Big Surprise—Nobody Wants 8K TVs
Big Surprise—Nobody Wants 8K TVs
331 comments
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I'm so content with 1080p
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I run a Plex server with really high quality 1080p and I'm completely satisfied with it. I don't see a reason to use the extra storage on 4k
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TV and movies I'm totally good with 1080p. If I want a cinematic experience, that's what the cinema is for.
But since switching to PC and gaming in 4k everywhere I can, it feels like a night and day difference to play in 1080p. Granted that means I care about monitor resolution rather than TV resolution.
But as an aside, as a software engineer that works from home, crisp text, decent color spectrum support, good brightness in a bright room, all things that make your day a whole lot better when you stare at a computer screen for a large chunk of your day
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Na, 4K, even 1080p upscaled to 4K is significantly better thsn FullHD with a video projector.
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Tbh 720p is good enough
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I’m content with 480. High quality isn’t important for me. I still listen to mp3’s that I got 25+ years ago.
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The consumer has spoken and they don't care, not even for 4K. Same as happened with 3D and curved TVs, 8K is a solution looking for a problem so that more TVs get sold.
In terms of physical media - at stores in Australia the 4K section for Blurays takes up a single rack of shelves. Standard Blurays and DVDs take up about 20.
Even DVDs still sell well because many consumers don't see a big difference in quality, and certainly not enough to justify the added cost of Bluray, let alone 4K editions. A current example, Superman is $20 on DVD, $30 on Bluray (50% cost increase) or $40 on 4K (100%) cost increase. Streaming services have similar pricing curves for increased fidelity.
It sucks for fans of high res, but it's the reality of the market. 4K will be more popular in the future if and when it becomes cheaper, and until then nobody (figuratively) will give a hoot about 8K.
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It's amazingly stupid having those prices. DVD should cost the same as Bluray and both should cost $25 max. After all, a DVD and a Bluray are two technologies far past their ROI date.
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Some of the smaller 4k sets work as an XXL computer monitor
But for a living room tv, you seriously need space for a 120"+ set to actually see any benefit of 8k. Most people don't even have the physical space for that
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I would love to have an 8K TV or monitor if I had an internet connection up to the task and enough content in 8K to make it worth it, or If I had a PC powerful enough to run games smoothly in that resolution.
I think it's silly to say 'nobody wants this' when the infrastructure for it isn't even close to adequate.
I will admit that there is diminishing returns now, going from 4K to 8K was less impressive than FHD to 4K and I imagine that 8K will probably be where it stops, at least for anything that can reasonably fit in a house.
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As someone who stupidly spent the last 20 or so years chasing the bleeding edge of TVs and A/V equipment, GOOD.
High end A/V is an absolute shitshow. No matter how much you spend on a TV, receiver, or projector, it will always have some stupid gotcha, terrible software, ad-laden interface, HDMI handshaking issue, HDR color problem, HFR sync problem or CEC fight. Every new standard (HDR10 vs HDR10+, Dolby Vision vs Dolby Vision 2) inherently comes with its own set of problems and issues and its own set of "time to get a new HDMI cable that looks exactly like the old one but works differently, if it works as advertised at all".
I miss the 90s when the answer was "buy big chonky square CRT, plug in with component cables, be happy".
Now you can buy a $15,000 4k VRR/HFR HDR TV, an $8,000 4k VRR/HFR/HDR receiver, and still somehow have them fight with each other all the fucking time and never work.
8K was a solution in search of a problem. Even when I was 20 and still had good eyesight, sitting 6 inches from a 90 inch TV I'm certain the difference between 4k and 8k would be barely noticeable.
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For what content? Video gaming (GPUs) has barely gotten to 4k. Movies? 4k streaming is a joke; better off with 1080 BD. If you care about quality go physical... UHD BD is hard to find and you have to wait and hunt to get them at reasonable prices... And these days there are only a couple UHD BD Player mfg left.
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For what content?
Seriously though, quality 4k media is hard to find outside of ... "finding it" on the internet.
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That's the dumbest part of it all is that pirates seriously get the best movie/TV experience of anyone. I mean, maybe if you spend a shitton on DVD and BluRays to rip you can match that experience, but even that can be legally dubious depending on the jurisdiction
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Those rips are still coming from physical. If those go extinct, bye bye BD Rips...
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Is there a player other than the shield that can play them and be simple? Roku Ultra can't handle most 4k HQ streams .
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It's such a shame that UHD isn't easier to find. Even the ones you can find are poorly mastered half the time. But a good UHD on an OLED is chef's kiss just about the closest you can get to having a 35mm reel/projector at home.
You are absolutely on point with 4k streaming being a joke. Most 4k streams are 8-20 Mbps. A UHD runs at 128 Mbps.
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Most 4k streams are 8-20 Mbps. A UHD runs at 128 Mbps.
Bitrate is only one variable in overall perceived quality. There are all sorts of tricks that can significantly reduce file size (and thus bitrate of a stream) without a perceptible loss of quality. And somewhat counterintuitively, the compression tricks work a lot better on higher resolution source video, which is why each quadrupling in pixels (doubling height and width) doesn't quadruple file size.
The codec matters (h.264 vs h.265/HEVC vs VP9 vs AV1), and so do the settings actually used to encode. Netflix famously is willing to spend a lot more computational power on encoding, because they have a relatively small number of videos and many, many users watching the same videos. In contrast, YouTube and Facebook don't even bother re-encoding into a more efficient codec like AV1 until a video gets enough views that they think they can make up the cost of additional processing with the savings of lower bandwidth.
Video encoding is a very complex topic, and simple bitrate comparisons only barely scratch the surface in perceived quality.
