Debate: Should you buy a 4K TV this year, or not?

Seamus Bellamy : Right now, 4K television sets which are also known as UHD TVs, are the pinnacle of home theatre display technology. The movie, sports or television aficionados in your life likely want one because of the ludicrously high resolution images that they can produce. The crisp, astonishingly detailed video and photos that can be shown on 4K/UHD hardware are made better still by the fact that the high pixel density of the displays make it possible to within a few feet of a big screen 4K television without being able to notice the the pixels or gridded structure of the pixels as they flash and change while watching a movie or playing a video game. So with 4K technology, using a giant television as the centre of your home entertainment setup in a tiny bachelor’s suite is a viable option.

That said, you should hold off on buying one, if you can, for as long as possible, for a few reasons.

First, and most importantly, 4K is by no means a guaranteed standard of what is soon to come. Remember the HD DVD/Blu-Ray war of a few years ago? See anyone making HD DVD players these days? Yeah, me either. With ultra-high definition television still very much in its infancy, it could very well come to pass that 4K resolution hardware won’t become the de facto standard. The schism’s already there: A lot of movies being released digitally to theatres are offered in 4096 x 2160 resolution. But many UHD televisions come packing a lower 3840 x 2160 resolution. What’s more, Apple unveiled their new 27” iMac with Retina Display, which is capable of presenting a 5k image packed full of 5120 x 2880 pixels! I dare you to look me in the eye and tell me that the 4K standard won’t be challenged in the coming months.

Second, there’s precious little to watch. While Netflix is ramping up a number of their most popular programs, like Breaking Bad, to 4K resolutions, it’s hard to justify the lofty purchase price of a Ultra High Definition television set or 4K display. In fact, there’s so little content out there that a fancy ultra high-definition TV can show off its crazy pixel density with that Samsung is currently selling a hard drive pre-loaded with 30 documentaries presented in UHD resolution and nine ‘Hollywood movies in near-UHD quality.’ It’ll set you back about $400. Such a deal. But then, if you’ve got between $1600 and $4600 to spend on a television set, I guess that’s a drop in the bucket.

With such a small amount of ultra high definition content to watch and no set standard for the next generation television hardware, you’d be nuts to invest in a 4K/HD TV right now.

Peter Nowak : I recently spent some time in my basement surrounded by 4K televisions. I was testing out some of the big-name brands – Sony, Samsung, LG and Panasonic – for a round-up review I was working on, so I watched a whole lot of ultra-HD Breaking Bad on Netflix.

I’ve since returned all those TVs and have gone back to my regular high-definition set, and I’m left with one realization: once you go 4K, there really isn’t any going back.

There have been plenty of articles on how 4K TV is an unnecessary technology and how it’s just another attempt by television makers, saddled with declining profits on regular HD TVs, to boost sales.

A lot of that is probably true, especially the part about how you probably won’t notice a huge improvement when you first upgrade to a 4K TV.

But I haven’t seen any articles about what happens when you downgrade – and therein lies the difference.

My wife and I noticed it immediately when we shifted back to regular HD. For those of us who wear glasses, it was like moving back to an older, fuzzier prescription. For people without corrective lenses, it was like putting on a set of blurry goggles. That’s perhaps an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

This is because 4K TVs do a couple of handy things besides cram more pixels on screen. They also up-convert existing pictures to a higher resolution, and the images look considerably better close-up. You can sit right in front of the TV – not that you’d want to – and get a much clearer, less-pixelated picture than on a regular HD TV.

The result is that regardless of what is being displayed, it looks better – and you get used to that.

4K TV makers still have several problems to overcome, the biggest of which is content because there just isn’t much of it. But, with disc players coming next year – I’m expecting to see several at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January – and online streaming services such as Netflix ramping up, it will come.

Price is another issue, with 4K TVs still coming at a premium. But prices are falling dramatically, to the point where they’ll probably be accessible by the mass market next year.

Ultimately, 4K isn’t just another gimmick – it’s a better picture through and through. Pretty soon, everybody’s next TV will be a 4K.

(Reprinted with permission from Peter's excellent blog Alphabeatic.)