The continued interest in YIFY 720p encodes (YIFY stopped a couple of months ago, and their encodes target small file size, not best quality) show that many people either can't tell the difference, or just don't care about the difference.
When I read movie critics I never see anyone saying "Not sharp enough" or "I wish there was more detail". Maybe I'm just reading the wrong critics? But when I'm watching a movie the quality of the image is about the last thing I care about, so long as it's above a fairly low minimum. (EG, Clint Eastwood often gets comments for his poorly lit films; a bunch of Youtubers could buy a tripod).
I'm not that old, but not super young either (38), and I can definitely tell a difference, I rented some movie on DVD instead of blu-ray and it was pretty horrendous. I try to watch SD on my TV and it's horrible. Granted, the difference between SD and 1080p is probably much more remarkable, but we have a 40" 1080p after having upgraded from a 28" 720p TV (I know, small) and I remember how going from SD to 720p was pretty amazing (got an Xbox 360 at the time, and playing some of those games were jaw dropping). When we upgraded to 1080p I was skeptical, but I was quickly a convert.
4k, I'm skeptical of, 8k, definitely; unless it's some weird 3D benefit (4k "in each eye" type of thing).
My parents got a new 55inch UHD (4k) TV and rave about it. It looks... remarkably different, but I'm not sure it's the resolution or the increased refresh rate. I don't think I like it, it "up-regulates" 1080p movies, and makes movement jerky or something is just off.
I'll stick with my 1080p for now. That said, I notice watching movies on my Retina Screen (mac) that movies from netflix are a bit higher resolution, though not 4k. It's noticeable for me even at that slight difference, though to be honest, I put the same show on both my TV and my laptop and place them so the screens are comparable size/distance and the difference is there.
i don't doubt for a minute that people can tell the difference. however would just make the point that a proper controlled experiment would be to change the source from 720p to 1080p or 4k, rather than the tv (assuming the tv supports the maximum res!).
Really? I've got a 50" FullHD TV and I could definitely use an upgrade to 4K. Sitting 3-4 meters away from it some content is definitely not as sharp as it could be.
What content? Netflix in 4K looks considerably worse than true BluRay at 1080p.
The resolution is really not the most important factor as most of the content most people consume now is streamed we lost pretty much all of the benefits of HD with squeezing 1080p HD content to a bitrate lower than that of DVD without much improvement with our encoders.
H265 can produce some seriously small files but atm the configuration isn't optimized yet (h264 still looks better) that plus some decent client side post processing can probably help to bring back HD content to it's full glory.
I often can't tell between 720p and 1080i source material either on my 46" 1080p set. About to buy a 75" 4k set though. The size means I'll definitely notice 4k from my couch distance (~8ft) and the sheer size will come in handy when watching TV from the kitchen table (~15ft away)
When I read movie critics I never see anyone saying "Not sharp enough" or "I wish there was more detail". Maybe I'm just reading the wrong critics? But when I'm watching a movie the quality of the image is about the last thing I care about, so long as it's above a fairly low minimum. (EG, Clint Eastwood often gets comments for his poorly lit films; a bunch of Youtubers could buy a tripod).