Is Bigger Always Better?
Whether we want it or not, 8K is here. Panel producers and TV brands will be jumping at the opportunity to squeeze premium out of the TV market for the holidays and the next few years with the promotion of 8K TVs, especially as we approach the 2020 Olympics in Japan (July 24, 2020), where portions of the programs will be broadcast in 8K over the Japanese NHK network. That said, why would you want to buy an 8K TV? Are they so much better than 4K and HD TVs that they are worth the astronomical premiums that are (and will be) charged for 8K in the near-term.
There is almost no native 8K content available other than a few YouTube, NASA, and travel shorts. As we have noted, there will be some 8K content available during the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, but the content space, especially broadcast content is still gearing up for native 4K content. So other than the story that you are buying a TV that will be around for many years, what might be suggested by retailers and brands as a reason for buying an 8K TV? Simply put, “upscaling”
Upscaling is the process for taking lower resolution video content and ‘expanding’ it to fill higher resolution displays and 8K TVs put that process to the test more than any so far. To understand what is actually happening, we offer this table of resolutions:
Upscaling is the process for taking lower resolution video content and ‘expanding’ it to fill higher resolution displays and 8K TVs put that process to the test more than any so far. To understand what is actually happening, we offer this table of resolutions:
Each of these calculations is based on a 75” TV screen, which means if content is developed in HD and shown on an HD screen, the actual image will fill each pixel. If it is shown on an FHD screen, there will be no information ~10 pixel in each inch, and if it is shown on an 8K TV, there will be no information for ~83% of the pixels/inch. Does this mean that you see lots of blank spots when HD content is played on larger resolution screens? No, because TV engineers have created upscaling engines that fill in those blanks and give you a full picture. There is a hitch however, and that is the law that says you cannot ‘create’ image data if it was not there in the first place, so display engineers came up with some solutions that sort of ‘fill in the blanks’.
In the most simplistic forms, simple upscalers take the video information from a single HD pixel and create duplicate pixels (with the identical information). Upscaling from HD to UHD requires each HD pixel to be duplicated eight time, creating a 9 pixel block from just one. It’s a great idea, but results in lots of duplicate information that creates jagged lines and some messy looking images. Who looks at HD content these days anyway? You do, as much news content is HD based, but using that methodology when you need to fill 8K resolution screens would be (and is) almost impossible to view. Other methods for creating those missing pixels get more complex, some taking information from a number of pixels around the subject pixel, while some check for ‘noise’ or individual pixel data that might be distorted to avoid duplicating the inaccurate information. With the advent of faster processors, upscaling techniques have become more sophisticated with many brands designing their own scalers as a selling point.
Current upscalers combine adjacent data with information from the same pixel location in both previous and forward frames to get a better understanding of what is actually happening to the image on an other than single moment in time, and of course, artificial intelligence and machine learning have nw become the mantra for upscaling algorithms and hardware. That said, there is only so much even the best upscaler can do, as the information it has available is limited to the contents original format, so the ‘magic’ that TV brands extol in 8K sets, that are said to make content look better than the original is quite iffy.
There are certainly more pixels/in. in an equivalent 8K TV, and native 8K content will look spectacular on an 8K set, but the difference between what 4K content would look like on a 4K set and what it would look like on an 8K set is so minimal that many hardware reviewers find it difficult to see the difference. When you bring that down to the average consumer, it would be hard to convince a buyer that he or she is going to see an immediate improvement in day-to-day video content. All in it means that consumers have years before they have a reason to buy an 8K TV and by then we suspect there will be little premium to pay.
In the most simplistic forms, simple upscalers take the video information from a single HD pixel and create duplicate pixels (with the identical information). Upscaling from HD to UHD requires each HD pixel to be duplicated eight time, creating a 9 pixel block from just one. It’s a great idea, but results in lots of duplicate information that creates jagged lines and some messy looking images. Who looks at HD content these days anyway? You do, as much news content is HD based, but using that methodology when you need to fill 8K resolution screens would be (and is) almost impossible to view. Other methods for creating those missing pixels get more complex, some taking information from a number of pixels around the subject pixel, while some check for ‘noise’ or individual pixel data that might be distorted to avoid duplicating the inaccurate information. With the advent of faster processors, upscaling techniques have become more sophisticated with many brands designing their own scalers as a selling point.
Current upscalers combine adjacent data with information from the same pixel location in both previous and forward frames to get a better understanding of what is actually happening to the image on an other than single moment in time, and of course, artificial intelligence and machine learning have nw become the mantra for upscaling algorithms and hardware. That said, there is only so much even the best upscaler can do, as the information it has available is limited to the contents original format, so the ‘magic’ that TV brands extol in 8K sets, that are said to make content look better than the original is quite iffy.
There are certainly more pixels/in. in an equivalent 8K TV, and native 8K content will look spectacular on an 8K set, but the difference between what 4K content would look like on a 4K set and what it would look like on an 8K set is so minimal that many hardware reviewers find it difficult to see the difference. When you bring that down to the average consumer, it would be hard to convince a buyer that he or she is going to see an immediate improvement in day-to-day video content. All in it means that consumers have years before they have a reason to buy an 8K TV and by then we suspect there will be little premium to pay.
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