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The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

32 points by cxrlosfx

by Underqualified

1 subcomments

We were talking about TVs recently in the office and pretty much everyone agreed that even 4K is overkill for most TVs at a reasonable viewing distance.
I got a 65inch TV recently, and up close HD looks pretty bad, but at about 3m away it's fine.

by Kon5ole

2 subcomments

55 inch 8k tvs make for great monitors. Basically your whole field of view is a retina canvas for apps, equivalent to a 2x2 grid of 4k monitors.
The last ones I saw for sale were below 600 usd in physical stores from name brands (LG). Mine was just under 1000 when I got it.
Why we can’t buy the same panels as monitors is a mystery to me.

by ksec

4 subcomments

Just when 100"+ TV are coming out and gaining traction. To put this into perspective, an upcoming 130" LCD TV would 8K would have 68PPI, on 98" would have 90 PPI, and 80" would be 110".
Depending on whether you want a TV experience sitting further back or Cinema is coming Home as Sony's tag line. I believe there is room for something greater than 4K. Especially when TV industry trend suggest TV purchase size is increasing every year. 40" used to be big, then it became entry level, now all top of the line TV dont even offer anything before 50", and the median is moving closer to 65". 80"+ price will come down in the next 5 years as LCD takes over again from OLED. I dont understand why but also wont be surprised if median size move pass 70".
In 2015 I wrote on AVSforum how 8K makes zero sense from Codec, computation, network, transport and TV. However I would never imagine median TV size moved up so quickly, and also I cant see how we could afford 100"+ TV at the time. Turns out I am dead wrong. TCL / CSOT will produce its first 130" TV in 2 years time. For those ultra wealthy they could afford 160" to 220" MicroLED made out of many panels. There will be 10% of population who could afford ultra large screen size. And I am sure there is a market for premium 4K + content.
There is definitely a future with 4K+ content and panel. I just hope we dont give up too early.

by garyclarke27

1 subcomments

What baffles me is that TV manufacturers create amazing hi-definition home screens with glorious colour at incredibly cheap prices - then idiot Netflix directors completely waste 40% of the pixels for zero benefit with their stupid letterbox formats.

by Aardwolf

6 subcomments

> Gaming was supposed to be one of the best drivers for 8K adoption.
While the step from 1080p 1440p to 4K is a visible difference, I don't think going from 4K to 8K would be a visible since the pixels are already invisible at 4K.
However the framerate drop would be very noticeable...
OTOH, afaik for VR headsets you may want higher resolutions still due to the much larger field of vision

by zihotki

0 subcomment

It baffles me that the 8K is discussed without taking the screen size into consideration. 8K in 77 inch TV is not that much different from 4k in 50 inch TV if you focus on PPI. Such big TVs also require certain distance to be able to watch them. Good luck finding an apartment or house in EU where you can fit 77 inch tv to comfortably watch it.

by klausa

0 subcomment

Discussions about this are very tedious, because people have hard time making distinction between "being able to see the difference between 1080/4k/8k content" and "being able to see the difference between 1080/4k/8k panels".
I'm sure there's plenty of content (especially streaming content in mediocre bitrate) where people would be hard-pressed to tell the difference.
But I think if people went back to 1080p _panels_; they'd actually rather quickly notice how much worse the text-rendering is, and that the UI looks off for them.
Moving up to 8k would definitely be a smaller step-change in clarity than 1080p->4K and many people wouldn't feel it's worth spending extra; but I don't think it would be literally indistinguishable.

by wosined

0 subcomment

Pretty easy to achieve 8K when you make the TV twice the size. I wish they improved pixel density more instead.

by padjo

2 subcomments

Yep we probably reached "CD quality" at 1080p to be honest. i.e. a level beyond which the vast majority of people won't be able to perceive a quality difference. We definitely reached it at 4k at a size/distance of most TVs

by LeoPanthera

1 subcomments

I had just recently been thinking of buying an 8K television to mount on the wall of my office to use as a huge monitor. Has anyone done this? Any recommended models?

by Animats

0 subcomment

Cinema theater projectors are rarely more than 4K. Many are still 2K. IMAX is sometimes 8K. The industry just doesn't see the need for content with more resolution.

by magicalhippo

2 subcomments

Gee, who could have foreseen that?
I mean my local cable TV is sending crap that's way worse than 720p YouTube videos and most people don't care at all.
I guess the primary benefit of an 8k display is that stuck or dead pixels are much less annoying than on a 4k panel of the same size.
I'm fine with 4k for my living room. Give me more HDR, less chroma subsampling and less banding.

by ChrisArchitect

0 subcomment

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46841265

by jl6

0 subcomment

640K ought to be enough.

by WithinReason

0 subcomment

Not enough content for it