Is 8K ready for prime time? It seems like an odd question to be asking since it feels like the industry only recently converted to 4K. But with gaming as the driving force behind 8K content, the momentum is already building for the next wave of video resolution. So what does 8K actually bring in terms of color gamut and HDR? How will 8K alter video distribution? Will the current HDMI 2.1 spec support 8K AV-over-IP?
These are just some of the burning questions that CE Pro editor Jason Knott posed to Mike Tsinberg, president, and Leon Tsinberg, business development manager, at Key Digital Systems in this week’s CE Pro Podcast.
“It is interesting because when the manufacturers first started making 4K TVs, we in the industry said, ‘Wait a second. This is too much. 1080p pixels is good enough. How would anybody ever need to look at 4K? Where is the content going to come from?'” says Mike. “We have all the same questions today about 8K,” says Mike Tsinberg, president and CEO of Key Digital Systems.
“4K became the de facto standard very quickly. TVs are being made now exclusively as 4K. And 4K content is everywhere. Content today is mostly distributed by streaming methods. Streaming is extremely flexible and extremely fast. The new streaming players are not very expensive and smart TVs now have streamers built in.”
Leon Tsinberg says consumers need to go to 55-inch TVs or larger to see the actual benefits of 4K resolution over 1080p.
“I just saw an article that says people’s TV sizes are getting larger but their homes are not,” says Leon. “That is going to be one of the driving forces behind 8K. People’s living rooms are not getting bigger so they are going to need a way to look at higher resolution images as the content becomes more prevalent.”
Hear much more from the conversation by viewing or downloading the entire podcast discussion above. Find past episodes of the CE Pro Podcast by subscribing to the CE Pro YouTube channel or our Apple and Spotify podcast feeds.