4K, Refresh Rate and the Numbers That Sell TVs

The sticker on a new television carries more numbers than a school report card.

4K, hertz, contrast ratios with far too many zeros.

Only a couple of them change what you see from your sofa.

What does 4K actually mean?

A screen is made of tiny dots called pixels.

Resolution is simply how many dots the screen has.

A Full HD television has about two million.

A 4K television has roughly four times as many.

Smaller dots mean smoother edges and cleaner text.

That is the whole idea.

4K is not a different kind of picture, just a finer one.

Only if you sit close enough to separate those smaller dots.

A useful rule is to sit about one and a half times the screen width away.

In most Indian drawing rooms the sofa and the wall are already fixed.

So distance is not really your choice.

The real question is whether the screen is big enough for where you sit.

A bigger screen at the same distance shows off 4K far better.

And 4K only helps when the programme was made in 4K.

Old serials, news channels and much free content were not.

No television can invent detail that was never recorded.

Refresh rate is how many times a second the screen redraws the image.

It is measured in hertz.

A 60Hz screen redraws sixty times every second.

Doubling that mainly helps fast motion.

Think sport, action films and console games.

For news, serials and most films you will struggle to see any difference.

If nobody plays console games, this number should not decide your purchase.

Contrast figures written as huge ratios are marketing, not measurement.

No two brands count them the same way.

Ignore any refresh number described as effective or motion.

That one comes from processing, not from the panel.

Screen size in inches is measured corner to corner, diagonally.

So check the real width against your furniture.

Treat any number you cannot see with your own eyes as decoration.