TV versus Computer

One of the things I wanted to check out this weekend is how movies look on my new computer. It has a 27" Retina 5K display, with a resolution of 5120 x 2880 pixels (for 14,745,600 total pixels). This is compared to my Samsung 55" ultra-HD 4K TV which is 3840 x 2160 pixels (8,294,400 total). The computer should, in theory, be 56% sharper than the TV, n'est ce pas?

The external CD/DVD drive ("SuperDrive") for my computer doesn't do Blu-ray though.

Best I can do is compare some ultra-HD regular DVDs, like "The Alps from Above." Verdict?

Surprisingly, the TV appears to be about twice as sharp as the computer.

Why is that? Refresh rate? Interlacing? I'm not sure.

Movies look good on the computer -- real good in fact -- but it's no match for the beast upstairs. It has some kind of upconverting built-in so even old black & white movies from the '40s appear to be hi-def.

I don't get it. What is an "ultra-HD regular DVD"? A regular DVD player only produces 480P pictures. How could it play a 4K video stream?

It's not a 4k stream. But the movie was shot in some kind of ultra-HD (the cover actually says, "The Cineflex camera, developed by the U.S. Secret Services [sic], brings razor sharp aerial close-ups and breathtaking panoramic images to life") and then down-converted to 720x480. For some reason, it looks as sharp as any of the Blu-rays (1920x1080) I have. Source material apparently makes a huge difference.

I looked around to see how the upscaling is done on the Apple. No one had a definitive answer (that is, nothing from Apple), but a couple of people said that the Apple DVD player doesn't do upscaling. I believe that, as the upscaling is a difficult process, and computer DVD drives are typically that: just drives, without the capabilities of dedicated DVD players.

So probably what you are seeing is essentially a zoomed version of the original 720x480 image. That would explain why it doesn't look as good as the television picture. Your BluRay player and your television are both capable of upscaling from the source to the display's native resolution. A/B testing will show you which device does a better job of upscaling. Imagine plugging a high-quality BluRay player into that super-resolution monitor. Wow!

Tried playing some Netflix 4k content.

Looks good, still nowhere near as sharp as the TV. Huh.

I read an article that says that computer's default resolution setting is 2560x1440. Did you try changing to the max resolution for the 4K programming?

No. Is it really? I'll have to look into that.

One drawback is that all the images on your display will become one-quarter size. Talk about small type!