might be bad for us all!
I need better products, and resolution is the least of the problems, that televisions have. The same goes to games. The resolution is not holding games back, Its the controls!!! I am writing this with the least popular console, that would be the most promising for making the actual gameplay better, if only you would consider the most important aspect of the product; the interactivity. People go without thinking after what appears to be the most popular and parrot the opinions, that self important lobbyists spam in internet.
Our Sony 55” X9 has been getting pushed quite extensively with games lately, and the performance is certainly good enough for me to be playing Super Mario 3D world’s final stage(Champion road) with less discernible latency than the gamepad. So that’s a great game mode improvement since we replaced the 46” X3000.
The X9’s latest firmware has two game mode profiles: the original game mode profile and the new standard game mode. Both profiles still produce a great gaming imagine. From just a normal play, I’d possibly say the original mode is slightly more detailed and the standard mode feels a little more responsive; but that might just be power of suggestion on the responsiveness.
As for telling the difference between 4K and 1080p from more than 9feet away; it certainly isn’t difficult, even with the bit starved youtube 4K demo footage. Although, I would be hard pressed to say I can see a big visual benefit of (mastered from 4K) superbit blu-ray discs on a UHD TV(in the cinema profile) in comparison to a top of the line Full HD set, like the 55” HX853 in the same configuration. Then again, the first time I looked at the Avengers blu-ray on a friend’s HX8, I was blown away by the step up in picture quality compared to our previous TV. So I’m pretty sure with normal blu-ray or SD tv/films the difference won’t be meaningful.
Why didnt you play the same 4K source on the 1080p tv? The sharpness
Could be improved too and more difficult to catch the difference
I think this is all a “plan” to sell 4k TV technology, since most of the content available to common users has (and will be) worst quality than what was tested, and i think it is ridiculous to watch a 55″ TV at 9ft away :P It’s like watching a tennis game in the referee’s seat :P Since 3D and smart TV technologies was a flop regarding sales success, now it’s time to earn money fooling consumers with a new revolution (NOT) in the TV business :P
I’m really concerned about what this will be like at my company.
We are wanting to install an UltraHD tv 4K tv, like the new Samsung 65″ for a conference room projector, with the Apple TV capacity to use an Apple iMac.
Does anyone have any iput for me, with regard to lag time/input time, on having this be a conference room projector vessel for a laptop/computer?
Thanks!
I think you should repeat the experiment, but this time put the two televisions in separate rooms. You might find that people have a much harder time of spotting the difference then. I would be more interested in upgrading if that experiment came out just as positive.
@adybaby: We went to great lengths to conduct this experiment, securing the TVs, venue, masking cabinets, manpower and promotional budget, and yet it’s still not enough to convince detractors that 4k vs 1080p difference is visible from normal viewing distance assuming the content is up to par. So what if we manage to repeat the experiment as you suggested, there’ll be new excuses anyway. 4K is coming regardless of what we do or say. :-)
Warmest regards
Vincent
Didn’t people say just a couple of years ago. That 3D was happening and we should just get use to it. Overall i think people who make predictions are mostly bullshitters.
[quote]While we’d like to claim that we’ve provided the definitive answer to the great 4K vs 1080p debate, there are a number of caveats. First, the 4K videos we served from a media PC were high quality, which included a demo clip from Chimei Innolux, as well as the Blender Foundation’s excellent open-source movie projects Tears Of Steel and Sintel. Critics may argue that this is unrealistic, since the native 4K material that may become available in streaming format will probably be compressed to a heavier degree. u would use the most pristine Blu-ray movies, instead of softer HD content or (gasp) Netflix, wouldn’t yo
While we’d like to claim that we’ve provided the definitive answer to the great 4K vs 1080p debate, there are a number of caveats.[/quote]
Take away here e.g, above = arguably superior than avarage consumer 4K content quality may provide false positives and author admitted to wit ,
[quote]”While we’d like to claim that we’ve provided the definitive answer to the great 4K vs 1080p debate, there are a number of caveats.”[/quote]
[quote]Second, we had some difficulty matching the displays such that resolution was the only difference, even with full calibration. We opted to use the Samsung UE55F9000 and UE55F8000 for the 4K vs 1080p comparison because of their excellent onboard SPVA LCD panels which we had hoped would be similar, but then we discovered that the retail units supplied by Richer Sounds featured slightly different black level and gamma response between each other, which is
understandable given that one’s a 4K panel and the other one isn’t.[/quote]
[quote]Second, we had some difficulty matching the displays such that resolution was the only difference, then we discovered that the retail units supplied by Richer Sounds featured slightly different black level and gamma response between each other[/quote]
Take away , The panels other image qaualities were not level matched for image quality properties other than resolution e.g, different black level and gamma response
said differences and may have provided “a tell”. While an attempt was made to level the differences the author admitted it was unsucessful .
Expectation bias and arguablby the 4K panels differences other than resoulution likley resulted in false positives and or bias preferences not to mention the sampling was far to small nor were the test conditions exacting enugh to conclude a reliable statistically valid result.
[quote]looking for a difference (which is the whole point of the exercise), even the slightest discrepancy gets magnified.[/quote]
Take away , again differences other than resolution could have resulted in bias preference or “a tell” resultingin false positives.
[quote]Third, although most attendees succeeded in identifying the 4K Ultra HD TV, we have no idea of how they arrived at their conclusion. For all we know, it could have just been a fleeting shot which looked marginally sharper that clued them in, out of 30-odd minutes of video playback[/quote]
Take away , Refer to above take aways and this,
[quote]”While we’d like to claim that we’ve provided the definitive answer to the great 4K vs 1080p debate, there are a number of caveats.”[/quote]
[quote]Last but not least, resolution is only one of the many attributes of picture quality [/quote]
Again see above re/ false positives .
[quote]So there you have it: the superior resolution of 4K over 1080p is visible on a 55? screen from 9 feet away, provided the content is up to par. The difference is not big unless you move closer – only you can decide if this is worth the higher prices currently commanded by Ultra HD 4K TVs.[/quote]
Arguably the author goes on to contradict himself here [quote]”While we’d like to claim that we’ve provided the definitive answer to the great 4K vs 1080p debate, there are a number of caveats.”[/quote] and here [quote]Third, although most attendees succeeded in identifying the 4K Ultra HD TV, we have no idea of how they arrived at their conclusion. For all we know, it could have just been a fleeting shot which looked marginally sharper that clued them in, out of 30-odd minutes of video playback[/quote]
Take away from all this , If one were to be kind, nothing much beyond a some arguably false positives from the many reasons listed above
have resulted from all this certainly not statistically valid results . One could also argue quite sucessfully that making general statements about arguably false positives in this case has no verifiable scientific merit .??
Thank you for this test and article!. I sstarting to think that I was the crazy one.. Or maybe I had super vision of something. The 4K TVs ALWAYS look better to me. It seems easy to see the difference when the TVs are right next to each other.
If you are going to spend 2 to 3 grand on a television today you would be stupid not to get a 4K TV. Why would you spend that much money on a technology that will be mostly gone in 2 years? This is not the same as the 3D debate either. Most people don’t give a crap about 3D. Especially with the dumb glasses that you have to wear. If you just want to get a great TV and also save money then yes, of course get a great 1080p for less than $500. But if you are getting top of the line or want something different then of course get a 4K. Unless of course OLED comes WAY down.