Television manufacturers have been proudly displaying 8K TVs at trade shows all year. The marketing pitch is that images on an 8K screen look even better then the beautiful images seen on a 4K screen. Many journalists who regularly cover TV technology and attend trade shows have been following the company narrative and raving about how good these 8K TVs look.
The manufacturers and the journalists aren’t lying. An image does look much better on an 8K screen than a 4K screen . . . in the conditions in which TVs are displayed at trade shows. In the conditions in which most people watch TV at home, the difference between 8K and 4K (and in some cases 1080p) are literally invisible.
Endgadget recently published an article asking what possible reason anyone might have to buy an 8K TV this year. They pointed out there is no 8K content to watch and current streaming technology doesn’t have the bandwidth to carry 8K at speed even if content was available. Endgadget reports that Samsung (which is offering 8K TVs for sale in the US and UK) responded that buying an 8K television now future proofs your TV because 8K is coming. Endgadget rightly points out that what looks like future proofing now might well look like a dumb purchase given technological developments between today and the day when 8K becomes plausible.
Higher-resolution images are sharper, clearer and have more detail than lower-resolution images. Fine details like the individual hairs on a person’s head that might be blurry and indistinct in a low-resolution picture can be sharp and clear in a picture with higher resolution. 8K looks better than 4K and 4K looks better than 1080p because small details are sharper and clearer in the higher resolution images.
The level of detail that’s present in a picture is one thing, the ability of the human eye to resolve or “see” that detail is another. The resolving power of a lens like the human eye can be calculated with the Reyleigh formula. Without getting into the math, resolving power decreases as the distance between the eye and the object looked at increases. Here’s an example. If you’re standing right behind someone in line, you can see (your eyes can resolve) the individual hairs on their head. If you see that same person across the street, you can see that they have hair, but you can’t resolve the individual hairs.
8K televisions are being hyped as the next big thing in home TV. These TVs are likely to have additional features such as high-quality HDR or high brightness levels that improve the picture no matter how far away you sit. Don’t be fooled. The same features are likely to be present on 4K screens as well. The resolution boost from 4K to 8K provides no benefit at all unless you sit very close to the screen. If you have a dedicated theater in your home (not a “home theater” as the term is commonly used) that can accommodate a huge screen, 8K may make sense. For everyone else, 8K is a waste of money.
(forbes.com)
