How does 1080p look on a 4k display?

[KingFatty]

And some vendors are using proprietary upscaling techniques, such as Samsung's, which will likely include features that are patented or secret so competitors can't easily copy:

http://www.samsung.com/hk_en/uhd-tv/mobile/quadmatic_picture_engine.html

 

[dorion]

Mr. toyota, I believe he ment that 3840x2160 is double 1920x1080 so it should scale perfectly. I'm just baffled when people don't get simple stuff like that.

When you say double the acreage you don't mean 4x the original acreage. I'm running two 1920x1080 monitors, do I have double the resolution or something else?

 

[Gloomy]

When you say double the acreage you don't mean 4x the original acreage. I'm running two 1920x1080 monitors, do I have double the resolution or something else?

have to double both axis

you have a resolution of 3840x1080

doubling the resolution = quadruple pixel count

 

[Gunbuster]

Got my wife a 39" Seiki 4k for work. Looked fine at 1080p to me, though it's hard to say since I dont have a 1080p screen of that size to make a comparison with.

 

[serpretetsky]

Lmao. This thread made my morning.

I'm all of a sudden reminded of having convos with a person I knew a while back who would try to change logic, reason, the laws of physics, and math in order to win an argument that he knew he was wrong in... Funny part is, just like now, it gains him nothing... unlike now, toyota now has these valiant efforts semi permanently recorded for all to see.

Anyways, assuming that the monitor is small enough, 1080p should look perfect on 2160p capable monitor. I just got a 1440p monitor and 1080p actually scales well enough with software. You can see that it's blurry, but sit back and all is dandy. Just don't try to do design work on the scaled image. Gaming, depending on genre should be fine.

I wouldn't laugh my ass off quite yet.

Here's what one person posted in this thread

While toyota isn't explaining himself very well, and is wrong about pixel doubling, a lot of scalers don't use pixel doubling. So even if you should be able to get a perfect lossless scale, they still interpolate the resolution and blur it all to hell. So in other words, this would have to be looked at in a product by product basis to see which 4k displays have true pixel doubling.

Of course even if the monitor didn't have true pixel doubling, the scaling could look decent, since the interpolation algorithm has such a high DPI to work with. Still, I would never assume it looks fine without seeing it, as too many scalers stink.

there are other people in this thread that seem to argue that their monitors do not do proper scaling for using a resolution that should be perfectly scaled . I haven't seen any proof for either side of the argument yet, so its hard to say.

Also: resolution doubling is not a well defined term. Some people will mean a single dimension, others will mean the total pixels. In general, I suggest people use a more precise language and not assume one definition or the other. In the context of this thread, I think it's pretty clear people mean doubling a single dimension.

 

[Lean L]

Fair enough. I concede that that is certainly possible. It's certainly not answering the spirit of the question though.

Even with no scaler, this can be achieved via software. Now if this were purely for tv purposes than it is a very valid point.

 

[TrulyUncouth]

Hate to post and keep this thread alive for another second but my god I have rarely been as amused and pissed reading a forum on the internet. In my opinion Toyota is definitely trolling you guys but doing it so well he even had me fooled for a while.

Just in case anyone has made it to this point without understanding: 1920x1080 has exactly 1/4 the pixels of 3840x2160(aka 4K or UHD) so any sane scaling algorithm will simply use 4 pixels in a 2x2 configuration on the 4K monitor to represent 1 pixel from the source. Therefore if two screens were the exact same size and using said sane scaling algorithm they would be virtually identical in image quality. In short, Toyota is a magnificent troll or needs a helmet for everyday life.


Calling out and attacking other members is not permitted here and will not be tolerated.

-Rvenger

 

[serpretetsky]

Just in case anyone has made it to this point without understanding: 1920x1080 has exactly 1/4 the pixels of 3840x2160(aka 4K or UHD) so any sane scaling algorithm will simply use 4 pixels in a 2x2 configuration on the 4K monitor to represent 1 pixel from the source. Therefore if two screens were the exact same size and using said sane scaling algorithm they would be virtually identical in image quality. In short, Toyota is a magnificent troll or needs a helmet for everyday life.

I completely agree with you except you still haven't proven Toyota wrong. The final question you must now ask is how many monitors out their use this "sane scaling algorithm" ?

All of them of them? More than 50%? Less than 50%? What about video drivers? Do they have scaling enabled by default when you install them? Do they use a "sane scaling algorithm" ? How many people realize there is a difference between your video card doing the scaling and the monitor doing the scaling?

These are the questions that the thread has ended on and no one has answered with some sort of proof.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm with Toyota on this one. I've seen some pretty horrific scalers built into monitors. I vote that 1080P upscaled to 4K is going to look blurry as $#!+.

 

[KingFatty]

All the marketing hype about 4K is surrounding each brand in its own proprietary wrapper of magnificent upscaling algorithm.

The whole push will be using 4K monitors to "embiggen" everyone's collection of low-res content.

That's the race, the competition. Which 4K monitor will do the best job of turning a 1080p mediocre blu-ray into a stunning eyeball melting masterpiece?

