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Hi All
I have been doing some research into 8k televisions after splurging out and getting an 8k Samsung 65 inch. I love it, but am always a sucker for geeky stuff even if its of no value.
The whole 8k vs 4k thing is quite interesting with arguments ranging from it's a gimmick to WOW, but seem not to look at the actual research. Here is what research/public showings say - and its not what I would have thought.
8K Live Encoding at IBC 2019
‘On the 4K native content, people complained about the quality of the capture, but the 8K captured content down covered to 4K and played back on the 8K TV had quality that was close to the native 8K content. This proves that a 8K-to-4K down convert with a 4K transmission and a quality up-scaling at the 8K TV is a viable option, if bandwidth is critical.”’
In summary, if you are getting a new TV now, at 55 inches get a good 4k TV. At 65 inches its not 100% clear cut, but for virtually everyone except nut cases like me still get the 4k - but if you are a bleeding edge type consider the 8k - its kind of cool when you get real close you still can't see pixels. I personally got the Samsung 65 inch 8k. At 75 inches its about 50–50 - only you can decide - 80 inches and above, 8k is the way to go.
Most people these days don’t have tv’s that large so its not really viable at this point in time cost wise - nearly everyone goes for about 65 inches or lower.
However here is the interesting point - if you have a direct 4k signal and an 8k signal fed directly into any size 8k TV compared to a 4k tv of the same size, the 8k looks substantially better. This is very strange - especially with what I said above. Investigating this further showed if you down-scaled the 8k to 4 k and compared it to 4k direct, the down-scaled content was substantially better. So let's compare the 8k to its down-scaled version. Then for tv’s below about 75-80 inches it is very hard to tell a difference. This means there is no need for normal size TV’s that are affordable today to get 8k, 4k is fine, providing you do filming, production etc at 8k then down-scale for transmission. But as time goes by larger models will become more affordable, and that is when transmitting in 8k may be of value. But here is the caveat - AI up-scaling from 4k to 8k is getting better and better. By that time it may be so good you will not be able to tell the difference at a normal viewing distance on even large screen size TV’s - right now we do not know. I have a 65 inch Samsung 8k myself and can say the AI up-sampling it has is very good - FHD looks almost like 4k.
And we have some very exciting developments in down-scaling:
https://www.isize.co/bitsave/
https://aomedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/YiannisAndreopoulos_UCL_iSize.pdf
It seems, and this is quite strange, down-scaling using AI then up-scaling at the other end, even without using AI in the up-scaler produces a better quality picture at the same bit-rate - very very strange - but true. So if we actually go to 8k is a moot point.
Thanks
Bill
I have been doing some research into 8k televisions after splurging out and getting an 8k Samsung 65 inch. I love it, but am always a sucker for geeky stuff even if its of no value.
The whole 8k vs 4k thing is quite interesting with arguments ranging from it's a gimmick to WOW, but seem not to look at the actual research. Here is what research/public showings say - and its not what I would have thought.
8K Live Encoding at IBC 2019
‘On the 4K native content, people complained about the quality of the capture, but the 8K captured content down covered to 4K and played back on the 8K TV had quality that was close to the native 8K content. This proves that a 8K-to-4K down convert with a 4K transmission and a quality up-scaling at the 8K TV is a viable option, if bandwidth is critical.”’
In summary, if you are getting a new TV now, at 55 inches get a good 4k TV. At 65 inches its not 100% clear cut, but for virtually everyone except nut cases like me still get the 4k - but if you are a bleeding edge type consider the 8k - its kind of cool when you get real close you still can't see pixels. I personally got the Samsung 65 inch 8k. At 75 inches its about 50–50 - only you can decide - 80 inches and above, 8k is the way to go.
Most people these days don’t have tv’s that large so its not really viable at this point in time cost wise - nearly everyone goes for about 65 inches or lower.
However here is the interesting point - if you have a direct 4k signal and an 8k signal fed directly into any size 8k TV compared to a 4k tv of the same size, the 8k looks substantially better. This is very strange - especially with what I said above. Investigating this further showed if you down-scaled the 8k to 4 k and compared it to 4k direct, the down-scaled content was substantially better. So let's compare the 8k to its down-scaled version. Then for tv’s below about 75-80 inches it is very hard to tell a difference. This means there is no need for normal size TV’s that are affordable today to get 8k, 4k is fine, providing you do filming, production etc at 8k then down-scale for transmission. But as time goes by larger models will become more affordable, and that is when transmitting in 8k may be of value. But here is the caveat - AI up-scaling from 4k to 8k is getting better and better. By that time it may be so good you will not be able to tell the difference at a normal viewing distance on even large screen size TV’s - right now we do not know. I have a 65 inch Samsung 8k myself and can say the AI up-sampling it has is very good - FHD looks almost like 4k.
And we have some very exciting developments in down-scaling:
https://www.isize.co/bitsave/
https://aomedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/YiannisAndreopoulos_UCL_iSize.pdf
It seems, and this is quite strange, down-scaling using AI then up-scaling at the other end, even without using AI in the up-scaler produces a better quality picture at the same bit-rate - very very strange - but true. So if we actually go to 8k is a moot point.
Thanks
Bill
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