8K – Slip Sliding Away
Way back in 2007 SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers) began to set standards for what is known as 8K resolution, a format that the Japanese Public Broadcasting system began to research in the mid 1990’s to help Japanese CE companies maintain a leading share as LCD TVs began to become popularized. Sharp (6753.JP) released an 85” 8K LCD TV at the 2012 CES show, soon to be followed by Panasonic’s (6752.JP) 145” 8K Plasma demo at IFA in the same year, and the 2014 Winter Olympics and the World Cup were broadcast in 8K. By 2018, while forecasters were relatively conservative, predictions that 8K would be ‘mainstream’ by 2023 and would sell over 11m units were appearing along with 8K sets from almost all major TV brands and in 2020 Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) noted that the Samsung Galaxy S20 smartphone would be able to record in 8K, although it required 600MB/minute of storage capacity.
But things have not been going well for 8K recently, despite the support from TV set manufacturers, who generate premium prices for a resolution that is 4 times the resolution of the 4K TVs that are becoming the standard globally, as US TV brand Vizio (VZIO) has decided to drop the format from its TV lineup and rumors that early 8K cheerleader Samsung might be cutting back on offerings going forward, although we expect they will maintain some 8K representation in the Mini-LED/QD lines. But it gets worse in that OMDIA has just cut its 8K forecast again, after cutting it late last year, as it seems that less 8K TVs were shipped in 2021 than in the previous year, with Samsung, the share leader at ~65% seeing 18% less units y/y. The latest cut puts the number of global 8K households at 2.7m by 2026, down from 9m by 2025 in last year’s forecast (here are 596.97m households in just the top 10 largest countries), only 0.15% of all TV sets shipped last year.
Of course there is the fact that there is very little native 8K content, which would be the real reason for owning an 8K set, and a distrust of upscaling techniques that have always been sold to the public as ‘enhanced’ versions of 4K content (see sidebar), but it has always been our view that buying an 8K set to ‘anticipate’ content would cause one to own an outmoded set when that content finally comes around. Those issues, along with the significant expense broadcasters would have to incur to air 8K content (Streaming services can but it takes considerable bandwidth even with compression), seem to have put a real dent in 8K, at least for the time being, and adding the difficult macro environment seems to have tapped off any residual COVID-19 related consumer interest. Now it is up to TV brands, who will be looking to rein in costs, whether they can support an 8K format with such small unit volumes in such an environment, but we expect 8K will be back again when consumers are less burdened by inflation and TV set brands can try to squeeze out that extra bit of margin on 8K product once again.
But things have not been going well for 8K recently, despite the support from TV set manufacturers, who generate premium prices for a resolution that is 4 times the resolution of the 4K TVs that are becoming the standard globally, as US TV brand Vizio (VZIO) has decided to drop the format from its TV lineup and rumors that early 8K cheerleader Samsung might be cutting back on offerings going forward, although we expect they will maintain some 8K representation in the Mini-LED/QD lines. But it gets worse in that OMDIA has just cut its 8K forecast again, after cutting it late last year, as it seems that less 8K TVs were shipped in 2021 than in the previous year, with Samsung, the share leader at ~65% seeing 18% less units y/y. The latest cut puts the number of global 8K households at 2.7m by 2026, down from 9m by 2025 in last year’s forecast (here are 596.97m households in just the top 10 largest countries), only 0.15% of all TV sets shipped last year.
Of course there is the fact that there is very little native 8K content, which would be the real reason for owning an 8K set, and a distrust of upscaling techniques that have always been sold to the public as ‘enhanced’ versions of 4K content (see sidebar), but it has always been our view that buying an 8K set to ‘anticipate’ content would cause one to own an outmoded set when that content finally comes around. Those issues, along with the significant expense broadcasters would have to incur to air 8K content (Streaming services can but it takes considerable bandwidth even with compression), seem to have put a real dent in 8K, at least for the time being, and adding the difficult macro environment seems to have tapped off any residual COVID-19 related consumer interest. Now it is up to TV brands, who will be looking to rein in costs, whether they can support an 8K format with such small unit volumes in such an environment, but we expect 8K will be back again when consumers are less burdened by inflation and TV set brands can try to squeeze out that extra bit of margin on 8K product once again.
Most 8k upscalers fill in the missing pixels by interpolating image content around the target pixels. If there is consistency, such as a red background, the system will assume that it can fill in the extra pixels with that color, but when it comes to fine detail, each upscaler has to use its algorithm to make a determination of what would look best and place that image on the additional pixels. AI techniques can be used to better understand an image based on what the system has seen in the past, but all upscalers make assumptions as to what ‘might have been there if it was taken by an 8K camera’. TV set brands and retailers will show you a 4K and an 8K set next to each other to point out the skill of the upscaler, but most of the difference is actually the number of pixels on an 8K set displaying a higher resolution image, as no upscaler can create ‘better’ images than were captured natively, they can only attempt to fill in the blanks with something close.
1080p, 4K, 8K resolution upscale - Source: gramophone.com
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