Not entirely correct.ES_Revenge wrote: ↑ Fixed that for you.
Displaying a higher-than-native res image/video on a digital display (i.e. LCD, OLED, plasma) is not going to get you any more detail. In fact due to scaling, it may even look worse than a native-res image. This is especially true if it's not an "even" scale factor. Luckily 4K and 1080p scale evenly but something like 1440p on a 1080p display will look worse than 1080p on the same display.
It's similar to gaming at 120 FPS+ on a 60Hz display. You're not really seeing any more than 60 of those 120 (or higher) frames.
Using a higher resolution image that the display device supports and scaling down, provided the sampling algorithm is not complete and utter garbage, absolutely has the potential to display a better quality image that may contain more detail. The method is called supersampling and is more common practice on modern displays and video processors now that we have more horsepower in VPUs.