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It's because for the Average Joe, having a TV box at the end of your driveway that has the latest big number on it is important. It's how they gain their identity. Do not upset them for obvious reasons.
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I am a filmmaker and have shot in 6k+ resolution since 2018. The extra pixels are great for the filmmaking side. Pixel binning when stepping down resolutions allows for better noise, color reproduction, sharpened details, and great for re-framing/cropping. 99% of my clients want their stuff in 1080p still! I barely even feel the urge to jump up to 4k unless the quality of the project somehow justifies it. Images have gotten to a good place. Detail won’t provide much more for human enjoyment. I hope they continue to focus on dynamic range, HDR, color accuracy, motion clarity, efficiency, etc. I won’t say no when we step up to 8k as an industry but computing as a whole is not close yet.
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The same argument goes for audio too.
6K and 8K is great for editing, just like how 96 KHz 32+ bit and above is great for editing. But it's meaningless for watching and listening (especially for audio, you can't hear the difference above 44khz 16 bit). When editing you'll often stack up small artifacts, which can be audible or visible if editing at the final resolution but easy to smooth over if you're editing at higher resolutions.
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The extra pixels are great for the filmmaking side.
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Imagine you're finishing in 8k, so you want to shoot higher resolution to give yourself some options in reframing and cropping? I don't think Red, Arri, or Panavision even makes a cinema camera with a resolution over 8k. I think Arri is still 4k max. You'd pretty much be limited to Blackmagic cameras for 12k production today.
Plus the storage requirements for keeping raw footage in redundancy. Easy enough for a studio, but we're YEARS from 8k being a practical resolution for most filmmakers.
My guess is most of the early consumer 8k content will be really shoddy AI upscaled content that can be rushed to market from film scans.
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film scanning at 4k res already reveals the granular structure of film, at 8k it's going to become hard to ignore. And you're spot on - they'll do crappy 8k upres garbage for ages before the storage and streaming become practical.
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There is also a 17k blackmagic coming out! The high resolution sensors they use aren’t a standard RGB pixel layout though so it’s not a great direct comparison. Like you said though, there’s no pipeline or good workflow for 8k in the slightest. Will take years if the industry decides to push for it
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I hate the wording of the headline, because it makes it sound like the consumers' fault that the industry isn't delivering on something they promised. It's like marketing a fusion-powered sex robot that's missing the power core, and turning around and saying "nobody wants fusion-powered sex robots".
Side note, I'd like for people to stop insisting that 60fps looks "cheap", so that we can start getting good 60fps content. Heck, at this stage I'd be willing to compromise at 48fps if it gets more directors on board. We've got the camera sensor technology in 2025 for this to work in the same lighting that we used to need for 24fps, so that excuse has flown.
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What's your opinion on using 8K TV as a monitor?
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The difference between 1080 and 4K is pretty visible, but the difference between 4K and 8K, especially from across a room, is so negligible that it might as well be placebo.
Also the fact that 8K content takes up a fuckload more storage space. So, there's that, too.
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solution: 16K 3D TV. buy now.
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I only want the curved IMAX version, though
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if it's a 16' x 9' screen, I'm in.
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Even 1080p isn't hugely different from 4k in many cases. Yeah, you can probably notice it, but both are fantastic resolutions. I've had a 4k TV for years, and I can count the number of times I've actually watched 4k content on it on two hands because it generally isn't worth the storage space or extra cost.
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I find that it really depends on the content on the size of the display.
The larger the display, the more you'd benefit from having a higher resolution.
For instance, a good quality 1080p stream vs a highly compressed 4k stream probably won't look much different. But a "raw" 4k stream looks incredible... think of the demos you see in stores showing off 4k TVs... that quality is noticeable.
Put the same content on a 50"+ screen, and you'll see the difference.
When I had Netflix, watching in 4k was great, but to me, having HDR is "better".
On a computer monitor, there's a case for high-resolution displays because they allow you to fit more on the screen without making the content look blurry. But on a TV, 4k + HDR is pretty much peak viewing for most people.
That's not to say that if you create content, 8k is useless. It can be really handy when cropping or re-framing if needed, assuming the desired output is less than 8k.
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depends how far you are from the screen.
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Pretty sure my eyes max out at 4K. I can barely tell the difference between 4K and 1080P from my couch.
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HDR is more noticeable, but yeah, I don't care if it's 1080p or 4k.
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Try BD vs UHD BD on a modern movie. No Country for Old Men for example. Hugely noticeable.
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Yeah. Another one for me was Deadpool, because the texture of his outfit actually feels real on the 4K disc in a way that it doesn’t in HD.
Whenever I see people point at math equations “proving” that it’s impossible to tell the difference from a comfortable viewing distance, I think of Deadpool’s contours.
Can I identify the individual pixels in HD? Nope. Does it make a difference? Yes definitely.
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If you can’t notice it when you’re not comparing side by side it doesn’t count
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Even 4K the content is not yet easily available . I mean except from AppleTV plus that all content is 4K and it’s part of basic subscription, every other streaming charges much more for 4K content, most people don’t want to pay more every month for 4K
So 8K is just a distant reality that content makers are not really wanting to happen
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4k is really cheap now.
having said that, I have a4k TV and practically only use 1080p for everything.
videogames? performance mode
movies/tv/YouTube? 1080p for better buffering.
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I do want a dumb 8K TV. I do not want all the so called smart features of a TV. Small Linux device with kodi works way better.
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Not ideal, but you can air gap the TV from the network, and use some small sbc, or even a firestick or android box. That's what I do. Stremio?
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As far as my TV is concerned I don't have an internet connection.
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I do want a TV that can access Netflix etc without another box. I just don't want the surveillance that comes with it.
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I just run mine without ever connecting it to the internet.
