SD channels looking pants on a 4k/full UHD TV-can resolution be altered to 1080p?

DEBTMONKEY1A

:beer:

Hi guys/gals-soz-you're probably sick of me by now but the Samsung Series 6 UEJU6000 is looking to be a purchase shortly (see my other thread(s) ).

Question.....seen various posts saying SD channels on say SKY look cr*p on UHD/4K & better on a native 1080p Full HD tv (which I have at the moment -sd a good picture) as in laymans terms it does not have as many pixels to upscale?

Thick question....is there a resolution setting on most UHD/4K tv's (& obviously in particular model mentioned above!) to quickly press to change screen resolution back down to 1080p for SD broadcasts-or am I missing the point/barking up the wrong tree?

Anyone got a link for the manual for the above model? Tried the Samsung website & google-no joy.

Thanks!

neilmcl

It doesn't matter what you input into the TV it will output everything in it's native resolution, that's just how flat panel TV technology works. Obviously the higher resolution you can feed it the better so SD content will be passable at best. Having said that even the HD output from Sky can be less than desired sometimes given the low bitrate they often broadcast at.

JJ_Egan

(Is there a resolution setting on most UHD/4K tv's (& obviously in particular model mentioned above!) to quickly press to change screen resolution back down to 1080p)

Not seen one .
But SD is very variable on my Panasonic UHD it depends upon the source .Varies between excellent and ok .

SouthUKMan

All LCD panels - whether they're LED / SD / HD / UHDTV, etc - have what's called a native resolution. This is the fixed number of pixels that make up the image you seen on screen. You can not change this. In my opinion, standard definition can look 'ok' on most 4K TVs HOWEVER I have also seen some SD sources that look awful - particularly if your source is one of the lower quality Sky channels for example.

Quite simply 4K TVs are designed for 4K sources - you can't expect SD to look 'stunning' on them. Technology has moved on from the old standard resolution of 576 vertical lines through 720, through 1080, to where we are now at 2160 - in otherwords, four times the amount of vertical detail.

stator

No, most TVs won't have an option to change the resolution.

Whether an upscaled picture looks good will depend on the quality of the hardware/software doing the upscaling. You may find that the TV is good at upscaling but the SKY box isn't, or visa-versa. So switching the source from Sky to Freeview (build in) or Freeview external may increase/decrease the picture quality because a different piece of hardware will be doing the upscaling.
If you change your sky/freeview box's settings to be non-HD then you will see how good your TV is at upscaling vs the sky/freeview box etc.

King_Nothing

Looked crap when I got mine at the start of the year, I've kind of got used to it now though, so it doesn't bother me as much as it first did.

aliEnRIK

Its all to do with upscaling. Personally im not looking into 4K at all yet due to the fact I still watch a lot of SD content. Most HD content is 1080P anyway so theres a fair chance even that wont look as good on a 4K tv as opposed to a true 'pixel to pixel' 1080P tv due to the conversion process.
I have no idea if the tv you posted as a decent scaler on it, but virtually all tv scalers are rubbish these days so I would guess it hasn't.

emptybox

A 4K set has exactly 4 times the number of pixels as a 1080 set, so upscaling SD to 4K should not be any more complicated than upscaling it to 1080; i.e each pixel on a 1080 screen is represented by 4 pixels on a 4K screen.
You just need to send the same info to all 4 pixels that you would send to the one pixel on a 1080 screen, to keep the quality the same.
So in theory SD shouldn't look any worse on a 4K set than on a 1080 set of the same size and quality.

In the real world however there might be other factors involved, which might affect picture quality.
And as others have said, the quality of upscaling varies a lot between different sets and set top boxes.
But it's really the size of the screen that's likely to determine whether SD looks good or not, rather than whether the set is 1080 or 4K.

DoaM

aliEnRIK wrote: »

I have no idea if the tv you posted as a decent scaler on it, but virtually all tv scalers are rubbish these days so I would guess it hasn't.

"These days" might be the kicker ... I've had a 32" Toshiba REGZA (1080p) TV for many years now. Their upscaling is called Resolution+ and I find that it works really well ... even fairly low quality streams from an Android box look much better on the 32" TV than on a 24" monitor or 15.6" laptop screen (both also 1080p).

almillar

Question.....seen various posts saying SD channels on say SKY look cr*p on UHD/4K & better on a native 1080p Full HD tv (which I have at the moment -sd a good picture) as in laymans terms it does not have as many pixels to upscale?

No - what size is that 1080 screen, and what about the 4K one. Usually people have just upgraded to a bigger TV when they make these comments. As I said in another post, there's only 500 odd lines of information. That get expanded to 1080 on a full HD screen, and 2000 odd on a 4K screen. At the same viewing distance, that SD picture might look fine on a 32 inch screen, worse on a 42 inch 1080p, and terrible on a 60 inch UHD screen. It has FAR MORE to do with the size of the screen than the type of screen.

to change screen resolution back down to 1080p for SD broadcasts-or am I missing the point/barking up the wrong tree?

Absolutely barking up the wrong tree. If you turn it down to 1080, you'll have a small picture in the middle of the screen. Even smaller if you could turn it off completely.
Your compressed Freeview SD signal will look rubbish because it is squished so much. Again, I said in the other thread, DVDs (SD) can still look great on big/FHD/UHD screens because there's not as much compression.

This looks like your TV and manual:
http://www.samsung.com/uk/tvs/uhd-ju6000/UE65JU6000KXXU/

Carrot007

You've also got to note that it also depends on which "SD" channel you are watching.

In these days of digital "SD" only refers to resolution. The channel's have many different bitrates and that effects quality a lot. Also some channels on sky broadcast on a Sub-"SD" resolution and are upscaled anyway. If you doubt this. Connect via scart and see the difference in a "SD" channel compared to it's "HD" (same reason for "") couterpart. The "HD" version looks much better.

In my view no digital "SD" channel gives anywhere near the quality analogue SD did.