4K and OLED are outdated and obsolete, welcome 8K and QLED!

[Lawfer]

It's already time to buy new hardware!

QLED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voGmbaHfvZU

8K: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfOLimMAhrs

[Blair]

Thank goodness! I was terrified all these stacks of money surrounding me would go unspent. [Sarcasm mode off]
This is all production and higher end pro-sumer level gear. Don't think we'll see any of this filter down to "normal" affordable consumer price points for at lest another 5 to 10 years.

[Extrems]

Sorry, but that's a regular LED edge-lit VA LCD with a Quantum Dot Enhancement Film.

[Ikaruga11]

Sorry, but that's a regular LED edge-lit VA LCD with a Quantum Dot Enhancement Film.

[nissling]

This is all production and higher end pro-sumer level gear.

No, not really. Samsung doesn't produce any professional equipment like Sony, JVC, Panasonic, Dolby etc. They're all for consumer products and have always tried to start niches that just sound high-tech on paper but in reality are nothing but fads. Only reason they're calling it QLED is to make consumers confused and sell more units.

[Blair]

This is all production and higher end pro-sumer level gear.

No, not really. Samsung doesn't produce any professional equipment like Sony, JVC, Panasonic, Dolby etc. They're all for consumer products and have always tried to start niches that just sound high-tech on paper but in reality are nothing but fads. Only reason they're calling it QLED is to make consumers confused and sell more units.

From what I've read Quantum dot displays could approach or even surpass the quality of OLED displays. But that might just be marketing and hyperbole.

Also, That 8k dell monitor doesn't seem like normal consumer level gear to me.

[Xyga]

Yeah apparently they've only improved their previous years quantum dot sets, added significantly more powerful backlighting matrixes and a fancier name as close as possible to OLED to fool some customers. Interesting sets though, but basically still LED LCD which remain inferior to OLED whatever they try, I doubt any manufacturer will ever find a tech trick to bring LCDs to OLED levels of performance.

Samsung were teasing a real self-emitting tech alternative to OLED some time ago and it was called QLED right? but it's still not a thing in the real world, not even a prototype presented afaik.

Regarding 8K I don't see the use right now as even the most powerful rigs can only just do 4K at 60Hz anyway. Moar pixels without the juice and actual compatible signals means only moar upscaling and interpolation. Picture editing pros with money to spend might love it hough.

[FinalBaton]

Useability/appeal of 8k is really only dependant of one thing : the amount of source material that was shot/produced natively at that res.

As far as I know, there isn't much 8k films/TV series and games as of july 10th 2017...

Doubt there will be much two years from now too

My guess is that in 5 years there still won't be enough 8k material to make it worth buying an 8k set

[Thomago]

Yep, nothing special about that "QLED" TV.

[tjstogy]

The only reason 4k exists is so they have something to sell you in a couple of years (8k). It’s marketing folks.

Edit- my point is not that 4k is stupid. Instead my point is if they went straight to 8k (which they should’ve done) there would be no where else to go. Otherwise they’d never be able to charge premium prices for new tvs.

[ZellSF]

Regarding 8K I don't see the use right now as even the most powerful rigs can only just do 4K at 60Hz anyway. Moar pixels without the juice and actual compatible signals means only moar upscaling and interpolation.

This is a PC monitor. Higher resolution here means better upscaling and better interpolation. PC GPUs don't screw up scaling like TVs do (well Intel and Nvidia ones don't at least).

Plus considering where we are you have to consider old games too. Can my PC do 8K playing Doom 2016? Probably not. Can my PC do 8K playing Doom 3? Of course. With 2D games 8K also allows for more integer scaling or CRT filtering options if that's your sort of thing. Emulators also obviously benefit a lot from this.

This isn't a gaming monitor anyway, 60hz only means no PC gamer should even consider it and no HDMI inputs means it's useless for console gamers. But a PC gamer, especially one playing retro games, a 8K monitor seems like a clearly better choice than a 4K one to me.

The only reason 4k exists is so they have something to sell you in a couple of years (8k). It’s marketing folks.

Uh, 4K also exists because it's higher image quality than lower resolutions.

[FinalBaton]

Uh, 4K also exists because it's higher image quality than lower resolutions.

we're entering the "law of diminishing returns" zone with 8k, though

i don't expect 8k TVs's upscaling of 1080p and below to be stellar
but as you said, the combo of monitor+ PC handle this better as of now. But should we really assume that an 8k rig will perfectly upscale 1080p? let's wait and see here

(I'll admit though : I'm not the target audience for an 8k monitor at the moment. I will buy a 4k tv soon but I am not longing for 8k.)

[RGBSource]

Yep, nothing special about that "QLED" TV.

The Dual Pixel Structure is somewhat special in improving viewing angle, but has undesirable artifacts - solid colored fields display a grainy/dithered pattern.