I run an Apple TV (shock, walled garden!), as it is the only device I've seen that consistently matches frame rates properly on the output. -
I personally hate Kodi UI. But I get your point
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uh....there are hundreds of Kodi UIs.
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I don’t care about 8k.
I just want an affordable dumb TV. No on-board apps whatsoever. No smart anything. No Ethernet port, no WiFi. I have my own stuff to plug into HDMI already.
I’m aware of commercial displays. It just sucks that I have to pay way more to have fewer features now.
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tv absolutely peaked at this (serious)
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You can have a smart TV but never set up any of the smart features. I have two LG OLED TVs but rarely touch anything on the TV itself. I've got Nvidia Shields for streaming and turning it on or off also turns the TV on or off. Same with my Xbox.
I just need to figure out if I can use CEC with my SFF gaming PC (so that turning it on also turns the TV on, and turning it off turns the TV off), then I won't have to touch the TV's remote again.
Ethernet port or wifi are good for controlling the TV using something like Home Assistant. I have my TVs on a separate isolated VLAN with no internet access. I have a automation that runs when the TV turns on, to also turn on some LED lights behind the TV.
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Fine, but I don’t want the smart features to be installed at all in the first place.
I don’t want a WiFi antenna or Ethernet port in there.
I know that sounds ridiculous, since I can “simply not use them,” but I want to spend my money on an appliance, not a consumer data collection tool.
I don’t want them to have any of my data, and I don’t want to spend money “voting” with my dollar for these data collection devices.
Some of these devices have even been known to look for other similar devices within WiFi range, and phone home that way (i.e., send analytics data via a neighbor’s connected TV as a proxy).
Fuuuck that. I don’t want my dollar supporting this, at all, plain and simple. And I don’t want to pay a premium for the privilege of buying a technically simpler device. I do, but it’s bullshit, and I’m unhappy about it.
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Sometimes that doesn’t even matter anymore; they’ll refuse to work now without a network set up.
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I blacklist the TVs Ethernet and WiFi MAC addresses. I strongly encourage using a computer, Apple TV, or anything that can’t fingerprint everything you use your tv for.
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This. I’ll happily buy an 8k TV only if it’s a dumb TV/monitor.
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No, I want only one DP port and to have a separate box that selects sources. That way I have the ports I want
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article took forever to get to the bottom line. content. 8k content essentially does not exist. TV manufacturers were putting the cart before the horse.
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4k tvs existed before the content existed. I think the larger issue is that the difference between what is and what could be is not worth the additional expense, especially at a time when most people struggle to pay rent, food, and medicine. More people watch videos on their phones than watch broadcast television. 8k is a solution looking for a problem.
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I think it’s NHK, or one of the Japanese broadcasters anyways, that has actually been pressing for 8K since the 1990s. They didn’t have content back then and I doubt they have much today, but that’s what they wanted HD to be.
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Not familiar with NHK specifically (or, to be clear, I think I am but not with enough certainty), but it really makes a lot of sense for news networks to push for 8k or even 16k at this point.
Because it is a chicken and egg thing. Nobody is going to buy an 8k TV if all the things they watch are 1440p. But, similarly, there aren't going to be widespread 8k releases if everyone is watching on 1440p screens and so forth.
But what that ALSO means is that there is no reason to justify using 8k cameras if the best you can hope for is a premium 4k stream of a sporting event. And news outlets are fairly regularly the only source of video evidence of literally historic events.
From a much more banal perspective, it is why there is a gap in TV/film where you go from 1080p or even 4k re-releases to increasingly shady upscaling of 720 or even 480 content back to everything being natively 4k. Over simplifying, it is because we were using MUCH higher quality cameras than we really should have been for so long before switching to cheaper film and outright digital sensors because "there is no point". Obviously this ALSO is dependent on saving the high resolution originals but... yeah.
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Not only the content doesn't exist yet, it's just not practical. Even now 4k broadcasting is rare and 4k streaming is now a premium (and not always with a good bitstream, which matters a lot more) when once was offered as a cost-free future, imagine 8k that would roughly quadruple the amount of data required to transmit it (and transmit speee is not linear, 4x the speed would probably be at least 8x the cost).
And I seriously think noone except the nerdiest of nerds would notice a difference between 4k and 8k.
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TV manufacturers are idiots.
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That's usually the case
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Not only does it not exist, it isn't wanted. People are content watching videos on YouTube and Netflix. They don't care for 4k. Even if they pay extra for Netflix 4k (which I highly doubt they do) I still question if they are watching 4k with their bandwidth and other limiting factors, which means they're not watching 4k and are fine with it.
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I don't want 8K. I want my current 4K streaming to have less pixilation. I want my sound to be less compressed. Make them closer to Ultra BluRay disc quality before forcing 8K down our throats... unless doing that gives us better 4K overall.
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Yeah 4K means jack if it’s compressed to hell, if you end up with pixels being repeated 4x to save on storage and bandwidth, you’ve effectively just recreated 1080p without upscaling.
Just like internet. I’d rather have guaranteed latency than 5Gbps.
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Bingo, if I were still collecting DVDs/HD DVDs like I was in the 90's, it might be an issue. Streaming services and other online media routed through the TV can hardly buffer to keep up with play speed at 720, so what the fuck would I want with a TV that can show a higher quality of picture which it can also not display without stutter-buffering the whole of a 1:30:00 movie?
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Bro I honest to God can't see the difference between 1080 and 4k, you could put them both next to me and I'd struggle to point out which is which. We don't need 8k. Enough is enough
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You could probably see the difference on a big enough TV. The kind of thing you only see in home theaters. I'm not sure you could make a big enough TV for 8k to matter.
