Buying a new TV for Christmas.  Currently running a Samsung 46" 1080p.  Sitting distance is about 11' 6" from eyeball to screen.

The 46" has been good for a general purpose TV (news, tv, movies, Xbox), however it does seem a bit small.

By comparison the 60" is a beast compared to the 46", and with 4K becoming very affordable I figured a 60" 4K would be the tits.  Displays look amazing.

Then I got on the Internet and researched the topic.  Apparently we all need to be sitting a LOT closer to our screens to get the most out of them.  This is even more true with UHD 4K b/c the human eye has to be closer to actual pick up on the difference.  The TV size calculator says for optimum picture I should be running a 70" 1080 TV and a 90"+ 4K!  Obviously it would be impractical and not affordable to run over 65" in my situation, so should I just skip 4K for now and buy a 65" 1080 and get the 4K OLED down the road?

Update - I bought the $999 Vizio 65" 4K from BB.  I think Sam's has it for the same price.  So far, very impressed.  Picture is amazing streaming in 4K from YouTube.  1080 signals look like 1080.  But with the right content you can absolutely see the difference.  Xbox One is amazingly more responsive than the old Samsung.  Operation and interface are fast and easy.

I bought a Samsung curved 65" 4k. It is just amazing as compared to standard HD. The curve does help.

This chart says you don't need 4K at that distance,but man I see a difference when I look at 4K and 1080p side by side. But then again you can get a monster 1080p for cheap nowadays. I saw a Vizio E series 70in for 1100 somewhere.

^^^^ has got it right.



With 4K all the rage among the hip consumer community, it's a great time to buy a quality 1080p display.

Just adding that yes, Costco has the Vizio 70in in 1080p for 1179,  That's a lot of TV.

Yeah I've got a buddy that has a 70" Vizio and sits about 8' from it.

Xbox sure looks amazing on it though.

With some of the deals on the 1080p large screens I would go with one of those.  Actually I did, I went with a 65" LG 1080p that Best Buy had on sale for 799.  I sit about 10'6" away from it and I think its great.  It isn't a top of the line model, but I've been very happy with it.  As far as 4k goes, is there a lot of content being offered yet in that format?

ETA was just browsing the BestBuy Black Friday ad, and they are going to have a Vizio 65" 4K for 999 and it will be available online ... at that price I'd say it would be worth a 4K.

Hell that's cheaper than a 1080p 65" right now!  Might have to go 4K unless I can find a good 1080 deal.

My Costco has a 65" 4k for like 1600


At that price, why not?


 

This is where I'm at.  I don't have cable and not much 4k stuff so I figured tbis tv was best for me.

I went 4K 55".
The charts make their claims but yeah, I can certainly see the difference between 1080 and 4K. My degree is in photography so maybe I have a better trained eye, but it think you get more edge definition and contrast, and even though you don't make out individual pixels, there is a clear improvement.

http://www.amazon.com/VIZIO-M60-C3-60-Inch-Ultra-Smart/dp/B00T63YMGK

I'll go against the online calculators and what not and say that I can see a significant difference between 4K and 1080P, even at distances they say I shouldn't be able to.

4K is the future.  It might not be next week, but eventually you'll be looking at 1080p just like people look at 480p now.

I agree with the last couple of posters.  I can see the difference, even at long distances, much longer than the chart shows.  I think the picture quality has improved, too.  Darker blacks makes everything else look better.  Crisp edges allows higher contrast (something that LCD's seems to lack).

Everything will be in 4k eventually, might as well go ahead and step up to it.

Agreed...  Personally I'm waiting for OLED screens though.

4k is great, but how much programming is out there for it?  It reminds me of 3d when it came out.  It was all the rage, and outside of movies, it really isnt all that.

 
I too disagree with the online calculator.


As I've gotten new TVs I didn't get rid of the old ones so I have an old 35" tube (480), a 37" (720) and a 42" (1080) all in a row.  I typically sit 4 to 6 feet away and I can see a huge difference between them.


I'm thinking of getting a 4k but haven't as it seems like Netflix is presently the only source of 4k programming.  Is that right?


Also, I've notice that 50" TV's and larger looks more like home movies than HDTV.  My father and sister have huge TVs and I don't like watching them at all and prefer my 42".  Am I the only one?


Note: the reason to keep all 3 TVs is because they are used for different things.  One is often used as a computer monitor or with my TiVo.  One works with my wireless headphones so I can watch TV while the wife is sleeping.  The other is used with the Fire Stick or the cable box for on-demand programming.  Sadly, if I get another TV, the wife is going to make me get rid of one of the current ones.

3D is a gimmick.

4K is the next step from 1080p.  Which was the next step from 720p.

I would wager money that identical 65" professional 4K monitors, set up exactly the same (gamma, black level, gray scale calibration, etc.) watched from 10 feet away, with one fed by a 1080p test disk, the other from a 4K test disc, will be indistinguishable to the human eye.



That doesn't mean that 4K is a gimmick, or is going away - it's not.  But it is a bridge to 8K UHD, which is coming sooner than you think, and will obsolete everything.

Actually, my TV up-scales to 4k which I truly enjoy.
There are few movies in 4k and 4k will not be used in future digital filming for movies and TV shows (it will be higher). I guess there will be a higher resolution in the future.

I saw Samsung has dropped their "sUHD" prices quite a bit. Hoping to get the JS8500 65" today, for $2k.

The one difference I can see in them, is letters on the screen. I was looking at two identical TVs, one 4K and one 1080, and the letters are soo much clearer. I can actually read the words on the screen now.

I went with the 55" LG OLED 4K.

Sometime in the next decade isn't sooner than I think.  And there are much greater technical hurdles to overcome.

Update in original post.  Went with Vizio 4K 65".