[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by soresu

Ah sorry, I didn't mean using HDR or Rec 2100 for 8 bit.

When I wrote ">10 bpc" I only meant above 10 bpc, not 10 bpc and above.

Gotcha. And yes, I've not seen many cases where >10-bit is needed for final consumer delivery presuming that good dithering was done. Things are simpler with more precision, because various dithering stages can be skipped (dithering-on-encoding is just one; the playback device can often have at least 2 rounds of dithering post-decode). In content creation, at least 2 bits more than deliver should be used so that dithering isn't required in all the intermediate steps.

As to the difference between 2K and 4K being visible without HDR, I would say that depends upon display size and the viewing distance.

Those can also be limiting factors. But the fundamental limitation is the human visual system and the content. For >2K to look better, you'll need content with frequencies greater than Nyquist to have material that can use more pixels. Lots of sources won't really have that, and a lot more sources will only have that in grain (source or synthetic). Most 4K studio content we see has lots of 2K + grain shots.

IMHO many people get screens too small to even appreciate the resolution uptick from SD to 1080p, and often sit too far away from the screen which only makes the issue worse.

Very true. For years I've been telling people that often the best upgrade to their TV experience would be pushing their couch forward.

I have a 40 inch 1080p TV which I use as a PC monitor (50 cm away at most), and I can just about see the screen door effect of the pixel separation.

Yeah, that's WAY too close! If you're looking at the center of the screen, the viewing angle to the edges of the screen are going to be terrible. You actually need to move your head around to see different parts, and push your chair back to see the whole image at once.

Obviously this gets much worse for a 4K screen, and 8K is never going to be anything but a placebo to the consumer, unless viewing through VR with insane pixel res per eye and the right optics to capitalise on it.

And with VR, only because the optics reduce the actual worse case detail delivered. Its really more about the fundamental limits of how small an arc we can resolve visually.