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Like watching a movie in 720p vs 1080p in the notebook, you don't see the difference. Once you try the same in a TV you notice how the 720p looks like shit.
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Not just size of TV but quality of TV. Not all 4k panels are the same. Spend lots of money on a kickass OLED TV and you'll see the difference between 1080p and 4k. Assuming both sources are of high quality of course. Comparing a high quality 1080p vs a low quality 4k isn't enough.
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I would much rather have 1080p content at a high enough bitrate that compression artifacts are not noticeable.
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Not exactly surprising, considering the TV’s and monitors are outpacing the contemt creators and gaming development.
A lot of gamers don’t even have GPU’s that can crank out 4K at the frame rates most monitors are capable of. So 8K won’t do much for you. And movies and regular TV? Man, I’m happy there’s 4K available.
A 4K screen will be more than most folks need right now, so buying an 8K at the moment is just wasted money. Like buying a Ferrari and only ever driving 25 mph.
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Also to add to this. 8k sounds 2x as large as 4k. But that isn't true. 8k is four times the pixels of 4k, so can you imagine what kind of GPU or content stream you will need to make sense...
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Also I think the improvements in HDR and brightness recently are more substantial than the update to 8K. At normal viewing TV distance you’d be hard pressed to see the individual pixels, even on a 1080p screen.
Even for PCs there isn’t much reason to go about 2k screens (1440p).
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4k monitors in portrait orientation are amazing for productivity. It's a shame more people don't do this
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This is why I often refer to 4K as UHD: The WCG and HDR being available to consumers is far more impactful than end users having a few more pixels.
(Also because I'm a snarky pedant, and consumer 4K UHD is only 3840 wide, while DCI4K is actually 4096)
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But I need the surface brightness of the Sun in my living room! It adds so much depth to the characters and stories!
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It's just a race. Perhaps you don't need the biggest and newest available thing, but you also will subconsciously discard what's "less" than what you already have or what's normal as obsolete. This creates an engine for a race, where good faith players can't compete.
Like with web browsers, a hypertext networked system even with advanced formatting, executable content and sandboxing can be so simple, that there'd be hundreds of independent implementations. But if you always race the de-facto standards with the speed you the monopolist group can maintain, and good faith competitors can't, then you'll always be the "best".
The Matrix movie actually talks about that, with its "there's no spoon" moment. It's not a usual market game, it's a meta-market game. And most people don't understand the rules of the meta layer, being sitting ducks there.
Nobody can compete with the industry leaders on their field. And unlike with steel or gasoline or even embedded electronics production, there's no relativity in the field at all. But the new possible fields are endless. Everyone can discover new pastures here, because it's not discovery, it's conception. But since that's counterintuitive, and the network effects work on psychology too, most people are not trying.
It's a bit like military logic, there were Western "controlled escalation" doctrines, because slow gradual escalation works in favor of the side with most resources, thus the West, and the Soviet "scientific-technical revolution" doctrines, which despite sounding stupid is a correct name, when you're the second in the race, your best chance lies in being unpredictable, unreasonable and changing the rules. One of the reasons Soviet doctrines gained such a crappy reputation as compared to Western ones is that, well, they are kinda similar to preventively going all out guns-a-blazing before you are forced to fight by the enemy's rules, which requires willpower from those making the decisions (and also capability to, well, do anything scientific and technical, LOL), and which means you prepare for some sort of general battle (that be nuclear war, or short highly concentrated offensives, such stuff) at the expense of "aggressive negotiations" scenarios. So - in our time anyone trying to heal the Silicon Valley's effects is playing USSR and can only expect anything good from breaking rules.
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Interesting post.
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they will just use a shitty upscale algorithm.
You don't sell performance to people, you sell numbers.
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Another possibility for why consumers don't seem to care about 8k is the common practice by content owners and streaming services charging more for access to 4k over 1080p.
Normalizing that practice invites the consumer to more closely scrutinize the probable cost of something better than 4k compared to the probable return.
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So many things have reached not only diminishing returns, but no returns whatsoever. I don't have a single problem that more technology will solve.
I just don't care about any of this technical shit anymore. I only have two eyes, and there's only 24 hours in a day. I already have enough entertainment in perfectly acceptable quality, with my nearly 15 year old setup.
I've tapped out from the tech scene.
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I've hit that same wall. I'm perfectly happy with a $300 smartphone, because it does absolutely everything I need to do, fast enough to not make me want to throw it across the room, and well enough that I don't notice the difference between it and a high-end device.
Do I notice the difference after three or four years of having the device and finally upgrading it to a new device in that price range? Sure, I notice it. But day to day use, I don't notice it and that's what matters.
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I don't understand most of the things I used to enjoy as a kid. I went from radio to cassette to CD to MiniDisc to MP3s. Now I'm supposed to endlessly change things around to keep up with media players and codecs and whatevers. No thanks.
I used to enjoy programming and tinkering with computers and microcontrollers.
Now I have to be an expert in 15 unrelated fields and softwares because even a simple job of turning a button press into a single output pulse is a weeks-long nightmare of IDEs and OSes and embedded Linuxes and 32 bit microcontrollers and environments, none of which are clear and straightforward, and all have subtle inter-dependencies.
So to turn on a LED with a switch now requires a multi-core 16GB main PC (so limited! You need more!) so I can open a multi-GB IDE (that can support every language ever invented) that requires an SSD just to be able to navigate the 35 windows it opens in less than an hour, so I can use AI to copy-paste hundreds of lines of boiler plate code I don't understand, so I can type a few lines of code?
And that's not counting all the new companies and architectures.
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If we had the 90's economy there would be a bunch of folks looking to get 8k tvs.
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Most Americans are out of money and can't find good jobs. We are clinging to our old TVs and cars and computers and etc. for dear life, as we hope for better days.
