Im not impressed by 4K. It’s no where near the dramatic quality difference when the jump was made from DVD to BluRay. Sure, you can tell a slight difference in details when looking real close, but honestly if I were to do a side by side comparison of a 4K file and 1080p file there is a good chance I couldn’t tell the difference. Especially if comparing animated movies.
With that being said, I am going to change the AppleTV 4K back to 1080p output for better performance with the UI and still great viewing. As I mentioned previously, my 1080p content looks noticeably better on the new LG 4K display through upscaling. I am very impressed by the LG TV.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the obvious with 4K which is the majority of content marketed as 4K isn’t true 4K. It’s a 2K resolution which is even closer to 1080p. Although 4K films are shot in 4K, they are rendered by the studios in 2K resolution.
Correct, also depending on where you get your “4K” video, the bitrate is so low, you’re not much better off than 1080p anyways. I buy my true 4k videos on blu ray and check to verify that they are in fact filmed and final rendered in 4k before i purchase. I rip them and leave them in their raw high bitrate format. Unfortunately these take up like 40GB for each video. Even then the quality difference is noticeable to me, but not to anyone else in my family. For most people, you would have to look at both movies side by side to tell the difference. In the end, it’s just not worth it for 4k unless you have a huge tv or projector. My 55" tv is not large enough to really notice the difference.
I’m gonna delete the ten or so 4K files and keep downloading and watching in 1080p. The 4K file of Saving Private Ryan is 90GB since it’s an almost 3hr movie. At say 2GB per 1080p movie, that’s 45 movies that could occupy the same storage space.
It sounds like you don’t really need 4K then. I personally would say there is a significant difference between a compressed 2GB HD and full 90GB 4K. You are losing out on audio quality and all notion of HDR too. Upscaling does do a lot, but you would have better luck upscaling a 30GB Blu-ray. Storage space shouldn’t be your motivation for not having higher quality as disks are so cheap (prime day had 10TB for ~$200) but for some, sure it can be.
Everyone has their own preference with viewing. I’m not a huge movie watcher by any means and 1080p is good enough. I listen through the built in TV speakers so the Dobly Atmos and other sound schemes doesn’t do anything for me. I agree you can notice some artifact in the small file size 1080p movies obtained through BitTorrent, especially in darker scenes. However, the movies I download from iTunes and strip the DRM protection from to stream via Infuse have zero artifact and an average file size of 3-4GB. My early 4K experience so far doesn’t have me convinced the small viewing quality gain and extra storage space required is worth it. Especially when I’m not a cinephile anyway.