So, I know a lot of people are really excited that 4K is a thing that is happening as a new standard, but really... Why?
Its simply another 16:9 format that is a direct scale from 1080p, so its only practical uses are for extreme sizes of displays, and I honestly can't see any other reason for it. It's far too high of a resolution to use on a desktop without scaling everything to look like it's 1080p, and then at that point you've spent $600+ on an effective 1080p display real estate.
I'm 100% in agreement with Linus, where other formats like 16:10 or 21:9 are much more compelling when talking about screen real estate. Because you actually have more pixels either vertically or horizontally to work with. A new resolution on the same scale ratio doesn't make sense to me as giving you more screen real estate. There's nothing more. It's really only going to look like 1080p with 4x AA or 2x AA.
And I really don't understand why we aren't moving to 21:9. We moved from 4:3 to 16:9 because 16:9 is what movies were being filmed in. Now movies are being filmed in 21:9 but instead of moving from 16:9 to 21:9 for a more natural progression with screen standard, we're just doubling the pixel count?
So all-in-all, with 4K bringing all this marketing hype, I'll be waiting to get my hands on a 1440p 21:9 monitor and have more effective screen real estate than the people on the 4K bandwagon. And in a few years when curved displays aren't uncommon, I'll already be used to the 21:9 standard and then be happy with my monitors wrapping around me for an extreme level of immersion that would only be surpassed by VR.
TL;DR
4K is an effectively useless resolution and I'm salty that we aren't moving to 21:9 as a standard.
This makes some sense but basically none. Why don't you just go back to 1600x900? or 800x450 then? It's still 16:9. Oh what's that? Yes it's because everything looks better in 1080p, and everything looks better than 1080p in 4k unless you need glasses and aren't wearing them. I could understand 4k in a phone being stupid as you practically can't see the individual pixels at 1080p anyway, but at 28" at 1080p I could count them all. Still looks good. but 4k will look a fuck load better.
Tl;dr It looks better unless you are blind or don't have eyes and why are you complaining? Stop making life hard for yourself, it's like getting angry at a fork with 5 prongs because 3 prong is enough!
HAHAHAHA! I was going to say 4 prongs but it felt like not that much of a difference compared to 5 which would defeat the purpose of the likeness to the big difference between 4k and 1080p. I do believe that cake forks have 3 prongs through, one of which is a 'knife'.
Oh yeah and btw, if you want 21:9 for wide screen real estate (what they're made for apart from movies that aren't supported much anyway) You can just put another monitor beside you original one and extend the desktop and BAM you still have $300 in your pocket. Where as for someone who wants 4k, they can't really get 4 1080p screens and put them on arms accordingly to make a TV.
Hell yeah. I never even thought of that before lol.
OT: I kinda disagree and agree...4K is getting a lot of hype because its easy to projectile vomit '4K' all over everything. But i think that 21:9 will find it's time in the next couple years. Especially if graphics cards don't get a serious power boost very soon. Would like to see 21:9 get a resolution higher than 1440p though as well, which like I said earlier, a couple years when GPUs catch up with monitors. I would rather have just one huge 21:9 monitor on my desk instead of 3 smaller monitors that might have a higher pixel density.
for computers 4k makes sense as you are sitting so close to the screen. if you sit 80cm (31 inches) or less away from the monitor will notice a difference even at common current screen sizes of 19 inches and above. your eyes can resolve the detail.
however, if you are sitting 3 meters (10 feet) away from a TV, such as in the case of living room gaming/movie watching, you would need a screen larger than 73 inches to start to see a difference in 4k over 1080p. at 5 meters (16 feet) away, the screen would need to be larger than 123 inches for your to see a difference in 4k over what you can see in 1080p. this is for 16:9 ratio screens. I can see 4k projectors making more sense than 4k TVs in the future. However, there is hardly any content that is delivered in 4k at the moment and i expect it to take time and be infested with DRM for a while before it is adopted and usable.
back to computers: i do agree that until software is optimised for 4k, the 21:9 high res screens look more appealing. i like that ratio better anyway as you get a lot of usable screen real estate without the need for extra monitors and your older hardware can still drive these monitors easily.
Yeah that is a good point really. At the moment it's 4k all the way but it would be very cool if you could get 4k in 21:9 and have that as the standard. Actually really 4k is no problem, it's great and there's nothing wrong with it when it comes to the OP, it's 16:9 that they don't like, if it was 4k 21:9 they'd love it, and who wouldn't really? haha
As a media person 4k makes sense for me, I've got to work with pallets scattered across my screen across various programs. If I can avoid having to constantly toggle things and not sacrifice what I'm looking at hell yeah I'd jump on it. However I'll probably be late on the bandwagon until someone can make a reasonably priced 4k 10-bit (full or 8bit+FRC) display with good response and color uniformity throughout.
Our samsung 4k will be out soon. We didn't like it. We liked 4k TN from another vendor, but not the samsung. 28" is the right size for 4k, though. The pixels weren't absurdly small at least. I'd like to see 16:10 or something more toward 4:3 more than 21:9 because my eyes don't have to move as far to take in information. I am sure the optimal field of view for human eyes is probably not something as wide as 21:9 and probably something taller than 16:9 but also not as tall as 4:3. But 4:3 is nice for reading documents. 16:10 is okay for reading two side-by-side documents.
Human vision is roughly 170 degrees by 130 degrees, or 1.31 width/height. The aspect ratio of 4:3 is 1.33, 16:9 is 1.78, 16:10 is 1.6. and 21:9 is 2.33. So, 4:3 is actually the closest to human vision.
16:9 and 16:10 are apparently nice to look at because they are close to the golden ratio or something like that.
