4K Television and the World

Is 4K  TV really necessary in this day and age? Some people say that 4K resolution is the future but do we really need to replace our Full HD TVs for 4k content? Let’s have a brief description and comparison of 4K resolution and 1080p resolution. 4K TV and Ultra HD are one of the same. Any TV described as 4K or Ultra HD will have a resolution of 3840 x 2160, where the 4K is derived from the number of horizontal pixels. This is slightly confusing as Full HD TVs, also known as 1080p TVs, take the number from the vertical pixels: i.e. 1,080. Well, this means more resolution, more detail.

It’s safe to say that Full HD is 1080p and Ultra HD is 4K TV. The sense of realism can be compared by these two resolutions but some people, especially who buy HDTV’s only for home use, say that 1080p is more than enough. Indeed, this claim is true because 1080p looks great. Personally, I think that 4K TVs are applicable if you want a very big screen, like 80″ and above.

Gaming consoles like the PS3 and PS4 only support up to 1080p. There are demos out their playing PS3 games in a 4K TV, even though it tried to upscale the resolution to 4K, the images look flush out and to be honest, awful. However, when you put a native 4K resolution to a 4K TV then you’ll get the opposite. You’ll get a very visual stimulating image on screen. The level of detail in 4KTVs are no doubt spectacular, the only problem is, no gaming console or even movies that support 4k yet. Sure, there are some who have native 4k content but it’s not enough.

I believe that 4KTVs are focused on people who want to have a “cinematic” or “movie” like feel in their houses. Another drawback is the price, the price of 4K TV is not that cheap. However, this is arguable because prices change over time. There are also 4K TV’s that are available for $300. 4K didn’t get off to the most auspicious of starts where pricing was concerned, with both LG and Sony’s debut 84-inch 4K TVs costing north of £20k. However, things are quite different. The 55-inch Samsung UE55F9000 recently launched at £4,000, a huge reduction in a short amount of time. Moreover, a matter of weeks later Samsung revealed a price drop of £700 down to £3,299 and £1000 off the 65-inch version to £4,999.

4K Ultra HD TVs have 8.3 million pixels while current Full HD TVs have just over two million. The result is 4K TVs have four times as many pixels than Full HD TVs at the same size. -John Archer

Native 4K looks stunning but in the meantime it’s not very practical to buy one today. Not just because it’s expensive but it depends on what you want to do with the TV. If it’s for gaming then better buy a 1080p TV because games look crappy on 4K TV because gaming consoles as of now are full HD or 1080p native, specifically the Playstation 4. However, this doesn’t mean that 4K would be a failure, let’s just wait and see what happens in the future.