Re: " were perfectly comfortable with the televisions they currently use"
The thing with any supposed improvement in TVs is that you rarely see it demoed in the place you'd actually be likely to use it, i.e. your front room, making any improvments are very difficult to gauge as you are so familiar with your current systen in this particular context, viewing distance etc, and the mind tends to edit out inadequacies over time; it looks 'good enough'.
My TV until 3 years ago was a 50 quid Argos 14in CRT job that must have been pretty much the last model sold in the UK that had CRT. The tube was actually slightly squint, but after a couple of years the mind had edited this out and probably done a bit of image enhancement to boot, so the whole thing seemed quite acceptable. I eventually persuaded my girlfriend a new 32 inch LED was a good idea by the simple ruse of buying one, begging for forbearance and insisting she wait a week before decapitating me for the loss of what at first appeared to be half the living room space. By the end of the week, the new TV had shrunk to normal proportions and she admitted - as I was - to being rather ashamed we'd put up with the other for so long.
So anything higher resolution is unlikely to get much of a shout until the current set packs up or the price has dropped to the point that replacing it is a virtual no brainer. and even then it won't be of the kind of size touted in the article, because we really have reached the physical limit of what the room will take, and the smaller models will make the proper viewing distance to get the benefit too close to be comfortable.
Additionally, as someone points out further up the page, the amount on compression for most UK broadcast TV takes a lot of the shine off the quality in any case. Anything not on one of the main channels tends to have the look of a bad webpage JPG circa 2001, with sound to match.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
