What TV Resolution do you Need?

I want to begin by saying that I love my 85-inch 4K Sony television. The picture is amazing and the screen is huge. Being a Sony employee I get discounts on our electronic products and so I didn't have to pay full price. Before that I had a 60-inch 1080p Sony television that had the added benefit of being passive 3D. That is the same technology used in movie theaters so when I wanted more glasses, I could just bring the ones from the movie theater home with me. So the question is if I notice a difference and if I think an 8K television would be better.

First I have to say that I like the larger screen but that is not what I want to focus on today. I have a large theater room in my house and the 85-inches fits perfectly. The size of the television is constrained by where you will put it. If you are in a small apartment, 50-inches may be perfect. If you are sitting within a few feet of the screen, 85-inches is definitely too large.

Resolution is a different metric than size and refers to the number of pixels on the screen. Your standard television from 30 years ago had a resolution of 640x480. That is not very many pixels and it is tough to go back to those old displays now. The picture quality is not that great. Now try to go back and watch an old VHS video cassette. That resolution came in at 320x240 and is painful to watch now.

A 1080p screen means there are 1920x1080 pixels and became the gold standard for televisions about 10 years ago. We also moved from a 4x3 aspect ratio to 16x9 which created a wider screen but that is yet another metric we don't need to focus on. Let's stick with just the number of pixels on most screens.

I remember attending an internal Sony technology fair about 10 years ago and seeing the first 4K televisions. The pictures looked very lifelike and made great demos. I wondered how long it would take for content to become available as a 4K screen has as many pixels as 4 1080p ones. That means videos are that much larger and streaming services require that much more bandwidth to send them to you.

It didn't take long for content to arrive but did it really? Your common Blu-ray player is limited to 1080p. If you want to see anything in true 4K, you have to upgrade to the newer 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player found in the PlayStation 5. Now you can try to stream that high resolution but the reality is that you won't get true 4K content. A streaming service like Netflix requires you to have the the premium service and all of your devices have to support 4K. Then you have to have the right Internet connection. The truth is that you will rarely see 4K content from any streaming service provider. That doesn't mean it is impossible, just rare.

People use televisions for more than just watching things. I used to spend a lot of time gaming and higher resolution monitors provide an advantage. While some games don't support the higher resolution, some do and they look amazing. I also have a 4K television that I have connected to my Mac computer and I like having that much screen real estate. It allows a lot of open windows at the same time.

So what resolution do you really need? If all you are doing is watching television and movies, your 1080p is just fine. I would not go out and buy a new TV. Now if something happened to your old television and it is time to get a new one, I would definitely recommend one that is 4K. I had a TV go bad in my vacation condo that I rent out and I replaced it with a 4K one. Yes I had to spend a little more but it should last awhile.

If you are big into gaming or use your television as a computer monitor, I highly recommend 4K and wouldn't even look at a lower resolution. Furthermore I would make sure the minimum size of my computer monitor is 43 inches. Smaller than that and you have to sit too close to the screen for it to be comfortable. My wife has a 4K monitor connected to her laptop that is 32 inches and she has reduced the resolution as it is too small at true 4K.

Now some of you are probably wondering if you need an 8K TV. Currently Sony does not make one and so you have to look at other manufacturers. Because of that, I won't be buying one soon. Furthermore there is little to no content available for them. Remember that 8K is like having 4 4K TV's. That minimum 43-inch monitor explodes to 86 inches if you want to use it as a computer monitor. That won't even fit on my desk. My neck hurts just thinking about it.

Eventually I may change my mind. As bandwidth from Internet providers increases and content becomes available, the change may make sense. I just don't see it right now. Should I need a new TV any time soon, I'll stick with 4K for now.  

I Thought a 4K Monitor Would be Enough

True to my word I am trying to stay busy during my Holiday break. This morning I got up early and skied for an hour at Alta before it started getting crowded given how many runs are open. I did do a bit of exploring so that when we get a lot more snow, I know what other parts of the mountain look like. I also managed to see an old family friend, Junior Bonous who turned 100 in August and he is still making it up to Alta for some turns.

I came home and got some food before heading to the ski tuning room to scrape and brush a pair of skis for Christmas eve. Then I headed to my office and put together a ski video describing the early-season conditions at Snowbird. It is a bit different than my usual videos.

One comment I have received is that I sound so monotone as I narrate my ski videos. Today I opted to create the video first and then add the narration afterwards without a script. I'm not sure I will do that again as I think it took a lot longer to create the soundtrack than normal. I also wanted to say a lot more and ended up leaving many of my comments out of the video.

Creating the narration track at the same time as the video required me to have both Garage Band and iMovie running at the same time. My Mac has a 4K monitor and so one would think I have more than enough space to do everything. That is not the case. I like to use iMovie so it takes up most of the screen. I do the same with Garage Band. A second 4K monitor would really be useful but I don't have one readily available.

I remember when I first started using the 4K monitor. It is the same resolution as 4 HD monitors running at 1080p. I thought it would be easy to divide up the screen into 4 sections and have them act as 4 independent screens. Nope. Once you have a high-resolution monitor, you use it all. I like being able to have my web browser take up more than a quarter of the screen. I also reserve extra space for my e-mail window. It just goes to show that no matter how high a resolution monitor you have, you will use it all. 

Getting the Most out of my PlayStation 5

When I first got my PlayStation 5, I kept it on my desk in my home office as I used it for work. Now that I am no longer working for Sony Interactive Entertainment, I have moved it into my theater room. I now have it connected to my brand-new 85-inch television. Unfortunately it was not as simple as plugging it into my TV as I had to also connect it to my surround-sound system.

