‘8K’ IS ON THE WAY
Which brands are promising 8K TVs to reach Australia this year?
CES in Las Vegas brought confirmation that we will finally see 8K televisions arriving on Australian shelves in 2019. But how will 8K content arrive in our lounge rooms?
8K coming to Australia
LG, Samsung, Sony and TCL all revealed that they’re bringing 8K televisions to Australia this year, spruiking their wares at CES in Las Vegas. But while 8K demo reels on the stands were looking spectacular, four times sharper than 4K, Aussies shouldn’t expect to get the full 8K experience at home any time soon.
For starters, not all of these new televisions will arrive with 8K-compatible HDMI 2.1 connectors, with the HDMI 2.1 standard only having been ratified in November.
Nevertheless Samsung and TCL have both committed to shipping 8K televisions with HDMI2.1 active. Meanwhile, the first LG and Sony 8K televisions are destined to ship with HDMI 2.0b — awaiting a 2.1 firmware update later in the year.
While we’ve previously seen vendors jerryrig 8K connections by bundling several HDMI inputs, the 8K demos on LG’s CES 2019 stand came courtesy of televisions and video players running pre-production HDMI 2.1 firmware.
HDMI 2.1 not only brings support for 8K resolution but also UHD (4K) High Frame Rate (HFR) content at up to 120 frames per second, which looks likely to become more widely available before 8K finds its feet.
For gamers, HDMI 2.1 will bring Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) for smooth motion.
On the audio side, HDMI 2.1 brings high bit-rate audio with an Enhanced Audio Return Channel (eARC) supporting uncompressed 5.1 and 7.1 audio as well as the Dolby Atmos and DTS:X object-based sound formats.
Of course those HDMI 2.1 inputs won’t be much good for 8K if we’re still waiting for HDMI 2.1-compatible 8K players to hit the market. A handful of HDMI 2.1 devices and cables were demonstrated at the HDMI Licensing Administrator’s CES stand, but Samsung for one says it is yet to confirm HDMI 2.1 for any devices other than its televisions.
Netflix and Prime 8K
So as it was for 4K, it looks like the streaming giants will be the first to bring 8K content into the lounge room. This path also has the benefit of bypassing the connections issue by delivering the 8K media direct to the TV as streaming data.
Samsung is already working with Amazon Prime Video on an 8K streaming format which supports HDR10+, but can’t say when it might be up and running. Arch-rival Netflix is likely to do the same, perhaps in partnership with Dolby Vision and LG — reinforcing the battle lines already drawn in the advanced HDR wars.
For now, even if there was enough 8K content for these streaming giants to make the leap, many Australians still lack the broadband speeds required to handle it. YouTube’s early 8K trials demanded 50Mbps for a single video stream. Many homes don’t yet have the bandwidth for 4K streams, let alone 8K.
Of course, 4K television has been a success despite also launching with a dearth of content, players or bandwidth. But with many purveyors of 8K currently spending much of their time trying to explain why we need 8K at all, if that translates as a widespread consumer indifference to this next (and potentially final) resolution jump, it will remain to be seen how quickly the 8K ecosystem can find its feet.