Consumer Technology Association sets official standard for 8K UHD TVs

[Thomas Smet]

They said the same thing about 4K vs 1080p.

Yes they did and TV sales have continued to drop because of this. It was only when the price dropped to HDTV levels that consumers started buying them and the only reason they did is because stores like Best Buy pushed the crap out of them to consumers. They made a situation where if one was going to spend money on a TV they might as well get the one that is supposed to be better for the same price as they would have paid for the HD one a few months prior.

Consumers will buy 8k but only when they are tricked into doing so and only when they are presented with choices in a way that makes them feel stupid if they don't buy the 8k one. I remember once at Best Buy I asked the sales guy why on earth was the Blu-ray player hooked up with HDMI and the DVD player with RCA. He said when they both used HDMI people couldn't tell the difference and they wouldn't spend more on the Blu-ray. We are now into tricking consumers to force them into buying stuff they probably don't really need.

TV manufacturers are desperately trying to find some reason to get people to rush out in droves and replace their perfectly good TVs. They think resolution will be it but most consumers still don't have access to 4k content and they are perfectly happy with the HD content they watch. I know a lot of people that still enjoy watching DVD's myself included.

We are chasing something of zero substance and then they wonder why people aren't buying into it. 3D wasn't going to do it, HDR is cool but most people still don't understand what it even is and its very hard to demonstrate it to users. Honestly HDR is the first thing in many years that is actually exciting to upgrade for and if I do replace my perfectly good 55" HDTV it will be for a HDR display. If they actually bothered to make HD HDR displays I might go that route but again we are being forced into 4k if we want it or not just to get HDR or better color reproduction.

The reality is these companies can only be profitable if every consumer chucks their $2k TV in the trash and runs out to buy another $2k TV every year or every other year. Thats a ridiculous business model to maintain and it just isn't going to happen.

We are also becoming a society where people would rather watch content on their phones, tablets or computers. This is another thing that is hurting sales and moving to 8k TVs that are 80" is not going to solve that issue. Some people don't want to be tethered to a garage sized living room to enjoy that large of a TV. We old farts appreciate the home theater experience but it's kind of a fading market.

Resolution has diminishing returns the higher we go and consumers are starting to realize that. Of course "more" is "better" but we get to a certain point where it doesn't really matter to most people and there becomes very little reason to keep upgrading something that works perfectly fine.

 

[Guest]

dvxusers spend more time discussing why manufacturers make and market products than anything else.

 

[Phil Holland]

Some very thoughtful replies and I'm really happy a lot of you "get it" with all of this. It was not very long ago where I was doing a panel on 4K at NAB and discussing the emerging trend in the face of a good amount of people who thought 4K would never catch on. Fast forward to present day, every camera manufacturer is now making 4K or 4K+ solutions and 4K televisions are cheap.

Yawn. Wake me up from hibernation when even 4K is the standard/normal.

You'll have to decide when standard/normal is and when you want to wake up I guess. I personally haven't delivered under 4K this decade, but I also sort of specialize in the 4K, 8K, and beyond arena. I know my market isn't everybody's market.

To your point, 4K is still not the "mass market" globally, but what you should take note of are:
- At the end of 2019 in the USA UHD 4K televisions hit about the 50% saturation point in homes. Basically around 1/2 of every home in the US will have a UHD 4K TV, give or take a few percent, we don't know how holiday season is playing out.
- There are about 300+ million homes with UHD 4K televisions today, not including businesses or venues. Also not including computer monitors and laptops.
- UHD 4K sales projections from 2017-2019 have all been exceeded by notable margins each year. Many expected a fairly linear growth in this time frame, it's been more of a steep ramp in the last two years in particular.
- Last year's projections put 2023-2025 as the moment when we'll have about 1 billion UHD 4K televisions out there worldwide. I personally think we'll get there in 2022-2023. Especially once we see how things play out in 2020.
- Nearly every current streaming service, the ones launching in fall, as well as the ones through April 2020 and likely beyond are all producing 4K content.