Just saying, but I bet that any 4K display that uses the "dumb" plain old quadrupling of pixels will get a reputation as a giant turd. Because if your 1080p content looks identical on the 4K TV as it would on a same-sized 1080p display, then what's the point.

So I think this is going to be a marketing phenomenon, where TV makers will evolve or die, and be forced into coming up with a weird upscaling algorithm or die.

 

[blastingcap]

All the marketing hype about 4K is surrounding each brand in its own proprietary wrapper of magnificent upscaling algorithm.

The whole push will be using 4K monitors to "embiggen" everyone's collection of low-res content.

That's the race, the competition. Which 4K monitor will do the best job of turning a 1080p mediocre blu-ray into a stunning eyeball melting masterpiece?

Just saying, but I bet that any 4K display that uses the "dumb" plain old quadrupling of pixels will get a reputation as a giant turd. Because if your 1080p content looks identical on the 4K TV as it would on a same-sized 1080p display, then what's the point.

So I think this is going to be a marketing phenomenon, where TV makers will evolve or die, and be forced into coming up with a weird upscaling algorithm or die.

Chicken and the egg problem. Produce 4K TVs and wait for native 4K content, or produce native 4K content and wait for 4K TVs. I think a lot of films are already filmed at way over 1080p so it's only a matter of time before we see more and more native 4K films crop up. TV not so much, they care too much about saving bandwidth.

The question is, how to deliver native 4K. Compressed 1080p on Amazon/Hulu/Netflix/etc. isn't going to cut it, but standard Blu-Ray discs can hold only so much data. It'll push the Blu-Ray specs to the limit to store something like a 4K version of a long movie.

 

[pakotlar]

You're going to have to explain how pixel doubling on a 4k monitor would look noticeably worse than a native 1080p monitor. Your anecdotes thus-far indicate that you have no idea what anyone in this thread has even been discussing.

Because scaling algorithms used by NVidia don't treat a half-res differently than any other fraction?

 

[hawtdawg]

Because scaling algorithms used by NVidia don't treat a half-res differently than any other fraction?

So we're talking about GPU scaling now?

 

[ggadrian]

If I input 720p to mi 1440p monitor it looks like crap, but thats because a 720p 27" monitor will always look like crap if you're too close. Appart from that the image isn't blurry at all.

If I set a resolution that isn't a multiple of 1440 the it looks blurry.

So I'd expect 1080p in 4k screens to looks completely fine.

 

[KingFatty]

If I input 720p to mi 1440p monitor it looks like crap, but thats because a 720p 27" monitor will always look like crap if you're too close. Appart from that the image isn't blurry at all.

If I set a resolution that isn't a multiple of 1440 the it looks blurry.

So I'd expect 1080p in 4k screens to looks completely fine.

As an experiment, I would be very interested to compare how your display looks between these two situations:

1) Use a 720p source content, and output a 720p signal from the computer, and send it to the display, and the display scales it up to fill the screen.

2) Use the 720p source content, and tell the video card driver to use the GPU to upscale to 1440p, then output a 1440p signal from the computer to the display.

 

[BrightCandle]

I was hoping that by now someone would have tested this and determined that the Seiki or such does output 1080p by just drawing onto 4 pixels and hence its all fine. I do share the concern that the scalar may very well get this wrong or try to antialias the picture to add more detail in, hence ruining the images sharpness. I am also worried about what happens when you do scale it correctly, it might not look the same as a 1080p panel and instead have an odd effect where the pixels are more obvious because of the finer edge between them.

What I really want people to do is try this on their monitor with Display and GPU scaling and take some high resolution pictures of a game with a camera.

 

[yosimba2000]

im wondering about this too, so let me try to state my question.

assume a 1080p monitor is displaying a 1080p image and assume you are sitting X distance away from the monitor.

assume the same image (still 1080p) is now being displayed on a 4K monitor/TV with the exact same pixel spacing as the 1080p display, but the physical dimensions are exactly 2 times the height and width of the 1080p display. you are sitting the same X distance away from the 4k as you were on the 1080p.

assuming NO pixel doubling on the 4K, is the image on the 4K only using 1920*1080 pixels? if so, shouldn't the picture displayed be the same as the 1080p?

now, assuming the 4K has pixel doubling, the image should now be stretched by a factor of 2 both height and width wise (but the image retains same aspect ratio since the 4K has same aspect ratio as 1080p). however, because of this stretching and the fact that you are still sitting THE SAME X distance away from the 4K, the image on the 4K should look not as sharp. However, if you move farther away from the 4K, eventually you will perceive the sharpness of the image on the 4K to be similar as the 1080p display, right?

 

[jkauff]

1080p content such as Blu-ray on a 4K display will look perfect if you show it in a 1920x1080 window. If you're showing it in 3840x2160 (full screen), the image will be scaled up. How well it scales up will vary depending on how the scaling is done. The math for the basic hardware pixel scaling has been done for us--it's exactly double.