[Xyga]

@Zell; You know I'm not always 100% for the rush forward in resolution for upscaling and interpolation, not all applications benefit from it the same way regardless of advertised GPU and drivers performance.
I see no interest in playing old PC games if it means calling for more and more polishing from the GPU, old games often end up looking awkward/off when displayed on a much higher resolution no matter the quality of the scaling and interpolation, because the designers didn't create visuals for so much real estate to begin, that's the same issue as with consoles emulation where in reverse we ironically need more real estate to better simulate much lower resolutions (most smoothing options looking terrible and more terrible as resolution goes up)
For a few of the most advanced shaders/emulation the benefit will be there indeed, but with something as complex as Royale essentially, which is quite heavy and only seriously works fine outside of still scenes if the display has extremely good motion resolution with as instant a pixel response as possible, which isn't attainable with 4K yet (afaik not without still-problematic motion reduction techniques) and even less so with 8K.

In short of course 8K will be better for a lot of things in the future but I don't see much interest in the present besides candy for photo/graphics designers and alike.
Considering how slowly 4K's actual potential comes about and is still a hurdle for many sources to really shine I'm not in a hurry for 8K, actually I would be much more happy if they announced synced-to-any-source-artifacfree-lagless blur reduction coming to even FHD or WQHD.
Well that' my personal opinion of it, I prefer when things are improved with 'doing it right' in mind to begin, rather than the endless 'always forward with more resolution it will become better eventually' mindset which is too convenient for a relatively lazy industry that plays it much too safe.

[Lord of Pirates]

Regarding 8K I don't see the use right now as even the most powerful rigs can only just do 4K at 60Hz anyway. Moar pixels without the juice and actual compatible signals means only moar upscaling and interpolation.

This is a PC monitor. Higher resolution here means better upscaling and better interpolation. PC GPUs don't screw up scaling like TVs do (well Intel and Nvidia ones don't at least).

Plus considering where we are you have to consider old games too. Can my PC do 8K playing Doom 2016? Probably not. Can my PC do 8K playing Doom 3? Of course. With 2D games 8K also allows for more integer scaling or CRT filtering options if that's your sort of thing. Emulators also obviously benefit a lot from this.

This isn't a gaming monitor anyway, 60hz only means no PC gamer should even consider it and no HDMI inputs means it's useless for console gamers. But a PC gamer, especially one playing retro games, a 8K monitor seems like a clearly better choice than a 4K one to me.

The only reason 4k exists is so they have something to sell you in a couple of years (8k). It’s marketing folks.

Uh, 4K also exists because it's higher image quality than lower resolutions.

Exactly, resolution bumps are always good. I wouldn't jump on them the second they're out because of the bold.


On the topic of OLED being outdated: I am beginning to wonder if it's going to move into the much larger lower end of the consumer market. Has there been a single OLED TV or monitor available for $1,000 or less?

At Xyga: I disagree on games looking off. Low resolution textures look alright enough with filtering (preferably AF) and the less aliasing on 3D the better. There might be some instances of lower resolution tricks being taken advantage of but I don't think it happened in general with PC games due to the arbitrary resolution support (or at least having to support several). The bigger issue is lack of support for stuff like 8-bit palettized textures and fog tables on newer cards.

Agreed on general lack of improvements in panel quality.

[FinalBaton]

Considering how slowly 4K's actual potential comes about and is still a hurdle for many sources to really shine I'm not in a hurry for 8K

exactly how I see this myself

[ZellSF]

PC games were often made with arbitrary resolution support as mentioned, but even if you wanted to run a PC game at say, 800x600 then 8K would would have the same advantages for playing it that emulating games does: more integer scaling factors, better CRT shaders or better interpolation.

More resolution = more potential to make games look the way you want them to look (or they way you think they were designed to look).

old games often end up looking awkward/off when displayed on a much higher resolution no matter the quality of the scaling and interpolation

What if you're using scaling that accurately reproduced a CRT?

Old games would still look bad on LCDs because "resolution magic" and good on CRTs because "crt magic" despite the higher resolution and the physical attributes of the CRT and LCD both create the same image?

Yes that might not necessarily be entirely possible now, but 8K is a step closer to it.

@Zell; You know I'm not always 100% for the rush forward in resolution for upscaling and interpolation, not all applications benefit from it the same way regardless of advertised GPU and drivers performance

They do not advertise anything of the sort. Intel and Nvidia appear to be scaling with bilinear interpolation, AMD with bicubic (I think) interpolation. You can for most games use third party tools to force integer scaling and/or CRT shaders if that's your thing.

Those scaling algorithms both from what I've seen are better the more scaling room you give them. I'm telling you what's possible and true from experience, not from PR speak from GPU manufacturers (I hate both of them, if you're wondering).

The bigger issue is lack of support for stuff like 8-bit palettized textures and fog tables on newer cards.

That's... not an issue? Pretty sure dgVoodoo2 acts as a compatibility layer for practically all games that use those features.

If you're playing old PC games on a new computer and haven't heard about dgVoodoo2 then you really should look into it, besides being a great compatibility tool it allows you to force higher rendering resolutions on games that don't natively support them or even games that do support them but you want to detach UI size from 3D rendering resolution.

[Lord of Pirates]

That's... not an issue? Pretty sure dgVoodoo2 acts as a compatibility layer for practically all games that use those features.

If you're playing old PC games on a new computer and haven't heard about dgVoodoo2 then you really should look into it, besides being a great compatibility tool it allows you to force higher rendering resolutions on games that don't natively support them or even games that do support them but you want to detach UI size from 3D rendering resolution.

I hadn't, thanks for mentioning it.

Poking around the Vogons thread I see it's not without issues (what is ?).