Resolution reference inconsistency?

[Sniperfox47]

Recently I've noticed a bunch of cases where people refer to 1920x1080 as "1080p" right before or after referring to 3840x2160 as "4k" or "UHD", while referring to 2560x1440 as "1440p" in a similar context. Why isn't there a level of consistency in terms of monitor terminology, especially when you get to 3840x2160?

 

Like if we're using "1080p" and "1440p" in references shouldn't we refer to "4K" as "2160p"?

 

If we use "4k", shouldn't we also use "2k" and "2.5k"?

 

Or if we're going to use "UHD", why doesn't it get paired with "FHD" and "WQHD"?

 

Seems like terminology for monitor resolutions is more than a little jumbled up in the electronics community.

[TheComputerdude]

6 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Recently I've noticed a bunch of cases where people refer to 1920x1080 as "1080p" right before or after referring to 3840x2160 as "4k" or "UHD", while referring to 2560x1440 as "1440p" in a similar context. Why isn't there a level of consistency in terms of monitor terminology, especially when you get to 3840x2160?

 

Like if we're using "1080p" and "1440p" in references shouldn't we refer to "4K" as "2160p"?

 

If we use "4k", shouldn't we also use "2k" and "2.5k"?

 

Or if we're going to use "UHD", why doesn't it get paired with "FHD" and "WQHD"?

 

Seems like terminology for monitor resolutions is more than a little jumbled up in the electronics community.

yup that is a side effect of marketing. Companies put names on resolutions and then reviewers and others repeat it and it becomes a confusing jumble of names

[minibois]

This entire thread is a good read on this subject:

There is no real standard behind this all, just some terms that are used by either display creators or the general public. There is no set in stone term to use for whatever resolution, just some terms people use most often.

I personally always write out the entire resolution, unless talking about 720p, 1080p or 1440p, because I think those are just three terms everybody agrees on. But they are not perfect, because why can 1080p or 1440p not refer to 2560x1080 or 3440x1440 respectively? It's not like the 'p' stands for "hey, this is 16:9"! That is also a reason why I never say 2160p, because you have 3840x2160, but also 4096x2160 (which the general consensus is that those are UHD and 4K respectively).

 

But this is not even mentioning the 'letter terms' for many different types of resolution. UHD and FHD.. Okay those are okay.. But than you have a whole list of terms like "WQHD", "WXGA" and so much more..

 

TL;DR: there is no real standard, other than general consensus. This is why I generally write out the entire resolution, unless for the super obvious ones like 1080p.

[Princess Luna]

Just write down the actual number, it is so much easier, screw other nomenclatures, go for 1280x720p, 1366x768p 1920x1080p 2560x1080p 2560x1440p and so on.

[Sniperfox47]

4 minutes ago, Minibois said:

TL;DR: there is no real standard, other than general consensus. This is why I generally write out the entire resolution, unless for the super obvious ones like 1080p.

Aren't the acronyms (VGA, HD, FHD, QHD/WQHD, QFHD, etc.) standardized by VESA?

 

6 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Just write down the actual number, it is so much easier, screw other nomenclatures, go for 1280x720p, 1366x768p 1920x1080p 2560x1080p 2560x1440p and so on.

Why tack on the p at the end if your listing the full resolution? Every modern monitor is progressive scan so it's kind of obsolescent isn't it?

[Princess Luna]

3 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Why tack on the p at the end if your listing the full resolution? Every modern monitor is progressive scan so it's kind of obsolescent isn't it?

Eh a lot of people read the P more as pixels than the old i / p differentiate, it's really up to you, I doubt any one would have any doubt if you killed it... I just write with it a long out of habit.

[Sniperfox47]

1 minute ago, Princess Cadence said:

Eh a lot of people read the P more as pixels than the old i / p differentiate, it's really up to you, I doubt any one would have any doubt if you killed it... I just write with it a long out of habit.

Ah okay. Fair enough.

[minibois]

2 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Aren't the acronyms (VGA, HD, FHD, QHD/WQHD, QFHD, etc.) standardized by VESA?

I don't know if they are, they might be. But there are just way too many to remember them all fully IMO. Even if you did remember all, not everyone else does and people might start to confuse some and you have an even larger mess of resolutions.

[Glenwing]

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Why tack on the p at the end if your listing the full resolution? Every modern monitor is progressive scan so it's kind of obsolescent isn't it?

Yes, it is somewhat vestigial, but it's very low effort to add and there isn't really anything better to call it instead. Just saying a number like "1080" by itself can be pretty ambiguous depending on the context.

 

Terms like 2K and 4K aren't "new", they're just new to the consumer segment so people assume it was made up just now to sound new and different instead of just a number increase (2160p), but this is not true at all. Horizontal resolution is used in the cinema industry because content is cropped vertically. When cropped, the level of detail and precision of the image doesn't change, so it makes sense to lump all crops into the same category or level of resolution, so all 2000-pixel-wide images are referred to as 2K. Whether it's 1920×1080, or you decide to crop it to 1920×800 to add black bars, it's still 2K, since the resolution of the content (that is, the precision with which details can be resolved) hasn't really changed, even though the vertical pixel count has changed. If you used vertical pixel count for shorthand, these two crops would have different names, even though the wider ratio isn't really "lower" resolution (from a production standpoint anyway; of course, 1920×800 is mathematically a lower resolution than 1920×1080, but resolution being changed in this particular way (vertical crop) doesn't affect image clarity in this case; vertical-based shorthands don't reflect this, horizontal ones do, so horizontal shorthands are used in filmmaking to so it's clear when an actual difference in resolution is being discussed, and not just a different ratio).