Technology

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.

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.

I would much rather have 1080p content at a high enough bitrate that compression artifacts are not noticeable.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Source: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship

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.

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.

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.

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?

I watch torrented shows with VLC on my laptop. Why would I want a giant smarphone that spies on me?

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.

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?

Will it make the 480x720 videos I watch on my 4K tv look twice as good?

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.

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.

I don't even want 4K. 1080p is more than good enough.

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

Pretty sure my eyes max out at 4K. I can barely tell the difference between 4K and 1080P from my couch.

I work off metered data. I’m happy with 360p.

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

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.

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.

Maybe if they add 3D, people will buy them!

/s

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.

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.

If we had the 90's economy there would be a bunch of folks looking to get 8k tvs.

4k ought to be enough for anybody

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.