![]() ![]() HDR, or high dynamic range, essentially increases the difference between the lightest and the darkest portions of an image. There's no shortage of acronyms in home entertainment, and it can certainly get confusing though. You'll also find Ultra HD content on Disney Plus, Hulu, Rakuten TV, and other TV streaming services like them – everybody's doing it! Not that some services allow 4K streaming for all subscribers, such as Disney Plus, rather than Netflix's tiered model. Amazon has gotten into the 4K UHD streaming game by offering some of its highest-rated shows – Transparent, Mozart in the Jungle, Man in the High Castle, The Grand Tour and Mad Dogs – in Ultra HD. The selection might be more limited than the amount of HD content, but it's increasing day by day. Not everything on the service will jump in resolution, though there's a decent amount of Ultra HD content available – including Dark, Star Trek: Discovery, Altered Carbon, and much more. Netflix has tiered pricing plans, with 4K films and TV shows becoming available on the Premium tier. OLED TVs are improving year on year, though, with reduced risk of burn-in and a new 48-inch size looking to make flagship OLED sets that little bit more affordable to average wallets. They're certainly gorgeous, though pricing remains high even years after they first came to market – and it's generally accepted that they don't have the longevity of LCD screens. ![]() Several companies (most prominently LG) are laboring away to bring OLED to 4K televisions. It's a real shame because OLED technology can be stunning, offering vibrant colors, deep blacks and bright whites. More acronyms! Isn't this fun? OLED – organic light emitting diodes – have been around for some time, but producing big screens using this technology has proven to be prohibitively expensive, something which has so far prevented OLED television from being a mainstream proposition. The higher pixel density of a 4K panel also enable you get much closer without the grid-like structure of the image itself becoming visible –this means you can comfortably watch a much larger screen from the same seating position as your current Full HD panel. Its higher resolution images are simply better. While 3D has proved to be a faddish diversion, 4K comes without caveats. Photographers who routinely view their work on an HD TV are seeing but a fraction of the detail inherent in their pictures when they view them at 2160p.Īn Ultra HD display reveals so much more nuance and detail – the difference can be astonishing. There are many reasons why 4K should make you rethink your next TV purchase (actually, there are eleven and you can read about them here), not all of them immediately obvious. However, the numerical shorthand looks likely to stick. This is one reason why some brands prefer not to use the 4K label at all, sticking with Ultra HD or UHD instead. However while your local multiplex shows images in native 4096 x 2160 4K resolution, the new Ultra HD consumer format has a slightly lower resolution of 3840 x 2160. Technically, "Ultra High Definition" is actually a derivation of the 4K digital cinema standard. If you have the bandwidth, you can now watch many of Netflix's shows in 4K Ultra HD (Image credit: Netflix) 4K vs UHD: what's the difference? This chart shows how close you need to sit at any given screen size to see the difference. If you're at "retina distance" from your 1080p set now and don't plan on moving your couch closer, upgrading to 4K may not make a big difference to your experience. More importantly, at that same distance, your eyeballs won't be able to squeeze any more detail out of a 4K image than a 1080 one. ![]() Get far enough away from a 1080p set and, hey presto, it's a retina display! Remember when Apple made a big fuss about "retina" displays a few iPhones back? "Retina" refers to screens that have sufficient resolution that at a normal viewing distance your eye can't make out individual pixels. How close do I need to sit to a 4K screen? And 4K screens are noticeably sharper than 1080p screens.īut if you're sticking with roughly the same size of television, and are used to sitting pretty close, you may not see that much of a difference – especially if you're still mostly watching HD content rather than 4K video. We're talking about a similar jump in resolution as the one from SD (480 lines high) to HD (1080 lines high). For extra added fun, you also might hear this resolution referred to as 2160p. And before you ask, yes, the industry named 1080 resolution after image height, but named 4K after image width. It's called 4K because the images are around 4,000 pixels wide. (Image credit: Samsung) Why is it called 4K? ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |