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[PSA] If you can't see a noticeable difference between 1080p and native 4K, then you sit too far from your TV.

I'm playing on a 28 inch 4K monitor and anything 1440p and lower is very noticeable to me.

For example, Rift Apart is 1440p in it's Performance RT mode and the image was just too soft for me and to make matters worse, the extra frames only highlighted how soft it is. However, playing it in Fidelity mode really made the game look gorgeous. It's so crisp and the motion blur plus lower frame rate gives it that CG movie-like quality.

So maybe for the people who say they can't tell a difference between 1080p and 4K are just sitting way too far away from their screen or they don't have the proper screen size for the distance they view it from.

For example, in my living room, I have a 65 inch Samsung Q70R, but we sit so far from it that I can't see any difference between 1080p content and 4K. I even cancelled my 4K Netflix plan because its pointless to push those extra pixels if you can't tell that they're there.

When I watch content or play games on my monitor, the difference is astounding and 1080p looks very low res and ugly to me.... then add 60fps to the mix and it just makes the ugliness stand out even more.
 
I can see it, but it's just not the biggest deal to me. I still play Switch on my TV just fine and switch systems a lot.

It looks really nice on older games. Some of the OG Xbox BC games look great at 4K because they have really simple geometry and the sharp lines are more noticeable.

I can tell the difference, but it's 2nd in my list after 60 fps. And last place is ray tracing, which is barely even worth it on consoles right now and will be turned off almost all the time in favor of other modes.
 

Kuranghi

Member
A big issue, for TVs at least, is that people have it in Vivid/Dynamic or they have sharpening and/or "AI upscaling" turned on, max contrast, contrast enhancers that increase gamma and colour enhancements. All of those things will make it harder to tell the difference between 1440p and 2160p on a 2160p display because you're removing detail if you add too much and too much is anything more than a tiny amount.
 

Kuranghi

Member
If you can't see the difference, then save your money and keep that 1080p TV

Thats my whole job, I say "Let me show you a TV with, imo, a massive difference in PQ (ie contrast, brightness, black level, colour saturation, motion clarity, among other things) to the one we're looking at now", usually this is a direct-lit, 400-nit LCD vs. a 1000-nit FALD LCD for example.

Before I get to the other TV I say, "If you can't notice a difference, then you just save money", 95% of the time they will notice the difference because I'm good at my job but I have to prompt them to notice the difference more often than not and emphasize how big of a difference it is by recalling the old image.
 
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p_xavier

Authorized Fister
My condolences to you for you missing out on a major benefit of more pixels though, the depth of the image.

Is a bionic eye on the cards?
Working on it, laser is not yet strong enough.
QjWWns0.jpg
 

Fbh

Member
I play on a 55" 4K TV.
The difference between 1080p and 4K is definitely noticeable. But I still think 1080p looks fine.

If you are on powerful and expensive hardware then sure go ahead. But on more affordable stuff I'd much rather play at 1080p or 1440p and 60fps than 4K at 30fps.
 

ParaSeoul

Member
I'm probably about two metres away from my 48 inch LG C1 and 1080p still looks good,not quite as good as native 4k but not bad. 1440p also looks good and harder to tell apart frome 4K. Seems like this is either a monitor issue or an LCD issue.
 

b0uncyfr0

Member
I 100% agree. If you have a modern TV, please don't sit too far away - sit up close and enjoy the eye candy.
 

Poppyseed

Member
I'm playing on a 28 inch 4K monitor and anything 1440p and lower is very noticeable to me.

For example, Rift Apart is 1440p in it's Performance RT mode and the image was just too soft for me and to make matters worse, the extra frames only highlighted how soft it is. However, playing it in Fidelity mode really made the game look gorgeous. It's so crisp and the motion blur plus lower frame rate gives it that CG movie-like quality.

So maybe for the people who say they can't tell a difference between 1080p and 4K are just sitting way too far away from their screen or they don't have the proper screen size for the distance they view it from.

For example, in my living room, I have a 65 inch Samsung Q70R, but we sit so far from it that I can't see any difference between 1080p content and 4K. I even cancelled my 4K Netflix plan because its pointless to push those extra pixels if you can't tell that they're there.