There was a time when "nobody had an HD TV". I don't think many of you are replying to me from sub-HD devices

On a personal level, I'm just happy UHD 4K is getting so much traction and adoption. Also happy to see UHD 4K TVs are extremely affordable these days. 8K is still very early on, but I assure you it's happening. This is all really at the moment about deep 4K market penetration and emerging 8K, which will ramp up in the coming years. That actually has been my main market for a bit now and that 8K content also gets finished out at 4K as well.


The vast library of SD and HD content getting up to snuff for these higher resolution displays is a fun journey to watch right now. Ideally every film ever made could go through the tedious process of remastering, which is expensive and often not possible due to degradation and loss of assets. However, upscalers in TVs are getting better and smarter. There's also some advanced AI processing being deployed by 3 main companies. Pretty impressive results. You still miss out on the fine details, like subtle texture, but it's an improvement to a simple upscale for sure.

But really this is all about current and future content doing it "right" with proper 4K or 8K finishes.

 

[Guest]

+1

 

[Phil Holland]

So well need to capture ±11.4K to debayer a proper 8K deliverable?

In a perfect world about 12K-10K for 8K delivery would be an ideal acquisition resolution.

However, based on the standards publically published and not by current and future streaming entities as well as studio mandates typically to deliver a 4K image you need to be capturing at 4K or higher resolution. Basically right now 8K capture for 8K delivery on a CMOS Bayer Sensor "just gets you there" on an industry standard level. The 8K broadcast solutions from Sony and Panasonic are a different beast of a camera system.

Some of the work I've been doing in 12K and 16K in the last two years has been purely to deliver it to 8K screens and receive the benefits of downsampling. However, stitched camera high resolution workflows are not for the faint of heart.

 

[Cary Knoop]

Yawn. Wake me up from hibernation when even 4K is the standard/normal.

For filmmakers, 4K has already firmly been the standard.

 

[TheDingo]

- Nearly every current streaming service, the ones launching in fall, as well as the ones through April 2020 and likely beyond are all producing 4K content.

How much bandwidth is required to properly stream an artifact free detailed 8K HDR video ?

 

[Run&Gun]

Meanwhile, almost everything you produce is viewed at 720p or 1080p on 4" screens. Millenials and Gen Xers, as an audience, aren't buying
65" 8K sets. Old, demographically less significant audiences are in smaller and smaller numbers.

You can debate the relative merits of 4K vs. 8K adoption until the cows come home but please just acknowledge that resolution
wars are nothing but a necessary function of selling new gear, whether its to pro content creators or to consumers. It certainly
isn't being driven by clients, who are largely still requesting or even requiring 1080 delivery. We exist in a vacuum!

Dan, you know I respect you, but every time I see something like this, to me it reads like someone is saying, "Why bother... With anything?"

Yes, people are consuming tons of content on their cell phones and tablets, myself included, BUT there are also lots of people consuming content on large, high resolution screens, too, myself included(92" 1080 and 55" 4K HDR and may go 120" 4K HDR front projection in the next few months to replace the 92"). I mean, way more people drive "normal" cars than jacked-up 4x4's with monster tires, but they still make and sale the lift kits and monster tires.

 

[Guest]

i get complaining about 8K s35 sensors, but i don’t get complaining about large 8K tv screens.

I’ll still shoot a standard definition movie after 8K tv’s are cheap, just because. But i really like what is available these days. We are getting closer to where video is kind of good, and not some ugly knock off of film. Video is maturing.

 

[puredrifting]

Dan, you know I respect you, but every time I see something like this, to me it reads like someone is saying, "Why bother... With anything?"

Yes, people are consuming tons of content on their cell phones and tablets, myself included, BUT there are also lots of people consuming content on large, high resolution screens, too, myself included(92" 1080 and 55" 4K HDR and may go 120" 4K HDR front projection in the next few months to replace the 92"). I mean, way more people drive "normal" cars than jacked-up 4x4's with monster tires, but they still make and sale the lift kits and monster tires.

