Hey guys, I know there are many home theater experts here so I thought this would be the best place for me to ask.
I remember how DVD was a HUGE jump over VHS videos.
Is 4K really worth it for me to buy and replace my DVD collection?
Is video quality the only boost I'd see?
They say you need at least 55" TV to be able to see the difference between 4K and 1080p.
DVDs are only 480/576 res however so you'll find both 1080p/4K to be quite a bit sharper
The main benefit for me would be HDR
You need more than 55 inch to tell the difference by looking at it. Once you own a 4K TV going back to a lower resolution is really obvious, but until you own one, you'd struggle to spot the difference on anything under 65 inch (really 70 inch is the point where you can tell at normal viewing distances).
I think you need to wear glasses.
Perfect vision buddy
@blonky: honestly though, I think HDR is the biggest con in television history. A really good non HDR TV looks just as good if not better than some HDR TVs including blacks and colour reproduction.
Load of garbage.
The size AND viewing distance matter.
I can tell the difference, I own a LG 4K TV and the picture quality in 4K shot movies is phenominal, pretty much like the first time Full HD become a thing and 1080p was filtering onto TV sets, I still remember my 1080p Samsung 32 inch TV, booting up the PS3 on it and standing in AWE amazed at the image quality
Same thing with the jump to 4K, I can notice it very clearly, especially when you broadcast 4K content to the TV
If you are budget conscious and already have a home theatre setup you're happy with then I suggest you wait. The two technologies you'd want to watch are "HDR" and "OLED":
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/tv-buying-guide,review-1943.html
This is oversimplifying a lot, perceived picture quality is way more dependent on contrast ratios than screen resolution.
The huge improvement from VHS to DVD is because it went from analogue to digital. Blu-rays are recorded with similar digital technology as DVD (ie. MPEG-2). Even though Blu-ray players have been around more than a decade the DVD sales/rentals easily outnumber Blu-ray. From memory I think DVD sales outnumber Blu-ray 3:1 and DVD rentals is 4:1
Screen resolution becomes critical when you are forced to view your TV from a close seating position and/or your TV has large pixels (eg. 65" TV).
analogue vs digital in itself isn't an argument for why it's better quality. I mean look at movies from the 40s which are available on blu-ray discs today. They look a lot better than the DVD versions but if the original storage medium which was analogue is inferior to DVD than that wouldn't be the case.
Wow, so you need to have a television of at least 55" to see the difference between 1080p and 4k?
Pure garbage I have a 24 inch 4K monitor.
movie watching is different than general computer use and gaming. 4k 24" monitors result in a vast improvement to font appearance and jaggies in games but movies are a different story. i probably wouldnt notice much of a difference between a blu-ray movie on my 4k monitor and a UHD movie.
I think the other poster meant that to see the difference between 4K and 1080p you need a 55" monitor?
4K is about the pixels, after all the human eye only has a certain inbuilt resolution you can't upgrade. That is, at a certain distance, from 2 TVS of the same size (one in UHD and one in Full HD) you wont be able to tell much if any difference (of course everyone's eye sight is different but we're still only human). The further back you go, the advantages of UHD diminish.
When people made the jump from CRT to 1080P (or even 720P) they were generally also getting a larger TV but weren't sitting any further away from it. So it made a difference. However, people aren't making the same larger screen size jumps in this case and people still sit about the same distance as they always did from the TV. So whether you need to get a UHD TV comes down to 2 things:
1 - the size of the TV you want to buy
2 - how far you sit from it.
I sit about 3m from my TV. So for me to see any real difference, I need a 80" or so TV. That's something I don't really have a desire, budget or care for. When 8K comes out, then I'd need to buy a 160" TV for me to notice the difference.
In short - if you want to sit really close to your TV, then go ahead and buy one.
Is video quality the only boost I'd see?
what are some other things you might expect to see improving, just out of curiosity?
I thought there may be better audio quality like DVD compared to VHS.
A good hi-fi vcr on decent tape has excellent audio. Nothing to complain about at all. Hi-fi VCRs only got cheap in the later stages of the VHS lifecycle, so not everyone could afford a $1000 Hi-Fi VCR over the $400 mono one next to it. It was unfortunately priced like that for many years.