When I watch content or play games on my monitor, the difference is astounding and 1080p looks very low res and ugly to me.... then add 60fps to the mix and it just makes the ugliness stand out even more.
Of course 1440p and lower looks soft to you. It’s not native res on your 4K screen…
 

Tqaulity

Member
So maybe for the people who say they can't tell a difference between 1080p and 4K are just sitting way too far away from their screen or they don't have the proper screen size for the distance they view it from.
So should people want to see the bad image quality at 1080p if it's not noticeable to them? The reality is that yes there is a very concrete relationship between pixel count and distance in order for your eyes to resolve detail. For most people playing games on a large screen in their living room, the difference between 1080p and 4K will be subtle at best because they are sitting 6ft+ from the screen on average. This is further compounded by the fact that most HDTVs have much more advanced upscalers than what you would find in a desktop monitor. The job of a quality upscaler is to make the lower resolution image look as close as possible to the higher resolution target so in many cases 1080-1440p will look really close to 4K with that powerful XR cognitive processor or Alpha Gen4 (for example). However, when playing on a computer monitor sitting 1-2 feet away, of course one will be able to see more differences between resolutions. In my experience though, that is more bad than good since some games look horrible on a large computer monitor.

I have a 77" OLED that I sit ~12Ft away from and I have a 34" Ultrawide 1440p monitor that I sit about 1.5ft from. Yes, games look much sharper on the computer monitor and even the difference between 1080p and 1440p is pretty noticeable. But I have yet to play a game on PS5 at any resolution on my OLED that looked noticeably different based on resolution whether its dynamic (DRS) or "only" 1440p vs native 4K. In other words, the value of fidelity mode is mostly useless in this configuration and the clarity delta between native 4K and upscaled 4K is hardly noticeable.
 
So should people want to see the bad image quality at 1080p if it's not noticeable to them? The reality is that yes there is a very concrete relationship between pixel count and distance in order for your eyes to resolve detail. For most people playing games on a large screen in their living room, the difference between 1080p and 4K will be subtle at best because they are sitting 6ft+ from the screen on average. This is further compounded by the fact that most HDTVs have much more advanced upscalers than what you would find in a desktop monitor. The job of a quality upscaler is to make the lower resolution image look as close as possible to the higher resolution target so in many cases 1080-1440p will look really close to 4K with that powerful XR cognitive processor or Alpha Gen4 (for example). However, when playing on a computer monitor sitting 1-2 feet away, of course one will be able to see more differences between resolutions. In my experience though, that is more bad than good since some games look horrible on a large computer monitor.

I have a 77" OLED that I sit ~12Ft away from and I have a 34" Ultrawide 1440p monitor that I sit about 1.5ft from. Yes, games look much sharper on the computer monitor and even the difference between 1080p and 1440p is pretty noticeable. But I have yet to play a game on PS5 at any resolution on my OLED that looked noticeably different based on resolution whether its dynamic (DRS) or "only" 1440p vs native 4K. In other words, the value of fidelity mode is mostly useless in this configuration and the clarity delta between native 4K and upscaled 4K is hardly noticeable.
1. Why have a 4K screen if you can't appreciate the 4K image on it? If 1080p and 4K look the same to you, then you wasted money.

2. The TV doesn't do any of the upscaling unless you specifically set your console to output at 1080p (which nobody would do if they have a 4K screen). Otherwise, the console is ALWAYS outputting a 3840 x 2160 image and only the game/console does the upscaling. The TV itself thinks it's a native 4K image, so there's no upscaling being done.
 

scydrex

Member
So should people want to see the bad image quality at 1080p if it's not noticeable to them? The reality is that yes there is a very concrete relationship between pixel count and distance in order for your eyes to resolve detail. For most people playing games on a large screen in their living room, the difference between 1080p and 4K will be subtle at best because they are sitting 6ft+ from the screen on average. This is further compounded by the fact that most HDTVs have much more advanced upscalers than what you would find in a desktop monitor. The job of a quality upscaler is to make the lower resolution image look as close as possible to the higher resolution target so in many cases 1080-1440p will look really close to 4K with that powerful XR cognitive processor or Alpha Gen4 (for example). However, when playing on a computer monitor sitting 1-2 feet away, of course one will be able to see more differences between resolutions. In my experience though, that is more bad than good since some games look horrible on a large computer monitor.

I have a 77" OLED that I sit ~12Ft away from and I have a 34" Ultrawide 1440p monitor that I sit about 1.5ft from. Yes, games look much sharper on the computer monitor and even the difference between 1080p and 1440p is pretty noticeable. But I have yet to play a game on PS5 at any resolution on my OLED that looked noticeably different based on resolution whether its dynamic (DRS) or "only" 1440p vs native 4K. In other words, the value of fidelity mode is mostly useless in this configuration and the clarity delta between native 4K and upscaled 4K is hardly noticeable.

