Eli5: Is there a level of tv/monitor resolution beyond which the human eye cannot detect further improvement?
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There’s a point at which our eyes cant really tell the differnece between different levels of resoluion on a TV or monitor. This is because our eyes have a certain amount of detail that they can see, and once the resolution is high enough we can’t really see any more detail.
It’s like when you look at something really close up. If you get too close you can’t really see any more detail, even if there’s more there. It’s the same with TV and monitor resolution. If the picture is really high resolution our eyes can’t really pick up on any more detail.
That doesn’t mean that higher resoluion isn’t important. Even if our eyes can’t tell the difference higher resolution can still make the picture look smoother and more realistic. It also makes the picture look better when it’s really big like on a big TV or movie screen.
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Yes, but distance to TV matters. When buying a new TV, measure the distance from the TV to where you sit. Depending on the distance, there may be no discernable difference between one resolution and a higher one. There are diagrams on Google.
Key here is diminishing returns. Every time you double the pixels, the image quality improves. At low resolutions this improvement is very significant, but at some point the improvements get smaller and smaller with every doubling, until it’s not worth it anymore.
Can you spot the difference between 4K and 8K? Maybe, if you’re looking for it and you’re close to the screen. But it’s no longer worth adding thousands of dollars for tiny improvements. There’s a bit of an optimum at 4K 60 fps over 1080p 30fps, but after that it becomes very niche for gamers and home theater fans.
No. While it is possible to improve the dots (resolution and pixels-per-inch) to make them smaller, to a point where they are so small that we can no longer see them, there is always something that can be improved.
At the moment improving maximum brightness (nits) and color (definition and accuracy) is the current trend. In the future, improvements will likely focus on making the brightness of each individual dot more accurate (instead of using brightness zones), making the action smoother (by getting fps closer to what our eyes see), and creating new ways of showing depth so that objects on screen better show the distances away from the camera.
TL;DR: No, eventually the dots will be too good for us to notice the difference, but there will always be something that can be improved.
Somebody never watched Steve Jobs talk about the Retina display:
How much screen resolution you can see depends on the screen size and the viewing distance.
So yes, one can easily make a screen that exceeds the human vision, if you can force the viewer to be a certain distance away, and they don’t have better than standard vision.
It depends what distance you are from the screen and on how good your eyes are.
Put your face right up against your tv or monitor. You should be able to see individual pixels.
Now move back. At some point you won’t be able to see individual pixels any more. At this point a higher resolution telly is of no use to you.
** It’s not quite so simple as higher resolution can be used to make sharper edges that you will notice, even past the point of no longer being able to see the individual dots, but the same idea still applies – back off until you can no longer tell the difference.
Yes, and…ceteris parebus, we’re already there with 1080p, at least with most people,if you’re talking about resolution wua resolution.
Could such a monitor be constructed or exist? Yes. The retina display was supposedly that, but it wasn’t. There are however definitely frame rates, resolutions and colors (which correspond to sounds when you crank up their frequency) which the human body most certainly would not be able to discern. Our hardware is limited, and that’s alright. I doubt we will make colors on purpose we can’t see, cause we can’t see them, but frames per second for example I think will be a spec sheet selling point long after it is pointless to increase.
I’ve got a practical example from the other day.
Me and my wife were walking around best buy and walked past the TVs and I decided to see at which distances could I see pixels and stuff on their smaller TVs (think like a bit bigger than your average computer monitor).
720p I noticed from 3-4 feet away
1080p I had to be a lot closer
However once I backed off to a reasonable viewing distance for their sizes, there wasn’t super obvious differences in picture quality (besides color and stuff because two different TVs). Edges seemed a ‘little’ fuzzy on the 720p at times, but someone who wasn’t looking for differences probably wouldn’t have noticed
Realistically it is 4k / 6k because of the size of the display.
Resolution isn’t as important than PPI or pixels per inch, or the density of that resolution.
And your eyes can only focus on such a wide angle of vision, meaning the size of the display can only get so big before it’s too big.
At 4k / 6k your eyes are kind of maxed out on how they can resolve the display based on its size.
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