As far as exhibition, screen size, respectfully, read the numbers, do the research. I'm not saying none of it matters, I'm saying none of it matters nearly as much as people in our business seem to think. Of course, people are still buying TVs and watching them. But the numbers are falling incrementally and all you have to do is talk to
your kids, grandkids, PAs you hire, etc. to see the wind in the wire. The monitor tech is only secondarily important in a way. Until there is widespread delivery of 8K via streaming, cable, etc. isn't it moot point? The damn pipes are still really small almost everywhere.
But contrary to, "Why bother...with anything", I am very vocal about implementing actual innovation into products when I meet with the engineering and design teams for the manufacturers. Last year, I met with the engineering team at Panasonic for the GH5 and GH5s.
I also met with some engineers from RED, Arri and Canon, both in formal settings and at informal settings over a meal. The common thread that I hear from a lot of these teams who are actually designing the cameras and camera tech
that we all buy and use is along the lines, of "Yeah, but marketing, yeah but the sales department, sales strategy, blah, blah" IMHO, engineers and and designers should be responsive to the requests of sales and marketing but not be slaves to sales and marketing and I can tell
that is exactly what is happening in their organizations.

I've been in business long enough to know hierarchal prioritization within an organization and that's why I have come to the conclusion that a lot of the "innovation" that we are presented with is coming at the cost of real innovation and is to merely "keep up with the Jones".
A lot of these designers and engineers want to work more directly with people like us who are actually using the cameras and lenses that they design to gain real, genuine feedback and design requests and ideas and I'm not convinced that this happens very much with a few exceptions
like Fujifilm. There is some good innovation going on out there but it hasn't been a priority compared to pointless resolution wars and the pointless pursuit of Full Frame sensors.

I had a conversation with a designer for a lens company at CineGear 2018 who told me, in no uncertain terms that they (this person and his colleagues) thought that having to design FF capable cine optics was a step backwards, that it turned their
design and performance goals from forward progress when they were designing for the S35 image circle to trying to not fall behind and having to design their lenses to be larger, heavier, much more expensive and with more compromises in edge to
edge sharpness and suppression of CA. He had the same exact take that I do about FF cine, "To What End?" It might be different if FF actually had large, tangible benefits to the average user and client. But it simply doesn't. It has small, tiny subtle
changes and a lot of us question if they can even be termed improvements over S35.

Incremental aesthetic "choice" (with the accompanying increased hassle, cost and weight) over true innovation that could have occurred more quickly if the standard had stayed S35 and FF had stayed a novelty. it doesn't matter now, that horse has left the barn.
I don't think innovation is driven solely by manufacturers and inventors, it's best when it's a partnership that is driven by users asking, "What if?" or "How could we solve this challenge?". FF, resolution wars, 3D, etc. none of this was driven by users request, it was
conceived as the next "gimmick" that could sell cameras and lenses to an audience who didn't need to buy them in many cases. I'm not against sales and marketing and during my time as a business consultant, designing sales team execution training, I know what's
needed to improve year on year sales figures. I don't think the problem is selling more gear, the problem is disconnection to the needs of the customers.

Some points of true innovation in digital cinema cameras over the past few years

1. Usable for professional AF - of course, doesn't replace MF/ACs but for many users, myself included, pro level AF has been a game changer in how I shoot and what kinds of shots I can nail focus on, in 4K.
2. Sony Variable Electronic ND - One of those smack yourself in the head innovations, so good, should be standard on every camera
3. Dual Card Slot Recording - Back when we were shooting tape, we would have killed for this, I (and I am sure you?) have lost valuable, irreplaceable footage when a tape was eaten or later when a card was corrupted. I was shooting a spot for LA NPR station KPCC last year, recording dual card interviews with some big wigs and one of the cards went south. Luckily, my bacon was saved by the extra recording. That, to me, is true innovation
4. Internal RAW recording - Once you shoot internal RAW, as I have been with my C200 and recently, the BMD UMP G2 and PCC 6K, going back to shooting external RAW seems like stepping back in time, it's so inconvenient, hassle filled, heavier and more expensive. And yes, I really think shooting RAW will hopefully become more standardized instead of a novelty like it is today. I've been shooting RAW stills for more than ten years, exceot with my iPhone, so taking that same type workflow, when you want the best possible quality and flexibility, is innovative.
5. BMDs camera menu design. I used to think that Canon menus, along with Arri, tended to be the best, least cluttered, most inutitive. Then I spent the past couple of months with two BMD cameras. Their menus are brilliantly simple, clean and logical, they are truly innovative. They win.

