1. I love 4K
It is my fault for trying to make a nuanced argument on the Internet. I have a 102-inch "TV" and sit 9 feet from it. I would love to have 4K. When I expand out to fill the full 10-foot-wide 2.35:1 screen, I can see pixels with some projectors. I look forward to more 4K projectors. Projectors are not TVs; 4K TVs are a waste. This is because...
2. The eye has a finite resolution
This is basic biology. The accepted "normal" vision is 20/20. In response to my previous articles on the stupidity of 4K TVs, many people argued they had better vision, or some other number should be used. This is like arguing doors should be bigger because there are tall people. Also, just because you have better vision, doesn't mean most people have better vision. If they did, it wouldn't be better, it would be average.
Try this. Go to the beach (or a big sandbox, or a baseball diamond). Sit down. Start counting how many grains of sand you can see next to you. Now do the same with the grains of sand by your feet. Try again with the sand far beyond your feet (like, say, 10 feet away). The fact that you can see individual grains near you, but not farther away is exactly what we're talking about here. The eye is analog. Randomly analog at that. So of course some people are going to see more detail than others, and at different distances, but 20/20 is what everyone knows, and it is by far the most logical place to start any discussion.
Is there some wiggle room thanks to variances in how people see? Yes, of course. Here's an awesome chart:
(Credit: Carlton Bale)
Let's skip ahead a step. Getting bogged down in the specifics misses the big picture. The eye does have a finite resolution, and if you want to argue it's better than 20/20, you're still conceding the point. You're just saying that smaller 4K TVs are viable. How much smaller? Well, not 50 inches. Probably not 60 inches, either. These are the sizes people are buying. Most people are buying even smaller TVs. Which leads to...
3. 84-inch TVs are never going to be mainstream
Never. Ever. Never ever. Like I said earlier, I have a 102-inch screen. I've also reviewed an 80-inch Sharp LCD. And let me tell you, it dominates the room. It's massive. There is a significant difference between a screen (effectively, the wall), and a Device of Unusual Size. Enthusiasts might be OK with this thing in their room, but most people won't. Ask your spouse. Ask your spouse's friends. Screen sizes have been inching upward, but not linearly with price. More specifically, the prices of big-big screens have fallen much faster than their sales have increased. I don't know what the upper limit is for what the average consumer decides is "too big" for their room, but I'm positive there is an upper limit, and this limit is far smaller than screens that need 4K.
I should clarify what I mean by "TV." I'm specifically talking about the televisions we know today. When OLED becomes something you can paint on your wall, or so paper-thin it hangs like a poster, then absolutely people will get bigger screens (presuming they're cheap). However, this is years (decades?) away. This future awesomeness is different than TVs of today. Will we still call them "TVs"? Yeah, probably, but their presence in the room will be radically different, hopefully because these future wafer-thin "TVs" won't have a presence in the room. They'll be part of the wall.
4. Viewing distance hasn't changed with HD, why would it change with UHD?
In the old days of 480i CRT tube TVs, people sat roughly 9 to 10 feet away from their TVs. There were good reasons for this (scan lines). Modern TVs offer significantly better resolution, so people can sit closer. Except...they don't. Most people still sit the same distance from their TVs as they did before.
Could people sit closer? Sure. A lot closer, actually. This ties in exactly with point No. 3. Sitting closer would be like getting a bigger screen, as it takes up more of your field of view. Just as people aren't getting as big a TV as they could, people aren't sitting closer, either.
So they can sit closer now, but don't. Why would anyone assume that because of UHD, people would suddenly sit closer. It doesn't make any sense. And just like with No. 3, I don't think most people would want to sit closer. Some of you might want to sit 5.5 feet from a 84-inch screen, but you are a tiny minority.
And speaking of viewing distance, this is precisely why comparisons to the Retina Display iPad are specious. The viewing distance is rather different between a TV and a tablet. Or, as President of DisplayMate Technologies Corp. Raymond M. Soneira says, your TV is already a Retina Display.
5. Why 4K?
Ah, now this is an interesting question. It's clear many seem to think TV manufacturers are some sort of altruistic entities that only do new things if there's a benefit to the consumer. How adorable, but no. Ultra HD isn't the "new technology" it appears. Modern TVs are made from huge sheets of "motherglass." From this big piece, companies slice up smaller pieces to make televisions. It's easier (read: cheaper) to make a big piece and cut it into smaller TVs.
Originally this was in case there was a problem with part of the glass, the rest could still be sold as TVs. When you read about "yields" as part of TV manufacturing, this is largely what they're talking about.
But manufacturing has gotten really good, so most of these pieces of motherglass are fully used. Instead of slicing up one piece of motherglass into four 42-inch 1080p LCDs, what if you just kept the whole thing as one piece? What would you have? You'd have an 84-inch TV. Use the exact same (or similar) drive elements/electronics and all the various bits, and you've got a 3,840x2,160-pixel, 84-inch UHD TV. Hey, wait.
You see, TV companies are pushing 4K because they can. It's easy, or at least easier than improving the more important aspects of picture quality (like contrast ratio, color accuracy, motion blur, compression artifacts, and so on).
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