And what can you even watch in true 8K right now? Some YouTube videos?
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But but but, don't you want better hardware so we can read your brain waves to automatically show you something you're in the mood to watch while we save that info and sell it to someone who wants to control your nervous system later?
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Calm down there Edward Nigma.
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If I were in the market for a new monitor and I could get an 8k monitor for under $1000 I'd consider it, but right now if one of my monitors broke I'd just be getting another 4k to replace it. The price isn't worth it for me to have high DPI.
For TV my only justification for my 4k TV is that it was free.
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I don't even want 4K. 1080p is more than good enough.
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You may not want 4K but I bet your ass wants a OLED TV because those are fucking amazing and I would be concerned if youdidn’t want one
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Even my smartphone doesn't have OLED display.
If I was in the market for a new TV I'd probably go for an OLED assuming image burn-in is no longer an issue with them, but I'll happily use my 15 year old LED TV for as long as it lasts. I can tell the difference in contrast when side by side with LED/LCD but in normal daily use I don't pay any attention to it.
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I also see no use, but I also stuck to 1024 far too long (also because that thing just kept working)
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I've still got the last good plasma TV. Power usage is horrible but the picture is great.
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I also think that 1080 is fine for normal living room distance. In my case, though, I use a 42" 4K as a monitor, where I have the equivalent of 4 1080 monitors. No gaming, but for my use it's more practical than multiple monitors.
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It's only the equivalent of you don't use any scaling, do you?
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I wish my eyesight was so good that I could see obvious flaws in a 4k image.
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It creates more problems than it solves. You would need an order of magnitude more processing power to play a game on it. Personally I would prefer 4K at a higher framerate. Even 1080 if it improves response.
Video in 8K are massive. You need better codecs to handle them, and they aren't that widely supported. Storage is more expensive than it was a decade ago.
Also, there is no content. Nobody wants to store and transmit such massive amounts of data over the internet.
HDMI cables will fail sooner at higher resolutions. That 5 year old cable will begin dropping out when you try it at 8k.
4K is barely worth the tradeoffs.
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A couple things - every jump like that in resolution is about a 10% increase in size at the source level. So 2K is ~250GB, 4K is ~275GB. Haven't had to deal with 8K myself, yet, but it would be at ~300GB. And then you compress all that for placea like netflix and the size goes down drastically. Add to that codec improvements over time (like x264 -> x265) and you might actually end up with an identical size compressed while carrying 4x more pixels.
HDMI is digital. It doesn't start failing because of increased bandwidth; there's nothing consumable. It either works or it doesn't.
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Yeah, legitimate 8K use cases are ridiculously niche, and I mean... really only have value if you're talking about an utterly massive display, probably around 90 inches or larger, and even then in a pretty small room.
The best use cases I can think of are for games where you're already using DLSS, and can just upscale from the same source resolution to 8K rather than 4K? Maybe something like an advanced CRT filter that can better emulate a real CRT with more resolution to work with, where a pixel art game leaves you with lots of headroom for that effect? Maybe there's value in something like an emulated split screen game, to effectively give 4 players their own 4K TV in an N64 game or something?
But uh... yeah, all use cases that are far from the average consumer. Most people I talk to don't even really appreciate 1080p->4K, and 4X-ing your resolution again is a massive processing power ask in a world where you can't just... throw together multiple GPUs in SLI or something. Even if money is no object, 8K in mainline gaming will require some ugly tradeoffs for the next several years, and probably even forever if devs keep pushing visuals and targeting upscaled 4K 30/60 on the latest consoles.
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4K for me as a developer means that I can have a couple of source files and a browser with the API documentation open at the same time. I reckon I could use legitimately use an 8K screen - get a terminal window or two open as well, keep an eye on builds and deployments while I'm working on a ticket.
Now yes - gaming and watching video at 8K. That's phenomenally niche, and very much a case of diminishing returns. But some of us have to work for a living as well, alas, and would like them pixels.
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4k ought to be enough for anybody
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1080p is enough for anybody, 4k is fun sometimes though.
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I was goofing on the old legend of Bill Gates saying "640K ought to be enough for anybody.” which is questionable he said it, but that's for another thread, another time.
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The only time I care enough about higher than 1080p displays is on my computer monitors so I can multitask on one display without UI elements getting mangled. If I'm playing a game or watching a video, I really can't tell between 1080 and 4k
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Antialiasing is still absolute trash.
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I think 8k has a use, just not in consumer televisions for things like Netflix or gaming. 8k's real use is most likely in the medical field where high high high high detail is extremely important.
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Why would the medical field need 8k screens? They can just zoom in on a lower res display y'know? Nobody is looking at a screen with a magnifying glass
I think a possible application for 8k displays is the huge displays where the viewer is extremely close to the display. But that would still just be the same pixel density as a lower res display.
Another area I think high pixel density might be useful for is patterning. Like PCB manufacturing and other photoresist stuff. But that's a problem already solved by much cheaper technologies
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I work in construction and the "digital" plan table has a resolution issue.
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Fun fact; Here in Brazil, the cheaper tv models being sold are 720p, and a lot of people buy them and don't even know what video resolution is, neither they feel like missing something lol
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In any developing country with low incomes but heavy social media presence and smartphone usage, most people care more about the content and how much they're actually getting entertained than bothering about quality and size.
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Yeah, and the television is far better there than it is here in America! For instance, you have live action shows based on timeless children's novels instead of the same things rehashed time and again, like here in America! :-(
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Is an adaptation of a timeless children’s novel not something that has been rehashed time and again?
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I have 2 4K tvs, one used as a monitor. I'm now rewatching some 70's - 80's shows. When the intro starts, I'm acutely aware of the low res, but as soon as the show starts, I get into the content, and I really don't notice the resolution.
