Technology is not the biggest barrier to the future of 8K TVs

TechRadar.com asks: Just how many pixels can you really see from the sofa?

I know Ultra HD is hardly the de facto TV standard right now, but a new report from industry analyst IHS is anticipating global sales of 8K TVs to hit an all time high in the run up to the Japan Olympics in 2020 as 8K broadcasting takes hold.

Any excitement around such estimations obviously needs tempering though – in 2015 the figures for global 8K sales is just 2,700. IHS reckons that seed will grow over the next four years to hit 911,000 units in 2019.

Considering we’re only really at the start of the push for 4K in consumer TVs, and its global sales for the first quarter of this year were already at 4.7 million units, the fact 8K is going to struggle to get close to 1 million in the next four years does make it look a little limp.

But it’s not just the technological barriers to producing 8K screens in volume which is going to hold back the next step in TV resolution.

Production is well on its way to seeing the tech problems, and hence pricing, tackled. China is looking to get its 8K fabrication facilities tooled up in the next three years, making 65-inch 8K panels far easier to produce.

No, the real problem is one of physical scale.

Read more at http://www.techradar.com/us/news/television/technology-is-not-the-biggest-barrier-to-the-future-of-8k-tvs-1299231