True, but it’s not like the TV I have is suddenly going to fall apart either. At least I hope not.
Sure they do. If you want anything under 43" (and I couldn’t possibly fit anything larger than 43", nor can I imagine needing one), you can’t get it in 4K pretty much. Even the 43" ones are starting to get thin on the ground, and you definitely can’t get a bunch of fancy features.
Don’t buy a 1080p TV in 2022. That’s silly. If you don’t watch 4k content that’s fine but the option is there.
I got one a while back off the Kickstarter. Works great with Plex. Haven’t found much (any?) 4K content, but the ATSC 3.0 support has made my reception better in the Seattle 'burbs.
Good to know it works with Plex. I’ll have to investigate the ATSC 3.0 broadcast situation in my area. I really only use OTA TV to watch live sporting events, so if there are no 4K broadcasts, probably not worth it right now.
Sadly ATSC 3 tuners in new TVs still won’t be commonplace in 2023. But maybe by 2025?
At Thanksgiving my brother’s old 1080p TV finally died so he asked for advice on what TV to get. One thing he really wanted was the ATSC 3 tuner, so to my dismay when I did the research, the LG C2 didn’t have one, otherwise he had been leaning towards that.
I know Hisense U8H has good reviews as a mini LED TV and has ATSC 3, but everyone was out of stock and he really needed a new TV. So he ended up getting the U7H QLED from Costco. Cheap, and he’s very happy with it, and having ATSC 3 tuner without plugging in anything else. But I wish it would come to more TVs.
Well, there’s some progress here at least. Apparently the regular season Fox NFL games weren’t in 4K, and neither were other broadcasters, but just like they did the Super Bowl in 4k in 2020, now that it’s Fox’s turn to do the super bowl again, they plan to broadcast it in 4k again this year.
And if I’d had a 4K TV, the World Cup in Qatar last month was available in 4K on Youtube TV if I’d paid extra for that feature.
Man with all the people in this thread claiming that there isn’t any 4K content available I have to wonder if I’m the only person on here that actually watches movies on 4K Blu-ray? The quality is usually far better than what you’ll get from streaming services—even 4K streaming services.
Here are a couple comparisons I threw together. Of course if you’re looking at this on a 7" phone screen you’re probably not going to notice much, but it’s a huge difference on a big screen, and of course this doesn’t even take into account HDR. Between the downscaling and compression I rarely find a stream that can even match a regular 1080p Blu-ray.
The Mummy “4K” stream…
The Mummy 4K Blu-ray…
Comparison of a couple crops…
And a “4K” stream of 2001…
4K Blu-ray of 2001…
And some crops…
Wow, those differences are amazing.
I did notice the differences between streaming and blu-ray back in 2009 or so, and I used to rent a lot of Blu-rays from disc Netflix because of that. It really was a big difference.
Is there a good priced equivalent for renting 4K Blu-rays out there in the U.S? I’d love to actually rent some 4K movies once I inevitably get a 4K TV.
I do not think so. The kiosk rental thing “redbox” has a handful of locations around the country that offer a meager selection of new release 4Ks for $2.50 a day, but that’s about it.
I just Googled and it looks like there’s a company that offers a UHD Blu-ray rental subscription service like the Netflix of old.
I just buy mine usually between $10-$20, though I’ve certainly spent a bit more for fancy releases.
I bought my first 4K Blu ray, Rogue One, and was completely floored that the PS5 doesn’t support Dolby Vision. I’m not willing to purchase a dedicated 4K player just to get DV and frankly the movie looks amazing on Disney+ on the 4K Apple TV. Thus ends my foray into physical 4K media.
You aren’t, but not that much gets released on 4K Bluray and they want significantly more for them, so I only have a couple and I’m entirely out of the habit of disc rental.
I agree that there’s a big difference, just as there is from 1080p or lower streaming to Bluray. But those of us who care are in a minority and I’m increasingly finding that stuff doesn’t even come out on regular Bluray. Want seasons 3 onwards of Fargo on Bluray? Tough. The Americans, after that first season? Nope. Most streaming shows on disc at all? No.
Xbox Series X does have Dolby Vision support, so I’m covered there, though I don’t have a receiver and speakers to take advantage of it.
Dolby Vision is an HDR format. You might be thinking of Dolby Atmos.
Ah right. Cool, so I just need a 4K TV with HDR to take advantage of it. Got it. :)
A lot of what I really want is on 4K (I currently have 104 UHD titles), but I’ll take your word for it that a lot of modern stuff isn’t—particularly TV shows. I don’t really watch much new television, though, so that’s kind of out of my purview.
And a player that supports Dolby Vision!
If you care about image quality, then yeah, disc is going to pretty much blow away streaming every day of the week. Streamers have to worry about mainly bandwidth, but storage is also an issue when you’re needing to jam as many TV shows and movies as possible on those cach servers that Netflix and the type distribute.
(Here’s an old, decommissioned one that had 262 TB of storage)
I’ve been testing the AV1 codec on Handbrake, and it does wonders for compact file size, but I most definitely noticing that the image quality is suffering. A lot more artifacting and banding is happening.
In some ways, it’s simliar to how cable HD channels look like shit compared to OTA HD broadcasts. OTA is uncompressed compared to cable HD. The image difference can be startling.
It is definitely startling. I got cable briefly in 2017 and watched Mad Max Fury Road on HBO over cable. The artifacting was so bad it has to be seen to be believed. I switched it off in disgust. The hurricane/storm scenes was a mess of compression artifacts. Just horrible.
Yeah you aren’t kidding when it comes to cable / satellite HD image quality. Every time I see a game broadcast on Dish Network I’m shocked by how bad it looks. It claims to be 1080p, but it looks like a 720p YouTube stream that’s been compressed to hell and back. Which is a shame, because that’s probably how most people think HD is supposed to look.
That’s wild considering one of the original selling points of cable was that the picture was better quality. (Since broadcast tended to be dealing with interference, shitty antennas, etc.)