If you focus on the resolution instead of the content, maybe the content is not that engaging.
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i can't tell the difference between 1080 and 4k at the distance i use it. let alone 8k.
we already have nice enough tvs. what about you guys focus on healthcare and shit now?
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At a typical distance of 12-15ft, people cannot tell the difference between 720, 1080 and 4K because human eyes have a limited resolving power.
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yes exactly!
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I'd buy a 8k TV, provided that it has no smarts, no WiFi, no TV tuner and its price isn't over 5% than a 4k TV
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So an 8K monitor.
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Somehow when it's called a "monitor" it quadruples the price.
I can't really accept that a basic 4k 27" monitor without even speakers costs the same of a 4k 65" TV with HDR, deeper blacks, WiFi and it even comes bundled with dozens of spyware for added convenience
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I haven't seen this mentioned but apart from 8K being expensive, requiring new production pipelines, unweildley for storage and bandwidth, unneeded, and not fixing g existing problems with 4K, it requires MASSIVE screens to reap benefits.
There are several similar posts, but suffice to say, 8K content is only perceived by average eyesight at living room distances when screens are OVER 100 inches in diameter at the bare minimum. That's 7 feet wide.
Source: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship
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Tell me Legolas, what do your elven eyes see?
Fucking pixels Aragorn, it makes me want to puke. And what the fuck is up with these compression artifacts? What tier of Netflix do you have?
Sorry Legolas, could we just enjoy the movie?
Maybe if the dwarf stops stinking up the place. And don't think I didn't see him take that last chicken wing, fucking dwarves.
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Not sure where 1440p would land, but after using one for a while, I was going to upgrade my monitor to 4k but realized I'm not disappointed with my current resolution at all and instead opted for a 1440p ultrawide and haven't regretted it at all.
My TV is 4k, but I have no intention of even seriously looking at anything 8k.
Screen specs seem like a mostly solved problem. Would be great if focus could shift to efficiency improvements instead of adding more unnecessary power. Actually, boot time could be way better, too (ie get rid of the smart shit running on a weak processor, emphasis on the first part).
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8K would only work well in a movie theater type setting I guess.
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4k 25" was worth it for me but I only spent about £140 on it so YMMV it's nice but not essential and after 1080p the extra pixels only add so much
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so if you're in the movie theatre sit as close to the screen as possible
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I don't know if it changed, but when I started looking around to replace my set about 2 years ago, it was a nightmare of marketing "gotcha"s.
Some TVs were advertising 240fps, but only had 60fps panels with special tricks to double framerate twice or something silly. Other TVs offered 120fps, but only on one HDMI port. More TVs wouldn't work without internet. Even more had shoddy UIs that were confusing to navigate and did stuff like default to their own proprietary software showing Fox News on every boot (Samsung). I gave up when I found out that most of them had abysmal latency since they all had crappy software running that messed with color values for no reason. So I just went and bought the cheapest TV at a bargain overstock store. Days of shopping time wasted, and a customer lost.
If I were shown something that advertised with 8K at that point, I'd have laughed and said it was obviously a marketing lie like everything else I encountered.
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What's the point? Even if you pay extra for "4K" streaming, it's compressed to hell and the quality is no better than 1080p. What are you going to even watch on an 8K TV?
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Nothing with Bluray stagnant at 4K. Not that I care, my aging eyes are fine sticking with 4K forever.
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Yeah, no shit. The only possible use is gaming, and even PC owners have been upscaling for some time now.
The only case where you might even notice a difference by going to 8K resolution is high end VR, but that's no reason to have 8K in a TV.
Even 4K is overkill for most movies. The HDR is the selling point there, which I'll admit looks nice.
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Agree that it’s HDR, not actually resolution that makes that much difference.
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It's useful in photography. 8K is 33 megapixels, which some modern cameras can exceed (whereas 4K is 8 megapixels which every camera exceeds).
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Who is out here filming at that resolution anyway? Cannot fathom the file sizes of anything made for these TVs
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A lot of people are filming in 6K or 8K, but only because it gives them more editing leeway when the final video is delivered in 4K.
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Higher res matters when filming, because you can reframe scenes in editing without losing resolution when downscaling the final result.
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I think that resolution materially benefits the medical field rather than the entertainment business.
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Well the good thing is info storage cost and processing power tends to increase over time, so that’s one side of their argument handled; and things tend to keep progressing technologically over time, so I’d assume 8k would eventually replace 4k, and so on and so on; but the human eye does have a limit to what it can resolve- so at some point 2d images will probably just be as good as we need them to be
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8k is going to be for things like billboards, movies, and jumbotron-scale applications.
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Here I am still downloading the 720p versions of movies and not minding at all. If I want hyper resolution imagery I just go outside.
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Watching 720p on anything bigger than a phone screen is crazy tho
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I download movies in 1080p but TV shows are almost always 720p unless its something visually stunning which could go up to 4k.
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Nobody will ever need an 8K TV, but 8K content would be nice on a (purely theoretical atm) pleasant to use head mounted display, one day
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I work off metered data. I’m happy with 360p.
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There was a while that I exclusively used apps where I could lower the bitrate of music I listened to. Because I'm not rocking crazy good headsets and such for when I needed it, and I really saw no reason to use up larger amounts of data when I was listening to music over the sound of a lawnmower walking around the yard for an hour. If I was going to leave music on and not have wifi, it just didn't seem worth it.
Also if you had poor bandwidth in an area, it plays better
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Yup - not a solution for everyone but there are typically Quality Of Service (QOS) services on routers that will do something similar - where it will target a certain threshold.