Then you wasted money getting a 4k TV. If you don´t see any difference between resolutions. A 1080p tv should have been enough in your case or play with 120hz then. At least you will appreciate the FPS more than the resolution.
 
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Then you wasted money getting a 4k TV. If you don´t see any difference between resolutions. A 1080p tv should have been enough in your case or play with 120hz then. At least you will appreciate the FPS more than the resolution.
Heck my old TV from 2009 is 1080p/120Hz native.
 

Captn

Member
Sitting 3 feet from my 48'' C1 and let me tell you that there is definitely a difference in quality between the 2. Lowering the res to 1080p from 4k on any game looks like someone dropped down the FOV slider way down to 30 or something loll and that is not talking about crispier textures in general.

But to be fair, I believe anything below 40 inch diminishes the differences by a lot imo. It also does depend on how far you are sitting from.

40 inches and above is the starting size to really start seeing image quality differences between 1080p and 4k but again it all depends on the distance you sit from.

Might be wrong but that's how my eyes perceive this loll. Everybody is different. :)
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
I take we're talking strictly games?
If not and you are saying can't actually see the difference between 1080p and 4k full stop I recommend watching this and then getting back to me
 

Hunnybun

Member
There isn't really a right or wrong distance to sit from a TV, it just depends what you want from it.

To REALLY notice the difference between 4k and something like 1440p, I need to be about a foot closer than I actually sit (I used to do that in my old setup). At about 6ft from a 65" screen, I found 4k resolution to be pretty important. At 7ft, as I do now, I struggle to notice the difference. Strange but true.

Of course, there's a sense in which I'm "wasting" the money I spent on a 4k tv by sitting at a distance where the benefit isn't absolutely optimal. But otoh, I'd be getting that benefit at the cost of being able to really enjoy 60fps games, and that seems far worse.

But since I can't get the same TV in a 1440p model, and I can't get a PS5 Pro, then I'm not sure there IS a perfect solution.

I am actually still sitting closer to the tv than the typical recommendation, btw, which is 1.5x screen size.
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
I game on a 1440p monitor. My wallet has a soft image when I think about going to 4k.

PC brain won't let me lose those frames. Maybe when the 40 series comes out I'll finally jump into 4K gaming on PC. Not worth it right now.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
But I have yet to play a game on PS5 at any resolution on my OLED that looked noticeably different based on resolution whether its dynamic (DRS) or "only" 1440p vs native 4K.
Maybe because your native 4k game has some blurry post processing anti aliasing, so you are not seeing a true sharp native 4k.
 
I take we're talking strictly games?
If not and you are saying can't actually see the difference between 1080p and 4k full stop I recommend watching this and then getting back to me

I literally can't tell a 4K netflix show from a 1080p netflix show from my couch on my 65 inch TV, but I can easily tell the difference on my 28 inch 4K monitor. Has nothing to do with frame rate.
 

Danknugz

Member
a few years ago i tried to set a pact with myself not to game in 4k until i get a 4k HMD in an attempt not to "spoil" the disparity between resolution in standard and VR gaming.

the idea is that since the effective perceived resolution inside an HMD is generally lower than the native of the screens used, if i only game in 1080p until I get a 4k HMD, the VR gaming will look at least as good as the 1080p.

i've been pretty loyal to it up to this point with the exception of getting skater XL clips in 4k for montages. but i still get the tricks a d play the game in 1080p.
 

ethomaz

Banned
I'm facing that issue with lower resolution games at home... before I used a 1080p set and it was fine but know with a 4k set lower resolution games looks awful.

But my distance is not that great too... it start from 1m from the TV and goes far like 2m or 2.5m max.
Most of time I play games in the sit position instead laying... so I'm closer to the 1m distance.

Maybe things get better with my new home but it will be finished in July only.
 
