The pointless push for 8K
Posted: Mon May 18, 2020 11:03 pm
Currently shopping for a new TV and this is pissing me off.
Look, back when 4K came out a number of manufacturers started punting 4K sets before the UHD standard was ratified. Buying one of those sets would've been an expensive mistake. FWIW the UHD standard mainly defines 3 things: the number of pixels, support for high refresh rates and finally 'up to' the REC 2020 colour gamut. The last point is a little moot, as no screens currently available really support REC 2020 and nothing is really mastered to use the whole colourspace either. Anyway, for most of us now upgrading to a UHD TV from a HD or Full HD set you will see an appreciable difference. That difference won't really be in the higher resolution, (unless you're sitting really close to your TV), but rather in the HDR films, a likely brighter screen and vastly smoother panning and fast action motion scenes.
Still with me? My point is that for most of us '4K' is likely the last perceivable benefit of upgrading to a UHD TV.
Since the maturity of OLED and Quantum Dots it seems the industry has hit a bit of a plateau whilst it waits for the next-gen display technologies to reach maturity like Mini-LED, MicroLED, QNED and so on. So instead of taking time to deliver the 'perfect' experience UHD can bring, it seems to be fixated on boosting sales by chasing numbers to appeal to the brain dead 'bigger is better' shopper, and so is bringing us 8K. Now 8K is really pointless. Firstly it's not a ratified standard that brings other benefits like UHD did. Secondly, aside from some YouTube demos, 8K content is just about non-existent. Thirdly, a number of studios are actively pushing back against the cost of mastering in 8K in the first place because of the above. And finally, the really salient point. No-one will be able to tell the difference!
Look, I sit 8 feet from my TV. According to all conventional wisdom, that means I need about a 60-62" screen before I start to see the pixel difference between my old FHD set and a UHD (4K) one. For most people in a normal lounge, 60" is a bit ridiculous. It's fully council, and you never go full council. I'm shopping for a 47-50" set which'll be the limit of what we can reasonably accommodate in our lounge. Anyway, to see the difference between 4k and 8k at 8 feet I'll need a 120-125" TV. Really?! What's the point and cost of that?
At this point you're likely thinking 'hey if you don't want an 8K set don't buy an 8K set'. It's not that simple. Some manufacturers, and I'll take Samsung as my example here but others are just as guilty, have started moving some of their premium features up to their 8K only sets, leaving the 4K sets as the 'middle of the range' models. The number of local dimming zones for example is now only a decent number on their expensive 8K sets. It's clear what they're doing - they're pushing the features you want onto the expensive sets to justify the 8K TV prices. What they should really be doing is concentrating their energies to improve the brightness levels of their 4K sets (necessary to perceive HDR 'correctly'; it's thought about 10,000 nits would make TV like real life, but the best TVs are barely a third of that), and bringing full implementation of HDMI 2.1 and all it's features, the REC2020 colour space compliant panels etc etc, rather than chasing numbers that won't make a difference to 99.99% of the population.
This rant is longer than I thought it would be.
tl;dr. I don't want an 8K TV, they're pointless. Don't push me to get one just to get the features I do want.
Look, back when 4K came out a number of manufacturers started punting 4K sets before the UHD standard was ratified. Buying one of those sets would've been an expensive mistake. FWIW the UHD standard mainly defines 3 things: the number of pixels, support for high refresh rates and finally 'up to' the REC 2020 colour gamut. The last point is a little moot, as no screens currently available really support REC 2020 and nothing is really mastered to use the whole colourspace either. Anyway, for most of us now upgrading to a UHD TV from a HD or Full HD set you will see an appreciable difference. That difference won't really be in the higher resolution, (unless you're sitting really close to your TV), but rather in the HDR films, a likely brighter screen and vastly smoother panning and fast action motion scenes.
Still with me? My point is that for most of us '4K' is likely the last perceivable benefit of upgrading to a UHD TV.
Since the maturity of OLED and Quantum Dots it seems the industry has hit a bit of a plateau whilst it waits for the next-gen display technologies to reach maturity like Mini-LED, MicroLED, QNED and so on. So instead of taking time to deliver the 'perfect' experience UHD can bring, it seems to be fixated on boosting sales by chasing numbers to appeal to the brain dead 'bigger is better' shopper, and so is bringing us 8K. Now 8K is really pointless. Firstly it's not a ratified standard that brings other benefits like UHD did. Secondly, aside from some YouTube demos, 8K content is just about non-existent. Thirdly, a number of studios are actively pushing back against the cost of mastering in 8K in the first place because of the above. And finally, the really salient point. No-one will be able to tell the difference!
Look, I sit 8 feet from my TV. According to all conventional wisdom, that means I need about a 60-62" screen before I start to see the pixel difference between my old FHD set and a UHD (4K) one. For most people in a normal lounge, 60" is a bit ridiculous. It's fully council, and you never go full council. I'm shopping for a 47-50" set which'll be the limit of what we can reasonably accommodate in our lounge. Anyway, to see the difference between 4k and 8k at 8 feet I'll need a 120-125" TV. Really?! What's the point and cost of that?
At this point you're likely thinking 'hey if you don't want an 8K set don't buy an 8K set'. It's not that simple. Some manufacturers, and I'll take Samsung as my example here but others are just as guilty, have started moving some of their premium features up to their 8K only sets, leaving the 4K sets as the 'middle of the range' models. The number of local dimming zones for example is now only a decent number on their expensive 8K sets. It's clear what they're doing - they're pushing the features you want onto the expensive sets to justify the 8K TV prices. What they should really be doing is concentrating their energies to improve the brightness levels of their 4K sets (necessary to perceive HDR 'correctly'; it's thought about 10,000 nits would make TV like real life, but the best TVs are barely a third of that), and bringing full implementation of HDMI 2.1 and all it's features, the REC2020 colour space compliant panels etc etc, rather than chasing numbers that won't make a difference to 99.99% of the population.
This rant is longer than I thought it would be.
tl;dr. I don't want an 8K TV, they're pointless. Don't push me to get one just to get the features I do want.