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I got a 4k monitor, and I could barely tell the difference with 1080p
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Do you play games? If so, do you really not see the jaggies?
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Same. Now I've connected my Steam Deck to it, but set the resolution to 1080p. All I ever do on it is watch YouTube and Twitch anyways.
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I would be fine with an 8k TV if there was 8k content and they were affordable. I haven’t purchased a TV in over a decade however and my TVs all work fine so I’m not even in the market
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I still sometimes have hiccups with streaming 4k content. I'd rather save bandwidth than stream 8k.
Until the pipelines are bigger or compression algorithms improve, I'd rather pause at 4k.
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I'm happy with 1080p content. I have a 4k TV and from the couch I can't see a difference. I would be perfectly happy with a bargain 4k TV, bigger the better.
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it depends on how big your tv is in your field of view, so a function of size and distance. and obviously how good your vision is.
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My TV is also 4K but my amplifier which eats all the inputs can only do 1080p. 4k quality on that 65" is better, but not by that much that I'd throw 500+€ for a new amp since the current one works just fine and it fulfils all my needs on a TV/media set.
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Maybe if they add 3D, people will buy them!
/s
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Tbf one if the use cases for display technologies with high pixel density is vr headsets.
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Yeah, very much looking forward to headsets with 8k panels. Most are up to 4k now, and it's getting pretty good. If it stays at 4k for a bit, that would be fine. But it's definitely an area where 8k will still be a very noticeable upgrade.
Even if the only short-term practical use for an 8k panel is how far away a 4k or 1080p screen would be clear to read in an augmented reality situation, that would be reason enough. But I personally will gladly lower quality settings to run VR games in 8k instead of 4k as well.
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8K content is too storage hungry. My pirate ship is already bursting at the seams with some 4K but mostly 1080. I have 130TB of media, if it was in 8K I would need a water cooled server farm.
That's the REAL reason for lack of 8K interest, the pirates are not demanding it. Not until 100TB drives are available for a reasonable price.
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Wait what? Are you implying that if there was demand for 8k content, then pirates would make it available? The content has to exist in order for pirates to release it.
I can download a remux of the 4K Lawrence of Arabia transfer because it was filmed in 70mm and the studio transferred it at 4K. It’s 70mm film, so it’s ~8-12K equivalent, but to actually get that resolution they would have to scan that film at that resolution, then go through the whole video workflow, color correction, whatever tf idk I’m not a video engineer, at that resolution, and render out the final version at that resolution.
Pirates aren’t doing that, they’re ripping physical or digital releases. And there’s no point in downloading an 8K upscale of a 4K release, just let your TV or your Shield or Infuse handle the upscaling.
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I am saying that the ability to store the content is needed before people will be able to make the demand for it. So take streaming platforms for instance. They won't want to build more server farms and instead just upgrade what they have. So once 100TB drives are readily available they will start upgrading and then influence the media companies to start scanning at 8k. The people scanning the damn movies will need to store it too. You know whoever is the first to start offering the content be it Netflix or Disney will start a chain reaction and then 8k will take off but I'm sure it will be a slower build up compared to 4k.
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The real reason for lack of interest is streaming quality of 4k has been getting worse for years, and is still like 1/10th the quality of 4k BluRay, with enormous levels of compression and artifacts.
8k requires 4x the data. We all know that means every subscription would charge at least 2x more to maintain profit margins of unlimited growth for vulture capitalism, and they'd skimp on the extra data too; leaving users with nothing better than the current 4k.
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That's true, and to add to that, most mobile phone and many land Internet based connections are not unlimited and have caps. Nobody wants to stream a few 8k movies and use up their entire monthly cap in one shot.
-speaking as a US user, many countries offer unlimited as standard but not the evil empire.
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2tb drives aren't as cheap as I would hope
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I hear anything at or above 8k resolution negates the need for anti aliasing entirely... But I feel that my pc would would be running at or around 10-15 fps for most games I would care about anti aliasing on.
Nice in theory, definitely can't handle that many pixels in reality.
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Half the games I play are 2D, the other half are not overly demanding either. Wonder what you would need to run deep rock galactic at 8k 144hz? Probably one of the more demanding games I have played lately. But if I was to spend money on better equipment for that game it would be sound equipment.
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yeah..."check out Stardew Valley at 8K!" or buy a 8K TV to watch Simpsons.
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DLSS Ultra Performance
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probably because i dont even care about 1080p tvs. they all look the same.
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And of course the comment section with "16k around the coner, progress doesn't stop".
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I can not tell the improvement since 1080P. Are these TVs letting us see into the future?
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I like how the article immediately tries placing the blame on the consumer. When in reality it’s the companies putting the cart before the horse and then being shocked when it doesn’t work out.
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"How come they don't fall for 'bigger number better' anymore?"
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I still use a ten year old 1080p Sony TV, and I’ve yet to see a new <$1k TV with a nicer picture than what I have. Granted I don’t really consume any higher resolution content anyway 🤷♂️
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It's been observed that the porn industry is often one of the first adapters of new media tech before they become commonplace, but I'm not sure some things need to be shown in that high a resolution.
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i read the same comment about 1080p and 4k porn but here we are.
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Maybe people will be satisfied when they can put their TV under a microscope to determine the actor's sperm count...
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It's not even really true; it's a salacious fact that was passed around and everyone agreed. For example, there's no real evidence that VHS won over Betamax because of porn. Everyone accepted that fact uncritically.
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How about uncompressed 4k before going to even more compression 8k. I have seen uncompressed 8k content on an 8k TV. I couldn't tell the difference between it and a good quality 4k picture, and I'm admittedly a quality snob. I can tell the difference in 1080 vs 4k pretty easily even on cheap tvs, it's just virtually non existent at 8k vs 4k in tv sizes up to 80 inch beyond viewing inches away from the screen.