So it's not that there has been no innovation, "Why bother...With anything". I'm truly excited by all of this stuff in my little laundy list. And they make resolution and FF look positively irrelevant.
And we haven't even talked about cadence processing, pixels, color science, contrast handling, DR, latitude and all of that other good stuff that matters so much more also.

As far as what manufacturers can do to innovate, IMHO, better, smaller, lighter, longer lasting batteries, better EVFs that come closer to the performance of an optical EVF, better integration with wireless video and wireless audio. Elimination of most or all external cabling for LCD screens, EVFs, wireless video. Better ergonomics with intelligent weight distribution. More standardization choices of formats, Logs and RAW formats, how great would it be if all cameras, besides their own RAW formats, had, say, BRAW or Prores RAW too, as a choice? You wouldn't have to use it, you'd still have the manufacturers choices but when doing those multicam or shoots where your footage needs to integrate into an already established workflow, wouldn't it be innovative to be able to offer any client or producer "the standard RAW", whatever that woud be? How about better management of heat? My cameras exhaust sends hot air straight into my right ear, even when just getting in close to the touchscreen, much less when shoulder operating. I could go on and on, there are so many new features that manufacturers could introduce that would allow us to be better at our jobs.

More creative, more freedom to get on with the shoot rather than taking 1 hour and 15 minutes to black shade? Or 20 minutes to take apart the shoulder pad kit to change weight redistribution with lens changes? Or pay $400.00 for a clamshell cable that never should have been an external, overpried cable in the first place. These are the sorts of things that remind me of what early drivers had to put up with to simply operate a car. There are far too many things on the tools that we use that are counterproductive to actually creating and getting work done. It would be a simple matter for you or me to take even the most recent, newly designed camera, say the FX9 or the C500 MKII and point out half a dozen things and ask, "Why?" "Why does this have to operate or work in this counterintutive, counterproductive way?" "Why can't it be easy, simple, smooth, fast and logical?" It's not that they won't be amazing cameras, I'm sure that they will be. But personally I would trade the two top bill features, FF and 6K to solve a dozen other issues I will still have with both cameras. That's all.

 

[High1ander]

Some very thoughtful replies and I'm really happy a lot of you "get it" with all of this. It was not very long ago where I was doing a panel on 4K at NAB and discussing the emerging trend in the face of a good amount of people who thought 4K would never catch on. Fast forward to present day, every camera manufacturer is now making 4K or 4K+ solutions and 4K televisions are cheap.




You'll have to decide when standard/normal is and when you want to wake up I guess. I personally haven't delivered under 4K this decade, but I also sort of specialize in the 4K, 8K, and beyond arena. I know my market isn't everybody's market.

To your point, 4K is still not the "mass market" globally, but what you should take note of are:
- At the end of 2019 in the USA UHD 4K televisions hit about the 50% saturation point in homes. Basically around 1/2 of every home in the US will have a UHD 4K TV, give or take a few percent, we don't know how holiday season is playing out.
- There are about 300+ million homes with UHD 4K televisions today, not including businesses or venues. Also not including computer monitors and laptops.
- UHD 4K sales projections from 2017-2019 have all been exceeded by notable margins each year. Many expected a fairly linear growth in this time frame, it's been more of a steep ramp in the last two years in particular.
- Last year's projections put 2023-2025 as the moment when we'll have about 1 billion UHD 4K televisions out there worldwide. I personally think we'll get there in 2022-2023. Especially once we see how things play out in 2020.
- Nearly every current streaming service, the ones launching in fall, as well as the ones through April 2020 and likely beyond are all producing 4K content.

