Due to a recently increased upload speed, I can now stream to some of my users 4K content from my Plex server. However, I do not have infinite hard drive space, so I would, at least initially, prefer to limit my 4K collection to films and TV show shows that actually benefit from it.

Personally, and with several of my friends, we’ve come to the agreement that 4K video has about as much advantage as 720 versus 1080. It’s not that big of a leap, and often not entirely worth the upgrade (when accounting for the hard drive space consideration, the added darkness, etc). However, with some films and TV shows, it really does make a huge difference.

With that in mind, what films and TV shows would you recommend that definitely benefit from 4K viewing?

  • IMALlama@lemmy.world
    101·
    14 days ago

    It probably comes down to how the show was originally shot and/or upscaled. IMO it also comes down to your vision, screen size, and viewing distance.

    I remember the early 00s having a high prevalence of, “raa, your eyes can’t tell the difference between 720 and 1080 at 10+ feet unless you have a bolliondy inch display!!!”. I would argue that you can see say 1080 vs 4k on a 50ish inch screen at 10 feet, but the difference isn’t that significant. At least with my vision. It’s the most obvious with high contrast items, like black text on white background.

    Newer movie/show shot with sharp modern glass on a high resolution media? 4k. Older upscaled show? I would lean 1080, unless it was shot on film and they rescanned it.

    It will also really matter how the video was compressed. I’ve seen low resolution videos look much better than higher resolution videos thanks to the codec and/or settings that were used for the higher resolution video.