Yesterday I posted about the importance of refresh rates and why 120 frames per second or Hz is significant for the latest televisions. I want to preserve the high refresh rate from my PlayStation 5 and that just isn't possible if I plug it into my current television receiver which is then connected to the TV. My receiver only supports 60 Hz at 4K and I do not want to spend money replacing it right now. I probably will in the future but for now I want to keep using it. So how do I keep the high video quality and also keep the high sound quality?

I can't take full credit for this as my oldest son helped me figure it out. The solution is to use the audio return channel or eARC HDMI output from the television. The high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) has been around for over 15 years and has evolved to allow for various scenarios like this. When I set up my PlayStation 5, I plugged it directly into my new television using one of it's two HDMI 2.1 interfaces. The second is used to connect the TV to the receiver. Now what happens is the picture and sound are sent to the television from the PS5. The sound is then sent back to the receiver for that shake-the-neighbors experience. HDMI works both ways so that any devices connected to the receiver use that same HDMI interface into the television.

One would think that with a PS5 I wouldn't need to connect any other device. It streams video, has a DVD drive, a Blu-ray drive, and can play 4K Blu-ray disks. I also have a PS4 Pro connected to a PlayStation VR as well as an old VHS video cassette player, from Sony, of course. The moment you connect your PS VR to your PS4, you lose the ability to play games in 4K without having to swap cables. Rather than deal with that, I just kept my PS4 Pro and use it with my PS VR. I also use it to play video games with my grandson and keep a healthy mix of age-appropriate games loaded on it. As for the VHS tapes, their quality is really horrible even with 4K upscaling. You never know when you may need to watch an old video though.

My son and I connected everything and then started watching Return of the Jedi on Disney+. While we enjoy the movie, we wanted to make sure the sound and picture were in sync. After all, nothing ruins the experience of a movie when you hear an explosion before you see it. The lip movement not matching the dialog can also be really annoying, which is why I prefer subtitles to dubbing for non-English movies. Fortunately both the TV and the receiver have mechanisms for delaying one or the other. In my case, the sound led the picture. I went into the receiver settings and added a 10ms delay. That improved things somewhat but wasn't perfect. I upped the delay to 20ms and everything synced perfectly. If it had been the other way around and the picture led the sound, I would have added the delay to the television.

Once we got the timing worked out on the PS5, I had to go in and check it on the PS4 and VHS cassette player. The PS4 is in sync but there is a 20ms delay on the VHS. I can turn off the delay setting in the receiver when I play video tapes to solve that problem. As I doubt I will watch a lot of VHS tapes, I'm fine not worrying about it. I can probably set custom parameters for each device and save them to the receiver but am fine with how things are set up now.

Should you find yourself with a new PS5 and an older receiver, just connect it directly to the television. Then use eARC to pull in your surround-sound receiver. You may have to adjust some settings but once you get it set up, you will be amazed at the quality.

The Right Size 4K Monitor

When I got my latest computer a few months ago, I made sure to pick up a 4K monitor. I started with a 27-inch one and quickly discovered that I couldn't really use all the pixels. I had to scale up the display or sit really close to the monitor with my reading glasses. That isn't very practical and so I looked for a new one. 

Instead of spending a lot of money, I purchased an inexpensive 4K 43-inch TV from Walmart.com for less than $200. My son makes fun of me because he thinks the quality of the image is not that great. For how I use my computer, it is perfect for me. I would not recommend this solution for someone doing extensive photo editing or creating scenic videos. But if you spend most of your time reading e-mail and surfing the web, it does a great job. 

The important thing is getting the right size. With almost 4,000 horizontal pixels (3840 actually) and 2160 vertical pixels, it is the equivalent of 4-1080p monitors stacked next to each other. It is a huge improvement of the 2-1080p monitors I had before it.

So remember when you go to get a 4K monitor, it isn't the number of pixels that is important, it is the size of those pixels. If the monitor is too small, you have to sit too close. If it is too large, it might not fit on your desk. My personal opinion is that 43-inches is about perfect for 4K.

Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

No I was not subjected to a tradeshow my first week back from vacation but there were several of my coworkers that were. Today a number of them showed up back at the office and gave me a quick rundown of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Last year the show was fairly boring. This year reports are that it was even more boring. I'm not sure if that is a bad thing or if it is good in that I get to hold onto more of my money this year.

The big buzz from the major consumer electronics companies is 4K television. The picture is the equivalent resolution of having 4 HD televisions. That means that when you get close to the screen, you see incredible detail. Unfortunately we are still lacking content for them and so I wouldn't rush right out and buy a 4K television. You also don't see much of difference between HD and 4K when you sit at reasonable distances from the screen.

Another product category making noise this year is wearable devices. There were a number of vendors that had various bracelets that measured calories burned throughout your day. Some of the better ones interact with your smartphone while others can interface with your computer. This seems to be a category that will need a bit of maturity before we see some real leaders.

I was able to watch several press conferences of the CES event and feel that the most innovative technology was in the digital camera space. Sony has their a7 or Alpha 7 camera that does away with the mirror found in most digital SLR cameras. This makes the camera lighter and also allows you to take faster pictures. This is not really necessary for portrait shots, but is critical for capturing the right action ones. CES also showed a number of features from full-featured cameras making their way into our smartphones. There are a number of manufacturers that include cameras with better than 10 megapixels in their phones. We are also starting to see image processing features such as background blur or defocus.

One of the bad things about a show like CES is that a lot of what is shown looks good in a showroom but won't see much use in real life. The hard part is sifting through all of the features and gadgets and trying to predict what will get used. We'll see if any of the things I think are cool gain mainstream adoption.