Ars Technica reported today that “The TV industry finally concedes that the future may not be in 8K” (link).
While 8K TVs started with great promise in 2012, sales never caught on and all TV manufacturers have stopped making sets except for Samsung. (LG stopped manufacturing 8K TVs last year, but is still selling 8K TVs until stock runs out.)
Problems with this format were many: high purchase cost, lack of native 8K content, and the difficulty most viewers had in seeing a difference between 8K and 4K at normal viewing distances.
The article is worthwhile reading.
Note in this 2024 chart from Omdia, that 8K TV set sales are too small to even graph. Credit: Omdia
Omdia research illustrates the problem: While 8K sales peaked in 2022, they were never large enough to even appear on this chart.
However, as several readers pointed out as we discussed 8K in the past, there’s a difference between 8K for distribution (i.e. TV sets) and acquisition. Higher resolution media – 8K, 12K, even, sigh, 17K – has value when feeding source video into a video wall, LED volume, or scaling 8K regions into 4K projects.
For distribution, though, the market has settled on 4K. Growth areas now are in HDR, OLED screens and other display technology. As well, there’s no value in streaming 8K via social media if your audience is watching it on standard HD or 4K computer monitors.
While technology is essential to today’s story-telling, ever-higher resolution is not as compelling as we once thought.
5 Responses to 8K TVs are Dead – But There’s Still Value in 8K
Interesting update, Larry. Streaming services and broadcasters still deliver mostly in 4K (even gaming consoles haven’t bought into 8K). The high-speed bandwidth required for 8K is beyond most consumers’ needs right now.
8K TVs have largely failed as a consumer product due to high costs and a lack of content, but 8K still has practical value for professional workflows, future-proof capture, and high-quality upscaling of 4K media.
That may change down the road, but right now people are already having a hard enough time managing tech updates across all their devices, adopting new software, and dealing with the impact of AI and cybersecurity on their workflows.
Philippe:
Yup. AI and cybersecurity are two issues I never expected to have as much of an impact as they do.
Larry
Good to know. Never believed in more than 4K as a consumer choice. Technology have never been essential for story telling.
Most…watch on your phone
Mark:
Absolutely true, which, at best, is 2K. 2622 x 1206 pixels on an iPhone 17. 1/4 the resolution of 4K and 1/8 that of 8K.
Larry