4K is not actually 4K

Did that 4K is usually not actually 4K? Despite the fact that tons of electronics corporations advertise screens, gaming consoles, and streaming devices that support 4K resolution, there’s actually no real standard for what the heck “4K” actually means. It’s only a word, it was made up.

As you’ll be able to see, 4K is known as “4K” since it refers to a resolution of about 4000 pixels in diameter. Probably the most common resolution advertised as “4K” is 3,840 horizontal pixels and a couple of,160 vertical pixels, which is usually seen on TVs and computer monitors, often labeled Ultra HD or UHD.

So this resolution shouldn’t be about 4000 pixels, however the 4K utilized in film production, called DCI 4K, is 4096 x 2160. So the aspect ratio is about 1.9:1, which is a bit of larger than the standard 1.78:1 we’ve accustomed to televisions and a typical computer monitor. Chances are you’ll know this aspect ratio by one other name: 16 x 9.

But DCI 4K shouldn’t be the one 4K movie format, because it is principally used for film shooting. But before you get to the theater, you’ll likely watch the movie in CinemaScope 4K resolution.

This sounds awfully fancy, however the actual resolution is just 4096 x 1716. And while this provides a 2.39:1 aspect ratio that appears cinematic, a typical 4K display at home has over one million and a half more pixels. So do not be fooled into considering it is advisable to watch the newest blockbuster in stunning detail. Most frequently you only cut off the highest and bottom.

To further illustrate this point, some products lower the resolution even further to realize the cinematic look of a large screen. Sony’s Xperia line of phones is understood for this with its signature CinemaWide 4K displays, but CinemaWide is definitely a stripped-down version of garden-variety UHD with a 3,840 x 1,644 resolution, allowing for a more cinematic 21 x 9 aspect ratio much like many Ultrawide monitors.

In fact, we don’t need to say that these displays are bad, as there are still good-looking OLED screens with HDR support, just don’t expect more pixels than on a $300 TV.

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This illustrates why 2160p shouldn’t be a precise synonym for 4K, although many individuals would really like to call it that, since we frequently consult with HD by its 1080p vertical resolution.

We have already covered two resolutions advertised as 4K, with vertical resolutions being much smaller than 2160 pixels. On the opposite side of the coin, products like dash cams are advertised as 4K because they’ve a resolution of 2160p, but are lower than 3,000 pixels wide and produce a squarer image that won’t too near what we often consider as 4K.

So why will we even use incomplete terms like 2160p? So using terms like 1080p and 2160p to explain resolution actually goes back to the times of CRT displays. You already know, those big, heavy TVs and monitors that we used until the late 2000s and are still used today for some really cool Super Smash Bros. tournaments.

CRT televisions didn’t have pixels within the sense that we predict of them today. As a substitute, they generated horizontal lines containing analog data that modified as they moved across the screen. In other words, they’d vertical resolution but not horizontal resolution.

That is why, back when cathode ray tubes ruled the world, the industry used terms like 480i or 576i to explain TV signals. The letter “i” stands for interlace, which suggests that the CRT scans only half the lines of a frame at a time to save lots of bandwidth. Whereas the “p” in 1080p stands for progressive, which suggests the monitor scans all the frame without delay.

Despite the fact that modern LCD displays have specific horizontal and vertical resolutions, the practice of using a single three- or four-digit number to represent all the resolution has remained unchanged. But even when a product clearly specifies horizontal and vertical resolution, you really want each that information and the display size to find out how much detail it may convey, because 4K resolution doesn’t really mean much in the event you’re sitting two feet away from a 200-inch screen. That is why most 8K TVs in the marketplace are really big.

So is not there a greater way than 2160p to explain how much detail a display can show? Yes, it seems it actually exists. It is a specification called pixels per inch, or PPI, and it’s exactly what it feels like – the variety of pixels in a one-inch line. PPI combined with aspect ratio gives a very good idea of ​​what the actual viewing experience can be like. This method is utilized by none aside from Apple, which uses it as the premise for marketing its Retina displays.