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TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
I literally can't tell a 4K netflix show from a 1080p netflix show from my couch on my 65 inch TV, but I can easily tell the difference on my 28 inch 4K monitor. Has nothing to do with frame rate.
That video just happened to be 60fps, it wasn't the reason I posted it.
The problem with games is we are not to that level of detail seen that video clip, we haven't even filled every pixel of 1080p.
So while game will look better they never gonna be as detailed as 4k can allow them to be.
But funny you mention Netflix.
I find most streaming services their 4k matches if not a little bit better then a native Blu-ray released.
But for example if you see the original Bad Boys in 4k on Netflix (I know another Will Smith film) and compare it to it's UHD Blu-ray release the difference as big as DVD vs Blu-ray
Those streaming services aren't really doing 4K justice
 
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That video just happened to be 60fps, it wasn't the reason I posted it.
But funny you mention Netflix.
I find most streaming services their 4k matches if not a little bit better then a native Blu-ray released.
But for example if you see the original Bad Boys in 4k on Netflix (I know another Will Smith film) and compare it to it's UHD Blu-ray release the difference as big as DVD vs Blu-ray
Those streaming services aren't really doing 4K justice
Regardless, I couldn't tell the difference with Rift Apart at Performance RT and Fidelity mode on the 65 inch TV, but it was a massive difference in clarity on my monitor.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Regardless, I couldn't tell the difference with Rift Apart at Performance RT and Fidelity mode on the 65 inch TV, but it was a massive difference in clarity on my monitor.
Interesting... it's usually harder to spot resolution differences on smaller screens 🤔
Maybe your monitor has a higher dpi then your TV and that's what you are seeing
I can't really comment on Rift Apart but Spider-Man I find it blurrier in both Performance modes.
 
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What tv is that?
It's an old Samsung touch of color TV with native 120Hz for smooth Blu-ray 24p content (each frame is played 5 times). It works great to this day!

Dust-by-Monday Dust-by-Monday could you check at an eye distance of 2.5 feet for the 28" monitor, if you see a benefit over 1080p?

I sit at a little over 2ft away from my 28 inch screen
Interesting... it's usually harder to spot resolution differences on smaller screens 🤔
Maybe your monitor has a higher dpi then your TV and that's what you are seeing
I can't really comment on Rift Apart but Spider-Man I find it blurrier in both Performance modes.
Obviously the 28 inch screen will have more DPI than a 65 inch screen.
 

jaysius

Banned
The real issue is 4k is mostly nonsense hype that the industry has sold, the tech is so empty that they had to blow out contrast with HDR to make it somewhat more exciting.
 

jaysius

Banned
I take we're talking strictly games?
If not and you are saying can't actually see the difference between 1080p and 4k full stop I recommend watching this and then getting back to me

That video is altered to make it look faster and sharper, it even looks the same on my old 1050p screen as it did on a 4ktv, so yea, it's not a good "SO THERE!" type reference material, it's shot weirdly is all.
 

MetalRain

Member
4K is great on PC where you can actually see the difference and with tech like DLSS we can actually use it sometimes :D
 
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Skifi28

Member
I also hear there are some tips around here for running every game at 60fps on your TV, even if the game is 30..!
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
I've got a 65 inch tv but my eyes are fucked. Not sure what distance I should be at.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Flat 1080p and Flat 2160p you should absolutely be able to tell the difference.
Unless as OP said you are sitting some distance away.

The thing is with reconstruction techniques the actual benefits of full fat 4K get less and less worth it.

DLSS 4K on my TV vs native 1440p on my monitor.....i honestly dont see the difference.
I would have to side by side them to really tell.

Knowing where the Matrix experience was constructing from im even more impressed and less fussed with a games rendering full fat 4K.
 

TonyK

Member
Good, so it's best to sit a little farther so I'm not annoyed by this.
Not a joke. If I could sit further away from TV I will do it to forget about 4K, as consoles can't achieve it at 60fps. But I can't, so less than 1800p is blurry to me.

At my TV size and viewing distance I must choose 4K30 instead of 1080p60 if I don't want to feel the game looks like PS3.
 

JeloSWE

Member
The real issue is 4k is mostly nonsense hype that the industry has sold, the tech is so empty that they had to blow out contrast with HDR to make it somewhat more exciting.
I'm sitting 2m away from my 75" Sony 2018 Master series and let me tell you, crisp 4K and well implemented HDR in games is no joke. It's the real deal. However I would still sacrifice 4K for 1440p if it means the game will run at 60fps on a console.

That video is altered to make it look faster and sharper, it even looks the same on my old 1050p screen as it did on a 4ktv, so yea, it's not a good "SO THERE!" type reference material, it's shot weirdly is all.
The whole movie was shot at 120fps full 3D and HDR. What you see there is only the 60fps version. It's not weirdly shot, it's just that there is so much fidelity in the image that you are not used to see, especially that the details and textures remain pretty clear when the camera pans. Most movies you see are only 2K and 24fps. This makes everything blurry and "dreamy".
 
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