Doesn't mentions compression artifacts, though. Thus - at the same bitrate - higher resolution images might look worse than lower resolution ones. Which is what I think the OP meant to highlight.
But the 4K stream is HEVC (H.265) vs H.264 for the other HD streams, so it may not be that simple.
What I'd really be interested to see is the House of Cards intro at this bitrate - the 1080p Super HD stream had a lot of really off-putting banding in the clouds.
Eh, it's supposed to, but it's not there yet. The best H.264 encoder (x264) is actually still more efficient than the best H.265 encoders (and MUCH faster).
Development of the H265 encoders is progressing fast though, x265 will likely surpass x264 within the year.
Here's some recent samples (12th June) that compares a very recent build of x265 with x264: http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1683608&postcount=907
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing
PS: I noticed issues standing ~10 feet from a 50' 4k screen.
http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/4k-resolution-201312153517.ht...
This is not a weird audiophile kind of thing, these are very noticeable differences.
All that said, I'm more excited about all of the other improvements coming to display technology these days: HDR, wide gamut, high/variable FPS, low persistence, etc.
Of course that doesn't mean Netflix can or will make use of any of them in their releases.
For a ~30 inch computer display at desktop viewing distance, the difference between 2560x1440 (which is larger than HD already!) and 4K is clear to see.
Strange how it's only TVs currently.
"“If we want the “perfect” Oculus Rift, with 180 degrees FOV and an APD of 45, we’ll need a screen with a resolution of 8000 x 4500″ This matches up very well with Luckey’s comment of 8K per eye. Using a PPI calculator, a 7″ screen with resolution of 8000 x 4500 would require 1311 PPI."
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/IvanBlaustein/20131029/203543...
When video is encoded with insufficient bandwidth, compression artifacts (e.g. macroblocking) are anything but subtle. These artifacts typically are not constrained to one or two pixels, but ramify to much larger portions of the image. Netflix has, by necessity, used insufficient bandwidth on practically their entire library. My money is on Netflix's over-compressed 4K being inferior in quality to Bluray 1080p for the vast majority of users.