Sharp Prepares To Launch Worlds First 8k Screen In October

Tech companies are on a constant cycle of innovation with the aim of enticing consumers to spend more and more of their hard-earned cash, Televisions are a perfect example of this and have seen SD being usurped by HD, this was before 3D pushed its way to the front for it to be then beaten by 4K. Now, 4K is not all you need as Sharp are preparing to launch the first ever 8K display which looks set for its market debut in October 2015.

Companies have attempted to develop “super hi-vision” resolution test models, but these have only been as a prototype and have not been commercially available. Sharp hope to break through this barrier with an 8K format which provides 16 times as many pixels as 1080p high-definition, It also creates an image so detailed that it can appear three-dimensional.

I bet you would like to own one, but there might be a slight problem with that. Firstly, Sharp have unveiled the 8K model which is a colossal 85 inches in size. That’s OK, I did not need that front room wall there anyway, and secondly, the price currently stands at $133,000 dollars (£86,000) which is a lot. The market and price point would dictate that only industries which include broadcasters and also other companies involved in testing the format would be able to afford such an expensive piece of kit.

One market analyst has suggested that “8K TVs which are targeted at consumers would be released around 2016, and we don’t expect they will cross one million units until after 2019,” said Abhi Mallick, from IHS Technology.  An image is below to convey the spec of these new screens as opposed to current pixel resolutions, as you can see, Full HD is dwarfed by the sheer detail of 8K.

It’s an exciting evolution in tech, albeit a slightly redundant one considering the lack of 8K featured content which is currently available to consumers. A further angle on this would be the demand aspect for such high-resolution screens, are consumers ready to adopt this format or is it one step to far for the commercial viability of 8K, 3D has been considered a damp squib for home adoption and content would need to be readily available in order for this format to succeed within the next few years or so, this would include an increase in broadband speeds for super hi res streaming content.

Thank you bbc for providing us with this information.