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That would be... (checks math)... about 5.972 Gbps of bandwidth, assuming just non-HDR content and 30 fps. Probably impossible for most people.
Less compression could make sense, but literally no compression would be a colossal waste of bandwidth and storage.
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Oh but what if it was in 3D!
Remember that time?
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Maybe if we curve the TV?
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I’d buy one if it came with every David Attenborough (or similar) nature documentary included. I don’t need 8k for games or movies or anything else but I’ll watch the shit out of whatever high budget nature documentaries are produced and put my nose against the screen to see the critter details.
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I'll take one! Well, two really. One large one for TV/media viewing and one to replace my 43" 4k monitor. Quadrupling the resolution on that would be amazing.
The difference would be minimal on the media screen, TBH, but Ive seen them in person and can tell the difference. It's just not a big enough difference to warrant replacing what I have.
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I use a VR headset as my PC display and i can choose whatever size or resolution and i've been using it in 8K for about a year for work to have many smaller windows that all look pretty clear. My bottleneck is probably the quest pro resolution so i'm looking forward to better headsets soon.
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I chased high resolution for a while then realized my eyes are not so good. Now I just save money by using low-res displays. The same thing with my ears saved me from a creeping case of audiophilia.
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I want a new fucking 3D TV. I'm so mad every single manufacturer gave up on that.
Yes, a lot of 3D content was awful, headache-inducing, and bad... But tons of it was done very well and looks amazing.
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Manufacturers did give up on that relatively quick. 3DS was a thing around that time too.
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Yeah, and 640kb RAM Ought to be Enough for Anyone.
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Except we're in the equivalent of the '70s/Z80 era, there's little to no need or content for 8K.
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Yet. The capitalist factories have to spin, they will find a reason/way to "encourage" another standard change, only it might take a few years. Lucas will re-release the original trilogy in a new cut he always envisioned, you'll be able to observe blackheads on your fav politicians nose, but it will happen, as it always did in the media buisnesses. Maybe it won't be screens, but laser projectors (id rather expect that), but 8k and then whatever-faptylion-k will come in into standard eventually because capitalism demands constant expansion.
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LASIK actually made a huge difference in being able to appreciate the sharpness of 4K, but I doubt 8K is as big a leap.
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4k is nice but at 1440p the diminishing returns are pretty obvious doubt 8k is somehow going to change that
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I want one but my GPU can't drive games at 8k and 100+ FPS. Also there's no media for it.
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games at 8k and 100+ FPS
You will never be able to game at 8k. Modern games run with 720p and 60 fps on the best GPUs, then "AI enhanced" to a vaseline coated 4k
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I have a 3080 and have all frame gen tech turned off, and still, almost every game I play can hit 60+ fps and 2k resolution, a lot can do 144. I get your point, but it's greatly exaggerated.
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I run DOOM eternal at 4k with a stable 120 fps (not the AI enhanced interpolation garbage) with a 3080...
I couldn't imagine going back to gaming at 60fps and is a big reason I hate console ports.
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Speaking as a developer; I've a 4K screen which is amazing for having loads of source files open at the same time, and also works for old or undemanding games. Glorious Eggroll's version of Proton has all the FSR patches in it, so you can 'upscale anything'. Almost any modern game, I'm going to be running at lower resolution, usually either 1440p or the slightly odd 2954 x 1662. Generally, highest-quality graphics and upscaling looks better than medium-quality native to me, for games where I have to compromise.
I would be interested in an 8K display for coding, as long as the price is reasonable. I'm not spending five grand, that would be crazy. But I'd still be upscaling for playing games, as basically no GPU could drive that many pixels.
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I found quite some 4k movies being more noisy than their 2k pendant. So whats the point?
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maybe that was the remastering process issues. also maybe 4k movies are not actually 4ks and are AI upscalers from actual 2k masters.
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My viewing position is about 330cm/11ft from the wall where my tv is mounted. That works out to roughly 80” television for 4K viewing pleasure. https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship
8k would be ridiculous, and the compression would be a significant factor.
Remember when ISP companies went after people who used over 500GB in a month? I remember.
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And yet people want 4k screens on phones and 13in tablets...
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I'll take an 8k computer monitor though. In fact, send two. Kthnx.
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I can't see ever owning an 8k display unless it's like 200 inches... The ones that are available now are too expensive to be a justifiable purchase and there's not really an abundance of content that takes advantage of the format.
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I mostly use my TV for gaming and watching old movies and anime.
The former task will be unviable at 8k and make my GPU cry, and the latter one makes 8k unnecessary.
I really don’t see the point in 8k displays right now.
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One thing, my current 4k TV/monitor does a pretty nice job upscaling 1080p. It, of course, doesn't look as good as native 4k, but it looks considerably better than 1080p not upscaled. So even without native 8k content, there is some value in being able to upscale 4k content to 8k.
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lol but you can have FHD the same size as that tv lmao
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Also have you seen 720HD with 10 bit color? Looks better than 1080p when it was released. Seen 1080p 14 bit color? Looks better than 4k when it came out.
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Makes sense:
No Media support.
And also on Monitors and Tvs i don't care if it's a. 1080p or 1440p of 4k give me 1080p -
BR standards haven’t caught up, that’s probably the answer for most who can afford it.
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Put them into Microsoft Windows as mandatory enabled or something.
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Honestly, at 3m (10 feet) I can't see the pixels at 1080p. My corrected vision is no longer 20/20
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331 comments
Nothing is released in 8k so why would someone want something nothing is in?
Computer monitor with multiple simultaneous 4k displays?
Grasping at straws here
PS3 has no games lmao
Nothing is produced in 8K either.