 

[KingFatty]

now, assuming the 4K has pixel doubling, the image should now be stretched by a factor of 2 both height and width wise (but the image retains same aspect ratio since the 4K has same aspect ratio as 1080p). however, because of this stretching and the fact that you are still sitting THE SAME X distance away from the 4K, the image on the 4K should look not as sharp. However, if you move farther away from the 4K, eventually you will perceive the sharpness of the image on the 4K to be similar as the 1080p display, right?

To me, the above description would be the same as simply comparing two 1080p displays, where one display is twice as big as the other, and they were arranged at the same viewing distance.

The bigger display will look not as sharp if at the same viewing distance as the smaller display. But if the bigger display is at a further viewing distance, you can achieve the same experience. I think your constraint in your example is you describe the 4K display as being twice as big as the 1080p display, so the person will be much "closer" to the 4K according to the size and the fact that you are using 1080p content.

But, here are two picture examples that I think sum up the issues discussed.

The first example is showing "dumb" pixel doubling. Notice how the two left examples appear to be identical to each other, you are just using pixel doubling (please ignore the two images on the right). So imagine the leftmost image is a 1080p display, and the image to its right is a 4K display of exactly the same size. It perfectly reproduces the 1080p content, using 4x the pixels:

Now consider the second example, shown below, where you have a 1080p content on the left with visible pixels. But the right image would be the 4K display "interpolating" and using its extra pixels to try to guess at additional information and insert "curves" into the image. Different algorithms can produce different results, but notice how the two images look different from each other? Which is better? Manufacturers trying to sell 4K displays will really try to convince you the image on the right is better, so you should get a 4K display to perform this kind of interpolation to "improve" your paltry 1080p content:

Just as a comparison, there are some really slick interpolation algorithms, e.g., this one is tuned to optimize icons or other "pixel art" type cartoons, and it's pretty amazing:

Here's another example, where seemingly the algorithm can intelligently fill in the blanks between the pixels of a (presumably) 1080p image:

Read more here: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/132950-csi-style-super-resolution-image-enlargment-yeeaaaah

That would be pretty cool to have a 4K display that could do this sort of thing without lots of distracting artifacting or messing up, but we'll just have to see. Perhaps the drawback would be that you'd need the equivalent of a $500 GPU built into the TV. Hmm I think I'd rather just install a software driver on my existing computer that already has a fancy GPU to handle this, and then buy a really dumb and cheap Korean 4K display that will just display the content that has been interpolated by the GPU that I already own. I don't want to be forced to buy a TV that has its own GPU if it will just be redundant, or worse, if it cannot perform as well as the GPU I already have where I could just use GPU scaling instead of TV scaling.

 

[amenx]

I think for 4k TVs to be a success (not sure how it will carry over to monitors), they WILL HAVE TO downscale impeccably to 1080p. For the next few years the content will still be overwhelmingly at that res. Who will buy a 4k TV it looks like crap at 1080p? Never underestimate what technology coupled with the need for profit can come up with. We cannot base our current assumptions on the crappy scaling of cheap monitors and TVs of the past to what we may see a few years from now.

 

[yosimba2000]

wow thanks for that post KingFatty. maybe manufacturers should find a way to reduce pixel sized by 4 so you can get 4k in 1080p dimensions :awe:

 

[mman12]

Looks terrible. I'm so spoiled at 4k now, anything else feels like 640x480.

 

[StrangerGuy]

I'm with Toyota on this one. I've seen some pretty horrific scalers built into monitors. I vote that 1080P upscaled to 4K is going to look blurry as $#!+.

This. Manufacturers had a horrible track record at calibrating their screens at native 1080p, let alone scalers.

 

[KingFatty]

I still think that, at worst, they'll just have a dumb thing that doubles the horizontal and vertical pixels, to be no worse than 1080p. But it's possible that processing is affordable enough where they can put nice scalers into TVs now without affecting the price too badly, in contrast to many years before where a nice scaler would probably increase the price of the TV quite a bit.

 

[ComputerGuy2006]

I was hoping that by now someone would have tested this and determined that the Seiki or such does output 1080p by just drawing onto 4 pixels and hence its all fine.

I just ran a test, it does not.

I put single pixels black dots in paint and a 45 degree line (this 45 degree line had pixels were each pixel in the line was on its own X and Y axis). Everything looked fine on my u2711, on my LG TV, and even on my seiki set at 4k. But the moment the seiki went to 1080p its obvious its not 4:1 mapping. Each individual pixel is blurry while my 45 degree line had 'pixels' in the same x and y axis as other pixels (hence not being a real perfect pixel 45 degree line on the seiki 1080p).

That being said, its possible my 7950 is doing something funky. But if I put the mouse in any of the four corners of the 1080p res seiki the mouse seems to reach the edge normally. My seiki is also set to 0 sharp.

And on a side note: MS you fail so badly with your multiple display management on vista+ OS. Made this ultra simple easy test into a very frustrating experience.

edit: hmmm.... but my u2711 is also not scaling. Maybe this has something to do with my AMD video card drivers... but once again, win7 is making this testing extremely stressful. I am done for the night.