http://www.avsforum.com/8k-tv-is-coming-what-you-need-to-know/
8K TV is Coming: What You Need to Know
by
Mark Henninger on January 30, 2018
8K is coming. 2018 is the year 8K
UHD TVsarrived in production-ready form at the annual CES in Las Vegas. These are typically very large TVs, measuring 85″ and up, which is fine since there’s hardly any point in making a small 8K TV screen. Granted, Dell already sells a 32″ 8K
monitor (
the UltraSharp 32 for $3700) but people are used to sitting close to monitors. Anyhow, by definition 8K UHD TVssport boundary-pushing specifications including the all-important 7680 x 4320 resolution.
While some anachronistic videophiles may bemoan the leap in resolution as unnecessary, the fact is that when it comes to
displays, there’s no such thing as “too many pixels.” So when the first 8K TVs finally go on sale— the Samsung Q9S could very well earn that honor—don’t fret because you can’t rent 8K movies from Amazon (yet). The first 8K production
cameras are either here today (from
Red) or on the way (from
Canon), and more are sure to follow.
Before worrying about where to find 8K content, let’s briefly examine the harsh truth about
4K UHD: There’s not a lot of movie content produced in native 4K resolution. That’s right, even in an era where
premium 1080p TVs have almost completely disappeared, you’d be hard-pressed to
find a movie that offers a pure 4K viewing experience. So, the first thing to realize is that upscaling will continue to be a part of the ultra-high-definition equation. In other words, you’re bound to see
4K content that’s upscaled to 8K for years to come.
Even today, it would not be accurate to say there’s no content available in 8K, which delivers 33 megapixels on screen. You need look no further that modern digital
cameras to find a source of high-resolution imagery—Canon even has a 120-megapixel DSLR for sale. And given that a popular trend with premium TVs is to display art when not watching content, the potential picture quality offered by an 85” or larger 8K
TV would allow you to examine exquisite levels of detail in photos and paintings, and do so from extremely close up. It’s all a matter of rethinking what a TV should be able to do.
The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo have long been cited as representing the true dawn of the 8K era. However there’s a catch—the 8K broadcast that Japan’s NHK provides (called Super Hi-Vision) will work in Japan but not in the US or most of the rest of the world. However, two years is an eternity in the AV world, and by the time the games roll around, it’s entirely possible 8K streaming will be available.
So, what happens if you want to stream 8K right now? Believe it or not,
YouTube already supports 8K resolution and has a small sampling of content to stream—albeit in limited quantities. Crucially, the built-in
appsthat come with premium
TVs are typically the first to support whatever new functionality that TV offers—current examples include support for HDR10+ in Samsung TVs and Dolby Vision various companies’ TVs. And while there are only a few PC graphics cardsthat can render 8K
UHD resolution, they exist today and are supported by Windows 10.
Visually, what you can expect from an 8K TV—at the bare minimum—is totally invisible pixels, which is already the defacto standard for smartphones and
tablets. You might think that if you can’t see a
pixel grid, you don’t need a higher resolution, but the reality is that eliminating aliasing artifacts requires even smaller pixels than an invisible grid. While this observation is anecdotal, if you have a look at the first generation of
iPhone to offer a “Retina”
display (the iPhone 4, with 326 pixelsper inch), today’s phones offer greater pixeldensity (up to 577 ppi) and do look sharper as a result. The upshot here is that 8K may finally deliver the video-gaming ideal of truly photo-realistic
graphics, while also displaying all the detail modern camera sensors can capture.
It’s important to remember that
4K UHD(3840×2160
pixels) wound up being about a lot more than resolution. With it came HDR and wide-color-gamut capability, which make significant contributions to overall picture quality. You can expect 8K TVs to continue that trend with an inexorable
drive to cover the entire BT.2020 color gamut. And on the HDR side of things, 8K
TV manufacturers are sure to pursue the technical ideal of a 10,000-nit HDR display—
Sony showed a prototype of such a screen at CES 2018.
Speaking from first-hand experience at CES 2018, another important element is how increases in processing
power affect the quality of upscaling. To wit, 2018 is the year of AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms, and a battle is brewing between the major TVmakers to offer the best next-generation processing.
Samsung touted the “AI Upscaling” of its Q9S at CES, and the demos showed that next-generation upscaling is better than what came before it. I recognize better algorithms from my years as a professional photographer using
Photoshop. There is definitive proof that if you throw more processing
power at the upscaling process, you can achieve superior results. But getting this to happen in real time and at high pixel counts is ultimately a matter of having sufficient processing
power.
The upshot is that an 8K TV, working with a 4K UHD
Blu-ray that (probably) has a bunch of 2K content in it (such as the CGI in movies) will likely offer the best-available rendition of that content—for a price. That’s how it always is with consumer-display technology; the early adopters get to have a ton of fun with the latest toys, but they pay a steep price for the privilege.
Perhaps the greatest barrier to enjoying what 8K has to offer is psychological. If you go to an IMAX presentation, you expect your entire field of vision to be filled by a gigantic screen. But there is a resistance to treating
TVs the same way. Still, it’s a simple fact that with an 8K TV, you’ll be able to have an IMAX-like experience at home, as long as you sit close enough to the screen. Also, visually convincing
virtual reality demands 8K resolution (per eye!) in order to eliminate visible pixels.
So while 8K remains a technology of the future (much like self-driving cars), it is not a distant pie-in-the-sky dream. And since an 8K
TV will still work with
SD,
HD, and 4K UHDcontent, it’s inevitable that we’re going to see the current trickle of 8K news, content, and products become a flood.