There was a time when "nobody had an HD TV". I don't think many of you are replying to me from sub-HD devices

On a personal level, I'm just happy UHD 4K is getting so much traction and adoption. Also happy to see UHD 4K TVs are extremely affordable these days. 8K is still very early on, but I assure you it's happening. This is all really at the moment about deep 4K market penetration and emerging 8K, which will ramp up in the coming years. That actually has been my main market for a bit now and that 8K content also gets finished out at 4K as well.


The vast library of SD and HD content getting up to snuff for these higher resolution displays is a fun journey to watch right now. Ideally every film ever made could go through the tedious process of remastering, which is expensive and often not possible due to degradation and loss of assets. However, upscalers in TVs are getting better and smarter. There's also some advanced AI processing being deployed by 3 main companies. Pretty impressive results. You still miss out on the fine details, like subtle texture, but it's an improvement to a simple upscale for sure.

But really this is all about current and future content doing it "right" with proper 4K or 8K finishes.

I don't think too many people meant 4K wasn't the future, just that transmisson of 4K wasn't in the near future. We have had Red One and 4K cameras for a long time, last time I checked not a single film have won "Best Picture" at the academy awards that has been either shot at 4K or mastered at 4K. Greenbook, Shape of Water both Arri 3.4K and 2K master.

Sure, eventually we all have 8K, then 16K, etc... but the speed at which people adopt are changing. SD -> HD was fast, it was easy to see the big leap in quality, HD -> 4K was slow, basically the 4K BluRay was dead on arrival, and there probably won't be an optical 8K. Also now the issue is that if you want proper 4K you need to take it from streaming services, but then the bitrate is really low, so you don't win much in quality. Also, people's living rooms aren't getting bigger to accommodate the bigger TV's needed to gain the benefit of extreme resolutions.

 

[DLD]

FX9 actually takes a step back from Raw, then another from Log and offers a baked-in look a la Fuji's Eterna (and others similar). Quick turnaround and small file sizes is a new mantra and is likely quite indicative of the many content owners needs.

The pro camera AF should have been here long ago. Follow McBob's recent experience with A7RIV thread on the Sony NEX forum. A7 RIV's AF may not be perfect ... oh, wait, it actually is.

As to the manufacturers, I recall my marketing classes in college and a constant reminder by my professor of the "Marketing Myopia" by Theodor Levitt (a famed Harvard economist and the editor of the Harvard Business Review) - "Make what you can sell, not sell what you can make". There's also a great German phrase that applies, "Immer weiter". IOW, they won't be making 25" black and white tube TV's without the remote anymore.

 

[Cary Knoop]

Some points of true innovation in digital cinema cameras over the past few years

1. Usable for professional AF - of course, doesn't replace MF/ACs but for many users, myself included, pro level AF has been a game changer in how I shoot and what kinds of shots I can nail focus on, in 4K.
2. Sony Variable Electronic ND - One of those smack yourself in the head innovations, so good, should be standard on every camera
3. Dual Card Slot Recording - Back when we were shooting tape, we would have killed for this, I (and I am sure you?) have lost valuable, irreplaceable footage when a tape was eaten or later when a card was corrupted. I was shooting a spot for LA NPR station KPCC last year, recording dual card interviews with some big wigs and one of the cards went south. Luckily, my bacon was saved by the extra recording. That, to me, is true innovation
4. Internal RAW recording - Once you shoot internal RAW, as I have been with my C200 and recently, the BMD UMP G2 and PCC 6K, going back to shooting external RAW seems like stepping back in time, it's so inconvenient, hassle filled, heavier and more expensive. And yes, I really think shooting RAW will hopefully become more standardized instead of a novelty like it is today. I've been shooting RAW stills for more than ten years, exceot with my iPhone, so taking that same type workflow, when you want the best possible quality and flexibility, is innovative.
5. BMDs camera menu design. I used to think that Canon menus, along with Arri, tended to be the best, least cluttered, most inutitive. Then I spent the past couple of months with two BMD cameras. Their menus are brilliantly simple, clean and logical, they are truly innovative. They win.

I would not call raw an innovation, more like a kludge.

Ideally, we want RGB sensors and get rid of all this debayering nonsense.

