UHD vs DCI 4K Resolution Chart

Two "4K" standards, one confusing name

Consumer displays, streaming platforms and most delivery specs use UHD — 3840×2160, exactly 2× the width and 2× the height of 1080p (1920×1080 doubled in both dimensions gives 3840×2160, four times the pixel count). It became the TV and web-video standard because it is a clean multiple of the HD raster editors and broadcasters already worked in.

DCI 4K — 4096×2160 — comes from a different lineage entirely: the Digital Cinema Initiatives specification that defines the projection formats used in commercial cinemas. DCI defines a family of fixed container rasters (2K and 4K, each with a full/flat/scope variant) sized for 35mm-derived aspect ratios and digital projectors, not for doubling a broadcast raster. A DCP (Digital Cinema Package) — the encrypted, JPEG2000-based delivery format theaters actually project — is built on DCI containers, never on UHD.

Both standards get called "4K" in casual conversation, and both are legitimate — they just come from different parts of the industry and are not interchangeable on a spec sheet.

Every standard raster, to scale

NTSC and PAL SD are listed as their honestly labeled stored raster — standard-definition video used non-square pixels, so 720×480 displays as 4:3 or 16:9 depending on the pixel aspect ratio flag, not as its stored 3:2. For the stored-vs-displayed math on SD, DV and anamorphic footage, see the Pixel Aspect Ratio Converter linked below.

"4K" is not "4K" — the arithmetic

UHD's width is exactly 2 × 1920 = 3840. DCI 4K's width is 4096 — a full 256 pixels wider, which is 256 ÷ 3840 = 6.7% more (the same ratio as 16/15, since 4096/3840 reduces to 16/15). That difference compounds across two dimensions: 4K DCI Full is 4096×2160 = 8,847,360 pixels, against UHD's 3840×2160 = 8,294,400 pixels — DCI 4K carries 552,960 more pixels, 6.7% more than UHD, despite both being called "4K."

The same 6.7% gap shows up one tier down: "2K" (2048px wide) is only 2048 ÷ 1920 = 6.7% wider than 1080p, not meaningfully "2×" anything. The real 2× relationship in this whole family is 1080p → UHD (1920 → 3840); "2K" and "4K" are marketing-era names for the DCI cinema containers, not doublings of the previous HD tier.

Flat and scope are crops of the same container, not separate rasters

DCI defines one container per resolution tier — 2048×1080 for "2K," 4096×2160 for "4K" — and flat/scope are both narrower crops of that same container, never additions to it:

• Flat (1.85:1) keeps the container's full height and crops the width: at 4K, 4096 → 3996 (100px off, 50px per side), giving 3996×2160. At 2K the same crop scaled down is 2048 → 1998 (50px off, 25 per side), giving 1998×1080.
• Scope (2.39:1) keeps the container's full width and crops the height: at 4K, 2160 → 1716 (444px off, 222px top and bottom), giving 4096×1716. At 2K, 1080 → 858 (222px off, 111 per side), giving 2048×858.

Neither flat nor scope ever uses all of the container's 4096×2160 (or 2048×1080) pixels — the DCI Full row in the table above is the only 4K DCI raster that does, and it exists specifically as the maximum extraction gate, not as a projection aspect ratio anyone actually masters to.

When each matters

Streaming platforms and broadcast delivery specs (Netflix, Disney+, most OTT and TV delivery) ask for UHD, 3840×2160, because their whole pipeline — encoders, players, TV panels — is built around doubling the HD raster. Theatrical delivery asks for a DCP built on a DCI container — flat or scope depending on the film's projection aspect ratio — because that is what a digital cinema projector and server actually ingest; a UHD master will not conform to a DCP without a resize and re-container. If a project only ever ships to streaming and web, UHD is the only raster that matters; if it also plays theatrically, the DCP master needs to originate from (or be conformed into) the correct DCI container.

An 8K reality check

8K UHD, 7680×4320, is exactly 4× 1920×1080 in both dimensions — 16× the pixel count of 1080p and 4× the pixel count of 4K UHD (33.18 MP against 8.29 MP). Very little content is mastered, delivered or even displayed natively at 8K today; it mostly exists as a capture and archival format that gives extra headroom for reframing, stabilization and future-proofing a 4K or UHD deliverable, not as a common release resolution.

1. Choose which rasters to show — SD, HD, 2K, UHD, DCI 4K and 8K all sit on one true-to-scale diagram.

2. Select any rectangle to read its exact dimensions, aspect ratio and megapixel count.

3. See how DCI 4K's extra width sits against UHD, then plan the crops with the open-gate delivery planner.