The resolution differences weren't that great. DVDs gave us far more convenience, subtitles, special audio features, random access, no tape wear, etc. To me those are the key points over VHS. And DVD also gave us MPEG anomalies due to the lossy compression of both audio and video.
I don't know why you don't just go and see some 4K content in the local retail shop and see what you think, OP. You don't need anyone to make that decision for you but you. Lots of 4K cameras are out too, so you can create your own content in 4K too.
Broadcast standards move at snail's pace so you'll be waiting a while for things to mature there. After 4k comes 8K too…some years in the future. If you can wait it out, do so. You'll probably save a bundle as the tech matures and becomes commonplace.
Is 4K really worth it
Not at this stage. 4K netflix is limited, and the quality sucks anyway. 4K blurays are rare, expensive, and actual 4K master copies number in about <10 - the rest are upscales.
replace my DVD collection
Oh boy. IMHO making a 'collection' of video is a very very bad idea. I know people that continue to buy DVD even today. Video quality will continue to improve, we are a long way away from 'ideal' quality right now, and DVD is FAR from it. Unless you're super-rich where multi-thousand-dollar DVD/bluray collections are throw away purchases, I don't recommend it.
Is video quality the only boost I'd see?
Negative, the jump from DVD to bluray provides an insane audio boost too. ~27Mb/s max audio for bluray, around 10Mb/s for DVD. Bluray also supports extra encoding options.
My personal opinion:
LCD TV's are (profanity) trash picture quality. At the sizes common these days (60in+), the manufacturing standards can't guarantee any sort of uniformity. 4K content is almost zero: Netflix has it, but the quality sucks ass; 4K master blurays are uber-rare. In order to have a good 4K experience that is future proofed for at least 5 years, you NEED: a) 4K HDR OLED (go on, look at the prices)… OLED is absolutely required. Picture quality trumps any perceived small benefit of 4K>1080p. b) 4K blurays, anything less and you're an idiot thinking you're cool for having SOME on-paper numbers bigger than your neighbour when in reality you know nothing John Snow. c) a 5.1 or better surround sound system. Self-explanatory.
Now, this kind of setup is crazy expensive. Add in the cost of renting (??? don't think there's many options left here) a 4K disc, or outright buying another collection, and your '4K upgrade' is a solid $10,000+. Alternatively, you could stick with 1080p and very likely (nigh on guaranteed, if you're asking questions online, since you literally don't know enough to judge it) not see much of a difference at all.
tl;dr stick with 1080p for now, don't buy DVD/bluray/whatever video collections.
You say that I shouldn't buy movies anymore then what am I supposed to do… just wait until the movies are sold in 4K?
But there will always be some new technology coming out. There will eventually be a technology that's better than 4K as well…
My point is that even today, a '4K movie' is not a 4K master copy usually. So out of the small percent of movies available on UHD format (I'm gonna throw out a generous 10% here), maybe 20% of THOSE come from 4K source master copies. So forming a collection of these, in combination with everything in my post, isn't super-great.
Tbh making a bluray collection is probably the 'best' move today. 1080p is pretty decent, sound quality is excellent, availability is excellent, price is OK, related hardware isn't crazy expensive.
Yeah, 8K comes after 4K. You'll be reaching diminishing returns and limits at 8K, certainly not at 4K though.
I still stand by my tl;dr above.
As the saying goes "if you can live without it then continue on doing so"
I love video quality probably way more than the next guy and owning blu rays and DVDs are a nice and acceptable investment / way to spend my disposable income for me so I am gonna go ahead and say that yes the increased 4k video quality is most definitely worth it (for me)
But I may be one of those few guys who like 1080p but can get irked off a bit when I know that there exists a better quality of it out there.
Some media do have a weird uncanny valley or soap opera effect when you increase quality or fps but other content vastly improved in quality and viewing experience from it.
The best advice I could give you is go and see it for yourself either in store / at a friend's place or trial test it with some other cheaper media before you go the whole full Monty.
For me it is like night and day but like I said up above or before some content vastly improves from it while others maybe not so much for example if it is more of like a comedy or life action family kids show or movie 1080p is well enough or for me at least way more than enough but if it is something like star wars or Disney styled animation or heavy bright lighted up action then maybe 4k might heavily benefit from it enough to make you want to purchase it.
Each person and movie is obviously different so ymmv and dealers choice rules apply.