This is what I think needs to happen innovation wise:

• RGB only sensors, no more debayering nonsense
• No more chroma subsampling, CODECs are perfectly able to do perceptual compression without this nonsense
• Floating-point code values recording scene linear and get rid of the gamma zoo
• Adding interlacing to the seven deadly sins

 

[Run&Gun]

Dan, I agree with pretty much everything you said.

I've offered up to be a tester and give feedback on gear to manufactures before, with no takers to date. Not looking for free gear, but to give honest, real word feedback by a real world, demanding, professional user, not a "YouTuber". If most manufacturers built what we really wanted instead of what the marketing department thinks they can sell, we would have much different gear than we have today.

I'm not saying we "need" 8K. Earlier I was just saying that in the not too distant future, that's just what's going to be available from the manufacturer's. HD and 4K screens will be largely phased out for 8K, because that's the way the manufacturing lines will go, regardless of what people are watching at home. It's not like when we went from SD to HD and and SD looked(looks) like crap on the higher rez screens. One of my TV's is 4K and HD looks fine on it, so with the AI upscaling, etc., from most accounts that I've heard/read, HD looks fine on an 8K screen, too.

 

[Guest]

An 8K tv screen is essentially a canvas. You can put HD or 4K or whatever you want. If you are streaming HD or 4K, you probably don’t care about image quality anyway.

 

[Run&Gun]

Also, people's living rooms aren't getting bigger to accommodate the bigger TV's needed to gain the benefit of extreme resolutions.

Honestly, you don't need a "big room" for a big TV anymore. I have a very average sized bedroom, at best, and I have a 55" set hanging on the wall and could have(and should have) put a 65" there. As far as living rooms, dens and other "public/family" rooms in houses where you'd typically have a larger TV, it's probably even less of a problem in a lot of cases. People talking about entire walls becoming TV/displays... It's here already(almost). There are ultra-short throw 4K projectors that are affordable and available today that can project 120" images literally inches away from the wall/screen. The one I'm contemplating only needs to be 7.2" away to do 120". Even factoring in the depth of the actual projector itself, it's less space(depth) than my current 92" RPT uses. It'll hide behind my current center channel and actually allow me to push the 'low-boy' component cabinet back closer to the wall and the center channel a little farther back, as well. So, I'll actually get a much larger "TV" and regain some space. And now that I think about it, I'll actually have more space than when I had a 27" SD tube there in an entertainment center set-up.

 

[combatentropy]

I am very vocal about implementing actual innovation into products when I meet with the engineering and design teams for the manufacturers.

I'm glad you are able to meet with the manufacturers, because you and I have the same opinions about cameras

 

[DLD]

Honestly, you don't need a "big room" for a big TV anymore...

It's different outside of the US (well, not the technology but the room sizes).

 

[Thomas Smet]

Some very thoughtful replies and I'm really happy a lot of you "get it" with all of this. It was not very long ago where I was doing a panel on 4K at NAB and discussing the emerging trend in the face of a good amount of people who thought 4K would never catch on. Fast forward to present day, every camera manufacturer is now making 4K or 4K+ solutions and 4K televisions are cheap.




You'll have to decide when standard/normal is and when you want to wake up I guess. I personally haven't delivered under 4K this decade, but I also sort of specialize in the 4K, 8K, and beyond arena. I know my market isn't everybody's market.

To your point, 4K is still not the "mass market" globally, but what you should take note of are:
- At the end of 2019 in the USA UHD 4K televisions hit about the 50% saturation point in homes. Basically around 1/2 of every home in the US will have a UHD 4K TV, give or take a few percent, we don't know how holiday season is playing out.
- There are about 300+ million homes with UHD 4K televisions today, not including businesses or venues. Also not including computer monitors and laptops.
- UHD 4K sales projections from 2017-2019 have all been exceeded by notable margins each year. Many expected a fairly linear growth in this time frame, it's been more of a steep ramp in the last two years in particular.
- Last year's projections put 2023-2025 as the moment when we'll have about 1 billion UHD 4K televisions out there worldwide. I personally think we'll get there in 2022-2023. Especially once we see how things play out in 2020.
- Nearly every current streaming service, the ones launching in fall, as well as the ones through April 2020 and likely beyond are all producing 4K content.

