Why is 2160p video called 4K?
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4k is vanilla big screen 16:9 cinema aspect ratio. 4096×2160. While you can get true 4k TVs, they are super rare and most TVs use more common blue ray UHD standard in 16:10 with 3840×2160. It works better in most rooms and the small black bars on the top and bottom of the screen won’t bother anyone. Especially since we are used way bigger size cuts in okd 4:3 TVs. For old 4:3 TVs. When film studios began marketing the term 4k, home entertainment industry had to put it on their UHD devices too so people understand quality will be the same, just in a slighty different ratio. (with a few pixel black bars)
Many people get this wrong when buying a TV and think bigger is better. But truth is that the viewing distance to size ratio is the most important thing after deciding to go for UHD.
A 65″ UHD TV will look worse than a 43″ UHD when sitting to close to the TV. However sitting to far from a 43″ TV will make it hard to spot details you’d be seeing with a bigger 65″.
Others have explained part of this, but part of it has to do with context and history.
1280x720p is the original “HD” resolution, while 1920x1080p is “full HD”. 1080p ended up becoming very popular in television, while other resolutions faded.
Because of how scaling works, it is best to quadruple resolution rather than increase it in smaller increments – it means that older content will look normal on a higher resolution screen.
So the next step up was 3840×2160 (4k) which is exactly 4x the resolution of 1080p.
So the reason that “4K” has less than 4,000 horizontal pixels (3840×2160) is because it was quadruple that of the previous popular TV resolution – 1920×1080.
Computer monitors had a similar change, where 720 was popular, and then 2560×1440 became popular.
The real answer is because 4K sounds better than 2160p.
HD tv and video was out and 1080 was pretty much in the vernacular. Now they had this better HD picture but how do you market that? Call it something flashy that can stick. 4k sticks. It also happens to be about 4x more pixels than the other HD format that was out.
Nobody would have bought the new tv’s if they just said 2160 on them or HD+, so they had to come out with a better way to sell and get mass adoption.
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