Is 4K worth it?

[techguyone]

it'll be worth it - when there's serious content available (not just software upscaled shenanigans)

I can remember circa 2004 when SKY was promoting HD as the next and greatest thing, yet here we are 13 years later and there's still SD channels around.

My advice?

Leave it another 5 years or so.

Why?

Prices will be a lot lower, tech will be better, and most importantly there may be a lot more 'genuine' 4k content available.

Buuut it's your money and your choice.

[Taf]

Early adopters beware...

This week we learned that both LG and Sony have now stopped making 3D-enabled televisions. The firms follow Samsung - the world’s biggest TV maker - who confirmed the move last year. It means there are currently no major manufacturers making 3DTVs.

TV makers are instead focusing on newer technologies such as HDR.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38778244

[richard s]

HD will eventually become the norm and 4K will be were HD is. As for 3D this will probably die a death.

[alferret]

We've had our 4k for 2 years now. SD upscaled looks washed out, 720p upscaled looks pretty damm good, 1080p upscaled is superb & 4k is awesome. I watch as much UHD content as I can get inc Netflix & other sources.
At the time of purchase, our TV was top of the range 50" 4k 3D Panny & cost a few quid shy of £1.5k. Looking back I would have spent the same amount on a larger but non-3D tv by Panasonic. 3D is good in 4k but more of a gimmick, watching terrestrial tv in 3D lasted about a whole day & we've watched around a dozen 3D films & that's it. Quite a lot of the major manufacturers are no longer producing or adding 3D going forward.

[pip08456]

Waste of money then.

[peanut]

I'll probably upgrade to 4k if or when it becomes the norm. I can't see myself paying extra for something that doesn't really interest me at this point then having to pay out more just for content. It's the same with 3D, unless it's a rare film such as Gravity, Avatar or the odd animation but after about 10 minutes I forget it's 3D as it is the film that I'm interested in, so it'll be the same with 4k. It's not going to make a film any better or worse.

I'm happy with my 42" 1080p with a decent full on surround system which does make a better overall experience. The picture is great and for my room anything larger would look stupid. So I much prefer a better sound system more than I would over 4k.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by techguyone

I can remember circa 2004 when SKY was promoting HD as the next and greatest thing, yet here we are 13 years later and there's still SD channels around.

My advice?

Leave it another 5 years or so.

Why?

Prices will be a lot lower, tech will be better, and most importantly there may be a lot more 'genuine' 4k content available.

Buuut it's your money and your choice.

SD is going to be around for a while yet. There are a couple of reasons. One being that not every channel and production house can afford to chuck out old equipment every time the resolution goes up. You and I might have set top boxes, TVs and DVRs to replace. A productions house will have multiple cameras, studio equipment and editing suites to replace. One suite can cost upward of £100,000 to upgrade. That's ignoring the thousands of pounds of network and power upgrades they may need.

Incidentally, this was one of the primary reasons the BBC moved out of White City. It would be naive to assume that property value didn't cross the BBC's mind (after all, the site would be worth at least tens of millions), but one of the reasons was that Television Centre needed millions of pounds of upgrades to cope with the power and data requirements of the latest hardware and software upgrades that the BBC needed to make to enable HD on more channels..

The other reason is that HD (even with more advanced compression systems) takes a lot more bandwidth on any given transmission system (every system has a finite amount of capacity for channels, this is commonly known as the bandwidth). The likes of Virgin and Sky would have to cut the amount of channels they carry by a lot to make them all HD. When one of your selling points is the amount of channels you offer (even if 75% of them are crap) you'd be stupid to switch off the SD ones.