Crayon
Member
If "the human eye cannot see more than 30fps" was a big meme, I feel like an actually true contender could be "the human eye cannot see more than 1080p from a normal viewing distance".
A big hubbub is made about the low-resolution of console games, but let's face the facts: the average TV size only finally exceeded 50-inches in 2023. In terms of viewing distances, I have no idea how to get data on what's typical, but the recommended distance for a 50-60 inches is a mere 2 meters.
Yet, almost every home I have been in and in any given online video of people's setups, the TV is typically many meters away from the couch. If you sit even 3 metres away rather than 2, are you really going to have a 98" screen appropriate for that distance? Fuck no you aren't. And yet, that is what the recommendation from THX would be (3 meters = 118 inches, x 0.835 as per their calculations = 98.53 inches). Now think about all the people sitting even further away:
I wonder if the 'rich people' who own this living room would be able to even tell the difference between 720p and 4K from that distance!
I came to the realization that a lot of resolution analysis is educational but also is just mental masturbation for most use cases. It's splitting hairs. On paper, a 200-400p difference might sound gigantic, but who is really going to notice the difference? I'll make a big exception for PC gaming and monitors, as these are under a meter away from our eyes. But for an average sized 4K TV at an average distance in a average living room, viewed by a person with average vision? You're going to need to take a Pepsi challenge to actually tell the difference.
We have our couch scooted up as far as it could without getting silly and still just got to 10 feet from a 55". I'm getting an easily noticeable difference from performance and balanced.
But soooooo many people are too far from their screens. That's what's nice about monitors, even for console gaming. It's so much more practical to get to optimal distance from a monitor.