I laugh at people buying 4K TVs… your eyes are almost certainly not good enough to tell the difference in the vast majority of viewing scenarios. Total waste of money
If we were just talking about the absolute resolution, you are right. At my normal viewing distance I can’t tell the difference between 720 and 1080. I’m certainly not going to see much improvement from a 4k screen. But it isn’t just the resolution. The more pixels you have to display the image data, the better the image looks. The pixels start to disappear and be truly invisible. I’ve known this about printing for years, but when you apply it to video, it really helps the realism of the image, even if you are watching a 480 DVD. With the proper hardware, everything will look better on a 4k screen, even if you never get a UHD player or media.
My dad has a 43 inch 4K TV and DVDs look horrendous.
Often, if you turn off all that image enhacent crap, lower quality sources like dvd actually look better. I have a 51" 1080p plasma tv, and i think DVD’s look pretty damn good if they were authored at high bitrate. a bit soft, but good.
I have a 40 inch 1080p and DVDs look great unless I’m directly comparing them to Blu Rays. I honestly believe that 4k as a resolution is simply too high for a TV.
4k content looks better on my 40" 4k tv than 1080p. But then again, DVD is obviously poorer-looking even when not comparing directly to a Blu-ray, so…
[shrug]
That’s why I think 1080p hits a sweet spot for TV resolutions. This is especially true if you watch older TV series (or really made before the mid 2000’s), which look bad already. I have not attempted to watch something like MASH or The Simpsons on a 4k TV, but I wouldn’t anticipate good results.I think we have a ways to go before upscaling technology is good enough to make these palatable on a 4k screen.