New Apple M1 Chips + 4K collection

I'd agree. Just in general terms higher resolution looks better. I can't even watch SD broadcasts on my TV now as SD just looks so bad to what I have become accustomed to after several years of HD and now UHD. Even on my iPad the difference between a low res download and high res download is obvious and on a large TV it is going to just slap users in the face!

That's my post above - for some strange reason it has logged it as another iD.

It will be interesting to see how much additional money people are willing to pay for 4K.  At some point, it will probably become standard and people will not expect to pay anything more, but that is probably a ways down the road.  I have a 50" 4K monitor in the bike room.  I have compared the same rides in HD and UHD.  While there is a noticeable improvement, I would not call it major.  It is not anywhere near as much improvement as going from SD to HD, probably because most SD has a lot more compression as well as lower resolution.

But unless you have a large screen (about 45" or above), I don't think the benefits of 4K will be very noticeable.

Mike we have had this discussion before a few times think ;-).  This is not about you, if your happy with the HD then your opinion does not really matter because 4K is for the customers that do care about the quality of what they will be looking at for hours on end. The type of customer that has purchased a UHD TV or owns a retina display Mac for the display. The customers with good eyesight, the customers that want to see the world not via a cheap plastic action cam but a full sized cinema camera with a glass Zeiss lens on the front... Tacx was last reviewed by Ray Maker & was completely slated because of what it has done to the films which should be an experience to really look forward to. I don't know how they can do it, because the temptation to be cheap with the bitrate is so massive for any Manager up there, but just wish there was at least an option for high quality regardless of the cost...Just so we can own this end of the market.. Nobody can then creep in & take it because nobody has a Bertha yet, or at least over 200 films recorded in 4 to 6K cinema log prores. The HD your looking at is not even 720p quality, the 720p is SD 90s Webcam quality. that's just the low bitrate which = much higher compression. 

Be nice if you would actually read what I said more carefully.  Not sure what the "good eyesight" remark is supposed to mean, other than start an argument.  You actually have no idea what cycling videos I have compared in both 4K and HD.  And I stand by my comment that anyone running TDA on a laptop sized screen would never see the difference.

Mike the eyesight was not a dig at you, but actually, a valid point based on myself, Im 50 & need glasses if the screen is at a certain distance...If on the trainer inside it's tough to use glasses. Your right that a laptop display would make it tough to see the difference, but at 'a certain distance'. Everyone that owns a recent Mac with a retina display will also know that 4K looks (or can look depending on bitrate & source) massively more true to life than HD also depending on the bitrate & source. Again this is eyesight dependant also.  

I'm not arguing that HD or even the SD is perfectly fine for many customers, for many just riding a GPS map also works, as does looking at blocks in a trainerroad workout in the mistaken belief they will deliver something that terrain can not. The competition has better apps, that are much more social & true to life than Tacx who now seem to have completely abandoned the fight to be relevant. I still can not do a simple group ride or even see a list of the best times on the hill or mountain I've just done...not even the basics, so if all we have now is access to a higher quality video product..why is that product hidden?  What do you do right now if you have a large display? You are forced to look at garbage simply due to the fact that someone else can't afford to pay a higher subscription?  There are customers with 4K Beamers & huge UHD TVs, they have the budget to pay any subscription that's asked if the cost of doubling the bandwidth is the issue. If nothing else for the Gyms that use the product & the shops/expos that advertise the product...they should be displaying something that near every customer would stop & look at....not a screen of artifacts.

Again...there is a market out there for high quality, that Garmin/Tacx could completely own if it wanted to...for peanuts also as it already has access to the footage.

I actually agree with pretty much everything you say.  I was mostly asking if there are enough customers willing to pay more.  Ironically, I hear customers who pay hundreds of dollars for jerseys and thousands for carbon fiber complain about paying $5 more a month for a subscription.  As you know, i am a big fan of your work.  I've looked at and tried a number of the main TDA competitors and there really is no comparison in my judgment.  As I have said, producing quality videos is a lot more than video resolution.

Really to me it does not matter if its 5 extra customers or 500 or 5,000 it would be a segment of a market that we/Tacx/Garmin can point a finger at & say "you maybe better then us in all other aspects BUT we own this". Just for simple pride Mike, if its just a scattering of millionaires that can only afford €19/month or some gold card yearly subscription for doubling the bitrate (doubling the costs) I would have a developer busy with the Apple 'VideoToolbox' to access the new video features for smoothing running H265 of the M1 chips from Apple. Im sure it would play really high bitrate 4K smooth. I read that the ancient player they use inside the mobile apps is being made right now to link to the new apple chipset, so its possible that soon the mobile apps would just become capable without much extra effort, if hardware limitations is the reason 4K was pulled from Beta.

Nobody gets to see the footage how I see it here in 6K on a 5K retina display, its much closer to the type of special content you see playing inside shops that sell TVs 

Well I think it matters to Garmin and anyone running a business for profit if it is 5 or 5,000 extra customers.  Still got to pay the rent.  (At least, Garmin will see it that way.)

After today's ride, I went into my Veloreality videos of some fairly spectacular desert areas around Utah.  I played both HD and UHD versions of the same ride on a couple of them.  Certainly with UHD, you see all the grains of sand, etc. more clearly, but overall, while the effect is nicer, it is not spectacularly so.  The HD file is about 5 GB and the UHD file is about 25 GB for the same ride.  I did not notice an compression or other artifacts, so I think this has been pretty well done in UHD.

Now, if I had a $20K UHD projector on a 100" screen instead of my 50" 4K monitor, no doubt it would have looked better.  But, of course, the HD version would also have looked a lot better with the high end projector as well.

You are right about the special content that retailers display in show rooms.  It is unbelievably enhanced, shot with the highest resolution camera, and processed using the highest possible bitrate.  But when people get their new display home, they are often disappointed to find there is very little content available of a similar nature.