I was in Best Buy the other day and decided to stop buy the TVs just to see how cheap everything is these days. (It’s crazy how cheap they are managing to get TVs down to these days but this thread isn’t about that.)
One thing I wasn’t expecting to see was an 8k tv. I remember hearing a little about them at CES but I assumed there would be diminished marginal returns compared to 4K. Wow was I wrong. They really are incredible.
Now whether or not they actually take off and hit mass market is another question, but the tech is undeniably great.
It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out content wise as well. Set box satellite and cable are still struggling with 1080p, streaming has great content, but 4K streaming is still a noticeable decline over 4K blu ray. Also, on the blu ray front, good luck getting people to buy yet another format change if they try to make 8k blu rays a thing.
It’s sad because I love progress, and 8k TVs are really amazing (or at least the one I saw was), but I just feel like it is launching too soon after 4K launched. It seems like a great product that no one is going to buy. You can either drop 5k on an 8k screen with no content or grab a same sized 4K for under a grand.
Since I don’t use physical media anymore, I don’t even get 4K content on my 4K TV. Game consoles and PCs alike can’t do 4K well so I ignore the former and always run the latter at 1440p for performance reasons.
Given that, I feel like I can’t even take advantage of the existing 4K. Things would have to change pretty substantially for me to ever consider an 8K display. I’m not sure what the market for that will be in the foreseeable future.
A friend of mine bought an HD TV in 2001. They didn’t get popular for five or more years after that.
I think 8K will be more real at retail no earlier than 2025. But that won’t stop manufacturers and retailers from trying to extract your money earlier.
I recently upgraded my 720p 50" plasma with a 4k 55" TV. I … don’t really notice the difference even on XB1X enhanced games (outside of the buggy pixel lines my plasma had from being old no longer being there).
You may want to get your eyes checked. I’m not even kidding, I did not notice a big difference between 1080 and 4K when I first got my tv. Then I finally went to the eye doctor for the first time in about 5 years. It’s a pretty big difference.
My eyes are fine, 20/20 in one eye and 20/25 in the other eye as of ~6 months ago.
Side by side yes I can 100% tell a difference, but playing one game at 720p and then a week later playing another game at 4k it’s hard to tell the difference, especially when you are sitting ~10 feet from the TV. The colors are more vibrant but that’s more because I traded in a 10 year old TV with artifacts to a brand new LED display. Games looked fine before and they look fine now, because I don’t pay attention to individual pixels when I"m playing a game, I’m focused on the game itself.
Nothing in how I experience the difference between the two TVs gives me any indication that what I"m seeing is better because of the resolution, and I’d probably think it looks just as fine if I upgraded to a brand new 720p than 4k.
