This illustrates the point of dimishing returns with regards to ever higher amount of total pixels on a screen.

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.

> Thus - at the same bitrate - higher resolution images might look worse than lower resolution ones.

But the 4K stream is HEVC (H.265) vs H.264 for the other HD streams, so it may not be that simple.

Well, HEVC compresses the same quality to about half the size of H.264, so since 4K is about 4x 1080p and the bitrate is a little over 2x their 1080p Super HD streams I'd expect the quality to be a little better.

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.

> HEVC compresses the same quality to about half the size of H.264

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

Am I the only one who watches stuff on his computer, and sits about 2-3 feet from it?

I watch most things on my 13" mbp w/retina. and my eyes are typically 1-2 feet away from the screen. Very immersive experience IMHO.

What screen size are you on? 27 inches? Can you make out individual pixels with film material (which usually has no sharp edges in it)?

Not arguing against what you are saying, but there's a significant difference between "making out individual pixels" and "noticing a difference".

That's true.

That's total BS, you can notice alising patterns easily at much higher resolutions than your suggesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing

PS: I noticed issues standing ~10 feet from a 50' 4k screen.

Alternatively, http://isthisretina.com offers a simple way to input whatever value you need. Not that the computation is complex, but it's quite handy.

That imperial system.