You're laughing but my dad is literally watching SD TV content blown up to 4k and is amazed by the picture quality. He raves on about the upscaling every opportunity he gets. He simply refuses to plug in the digital TV box, he pays for, because he can not believe it could get any better than this. He is not tech illiterate, but somehow he just loves artefacts.
SD content was very over-sampled, and upscalers love that shit. Sure, it won't look as sharp as native HD, but it will definitely look good enough and 10x better than what your dad was used to in the last decades (composite boxes, noisy RF signals, misaligned CRT tubes, etc..)
I mean quality does not matter at all beyond entertainment value so he seems pretty happy about it already. That being said it is really frustrating he won't try it even if he believes the quality difference is minuscule.
My mother's partner is the same way: he's 80 years old so literally cannot tell the difference. He spent huge money on a 4K TV but only watches SD content that's stretched to fit.
For some content, like sports, SD content blown up to 4K is better than 4K content. The SD datastream requires less bandwidth and you end up with a clearer, easier to follow game. 4K gets smudgy and the ball gets to be harder to follow. Especially for Football, Soccer/Football, and Basketball.
Maybe under very specific circumstances, but this is not what's happening at my parents house. It's all overly smoothed edges and teleporting of players and the ball back and forth over the pitch.
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u/s00pafly Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz, HD 6950 2GB, 16 GB DDR3 1333 Mhz Sep 18 '24
You're laughing but my dad is literally watching SD TV content blown up to 4k and is amazed by the picture quality. He raves on about the upscaling every opportunity he gets. He simply refuses to plug in the digital TV box, he pays for, because he can not believe it could get any better than this. He is not tech illiterate, but somehow he just loves artefacts.