I am still baffled by this 4K technology. I understand the math fairly well: 1080p is basically “2K” or 2048 pixels wide, 4K is 4096 pixels wide. UHD is roughly 4K, but actually slightly less that 4K if you want to get technical. What it all comes down to is “more pixels = higher resolution = better picture. Right? Now that I have a 4K “Smart TV” I’ve been running some practical tests. Here’s what doesn’t make sense to me. I can play a specific movie on my X-Box that is 4K with HDR, and it looks great. The blackest blacks, everything just “pops” and it’s very nice. Then I take the exact same movie in 1080p digital format and play it through the Plex app on my Smart TV and I swear it actually looks BETTER in 1080p! It seems sharper and things “pop” even more. I have checked the X-Box and it’s definitely in 4K, and the Smart TV is also in 4K, so it has to upscale the 1080p image to 4K. But how can a 1080p movie possibly look better than a 4K HDR movie–Especially if it’s the exact same movie? I’ve done this several times and it completely baffles me. They are both beautiful images, and I’m happy to watch either one, but it just doesn’t make sense.

Because of the high price of 4K UHD Blu-Ray discs–and the fact that they’re physical objects, so they require extra effort to actually use–I haven’t purchased any of them since getting a 4K TV until now. I’ve been trying to go all-digital these days so I don’t have to go through the “trouble” of inserting a DVD each time I want to watch a movie (first-world problem, I know). I’ve even converted all of our Blu-Ray movies to digital files for this same reason, fed them to Plex, and it has worked out great so far. 4K movies in digital format, on the other hand, are ridiculously huge, so I’ve stuck to 1080p for digital movies. And based on my test results above, I’m still very happy with upscaled 1080p at the moment. If anyone can shed some light on what’s going on here though, I’d really appreciate it.