EDLINES

Yes, 8K TV is going to be a thing. But after that?

The big TV focus of this year’s major electronics shows, starting with CES in Vegas, is and will be 8K resolution. We saw the first consumer 8K televisions last April, when Sharp used IFA’s pre-show press event to announce the European launch of 8K. We saw Samsung’s first 8K models at IFA itself in September. And as Adam Turner reports for us from CES 2019 in Vegas (p16), at least three brands have committed to having 8K TVs in Australia by the end of 2019.

But the question everybody is asking (and which manufacturers are spending much of their time trying to answer) is of course — do we need 8K? It seems like we only just got 4K. And on a 55-inch TV, which some people still consider quite large, even 4K is of limited advantage unless you’re sitting really close. In his Ultra-HD Blu-ray reviews this issue, Stephen Dawson notes that describing the video quality of 4K often has something of the feel of trying to describe, or even perceive, the differences between 98.8% and 98.9%.

And that’s for 4K over 2K. So is quadrupling that 4K pixel count to 8K a redundant upgrade? Relevant answers come perhaps from traditional broadcast planning and, secondly, from simple inevitability.

Off the map

Before Netflix arrived to redefine our viewing habits, it was the world’s broadcasters who set the standards for changes in TV technology. And 4K was never on their roadmap. The plan — and it was a nice, slow plan for generational change — was to jump straight from full-HD’s 2K right up to 8K. So 4K was, as IHS Markit’s Paul Gray once described it, “the resolution that escaped from the wild”. Panel fabricators realised they could make 4K, so TV manufacturers released 4K, under the ‘Field of Dreams’ maxim “If you build it, they will come”. After all, TV sales are driven by the need to have something new, something to promote, preferably something rivals don’t have. It was HD, then 1080, then 4K; now it’s 8K. That’s the inevitability.

And now 8K has been built, 8K content will indeed come. It may never come on a physical disc, mind you; streaming technologies are now several jumps ahead of optical disc technology, and even UHD Blu-ray’s future isn’t fully certain; the format enjoyed an unexpectedly rapid take-off, partly thanks to the first 4K disc spinners being amazingly cheap by historical standards for new formats. But if Oppo can’t make a buck selling the world’s best 4K player, are they really just a support vehicle for 4K TVs? And once video streaming goes a level beyond, will 4K discs survive? (We hope so.)

Not that 8K streaming will be easy for much of Australia, in which I include my home, which can’t get internet speeds capable of 4K streaming, let alone 8K. To be honest I’m not too upset about being late in the NBN roll-out, as hopefully by the time it reaches us, it won’t be so crap. Though it’s now a race as to whether the NBN or 5G will provide the best price/speed/datacap deal.

So I’m all for 8K as a standard. For one thing it will drive the development of better AV connections, which is a good thing. I’m no fan of HDMI, which has weasled its way into being the compulsory consumer AV connection through its persuasion of Hollywood et al that copyright control must rule over all other considerations. The new, very latest HDMI 2.1 will deliver 8K up to 60 frames per second, but not at 120Hz, which is where forward-looking broadcasters hope to go. (One broadcast maxim is ‘no spatial upgrade without temporal upgrade’, i.e. don’t increase the resolution without also allowing higher frame rates.) There are better faster data connections available, and they are widely used in professional equipment. Still, HDMI 2.1 does allow 4K at

120Hz, which sports broadcasters are particularly excited about. There’s also more to HDMI 2.1 than 8K and High Frame Rate — LG’s next-gen of 4K OLEDs, for example, will have HDMI 2.1 so they can support QMS (quick media switching), eARC (enhanced audio return channel), QFT (quick frame transport), ALLM (auto low latency mode), and VRR (variable refresh rate for gamers). Some of these will need the new cables (groan), some won’t.

Such additional enhancements will become increasingly important in future years, because it’s widely believed that 8K will be the final resolution, as it were. Yes, ever ever. Unless someone gives us all bionic eyeballs, there’s no point in going higher.

How will TV manufacturers compete then, eh? What will persuade us to buy new TVs? QMS, QFT and the rest are unlikely to have us rushing to the store, so the race will be on to find new attractions. Aesthetic design may become a key differentiator — the four TVs in the pic below are TCL’s ‘Living Window’ range, which looked superb at last year’s IFA show. And there’s wow factor galore from the roll-up OLED TVs shown by LG at CES (pictured above).

As for 8K, it may be pointless on a 55-inch TV, but then the one trend in TVs which shows no sign of stopping is larger sizes. And size is bewitching. Over Christmas I had at home Epson’s EH-LS100 projector — a 1080p ultra-short-throw projector (as we go to press we await news of Epson’s incoming UHD models), and to be honest I thought my wife would dislike both the fairly bulky projector and the 101-inch image (delivered from its lens position a mere 62cm from the wall). But no, this week she was begging me to pack up the lovely Sony OLED reviewed on p50 this issue, and get the Epson back in place in time for her to watch the Blu-ray release of A Star is Born (over and over again). So 8K will do its job as screens get ever larger. After that — well, all bets are off. TV manufacturers will need to come up with a whole new set of tricks to persuade us there’s a reason to upgrade from there.