There was a time when "nobody had an HD TV". I don't think many of you are replying to me from sub-HD devices

On a personal level, I'm just happy UHD 4K is getting so much traction and adoption. Also happy to see UHD 4K TVs are extremely affordable these days. 8K is still very early on, but I assure you it's happening. This is all really at the moment about deep 4K market penetration and emerging 8K, which will ramp up in the coming years. That actually has been my main market for a bit now and that 8K content also gets finished out at 4K as well.


The vast library of SD and HD content getting up to snuff for these higher resolution displays is a fun journey to watch right now. Ideally every film ever made could go through the tedious process of remastering, which is expensive and often not possible due to degradation and loss of assets. However, upscalers in TVs are getting better and smarter. There's also some advanced AI processing being deployed by 3 main companies. Pretty impressive results. You still miss out on the fine details, like subtle texture, but it's an improvement to a simple upscale for sure.

But really this is all about current and future content doing it "right" with proper 4K or 8K finishes.

Yes without a doubt 4k displays now sell well but that's due to the price dropping to HDTV levels and honestly if you can get more for less why not. I'm willing to bet most consumers did not buy their new TV because they went to the store seeking out that 4k experience their neighbor Bob was talking about while cutting his grass. They bought a 4k TV because they were pressured into it or convinced that it was the future. That and they got it super cheap and since they had a $500 budget anyway they went with what they figured was probably the better $500 investment.

Ever try to find a HDTV at Best Buy? It's like walking into an alley and buying something out of the trunk of some guys car. I kind of feel dirty just walking near that homely looking section of the store which is more like a TV graveyard. I fear I may need a tetanus shot walking into that section. Good luck even finding an employee willing to take the time to sell you a HDTV.

So yeah 4k TVs now sell well but that doesn't mean the HDTVs are bad at all. Alas this discussion also isn't about HD vs 4k. Its about 4k vs 8k which is virtually impossible for 99.9% of the population to actually see let along appreciate as some sort of life altering experience. Consumers want to be wowed. They want their neighbors to be jealous watching the Super Bowl on a TV that makes everything else look like it was made in the 1890's. There is absolutely no wow factor with 8k. None, zilch, nada. Unless one has a monster size home to fit a 96" TV it likely will never be noticed. Ok I take that back my 2 year old who insist on standing six inches in front of the TV can probably see it but I'm pretty sure she is more interested in reaching out to Baby Shark than the actual resolution.

4k at least had the sales perspective of walking a foot in front of it at the store and it looking great. What does 8k do? How will Best Buy even trick consumers over the differences between 4k and 8k? I guess they could play DVD content on the 4k display and 4k content on the 8k to fool people. 4k already has better color reproduction and HDR so 8k has no advantage there either. Its just more pixels so a forehead pressed against the screen sees no pixels. Ok that's neat but its not practical at all for consumers. Only time my butt leaves my couch when I'm binging Stranger Things is to pee or get drinks/snacks. I'm more concerned my bladder is about to explode at that point then if I see a lower resolution image for the few seconds I pass the screen.

I can pretty much predict this 8k phase.

it will come out and only the rich nerds will buy into it. People will check it out at the store with the fancy setup and loud speakers and when they see the $5k price tag will go and buy the 4k TV. Manufacturers will cry over horrible sales and layoff a bunch of people. Eventually the price of the 8k displays will drop to the comfort zone consumers will pay for a TV. the 4k displays will be the Diagon Alley rejects but people will ignore them since they want to invest in something decent and something looks off due to the jacked up weird digital signal Best Buy feeds into their monitors where they can control how crappy or good it looks. 8k fans will rejoice that 8k is selling well and explain that its time for 16k. The 2k, 4k and 8k people (the majority of the world) will say they are nuts. We will be force fed 16k and 8k will suddenly be made to look like the Pennywise leper in IT. At this point 2k will be one of those free gifts you get for sitting through a timeshare pitch except now you will actually like the free gift.

 

[Run&Gun]

...They bought a 4k TV because they were pressured into it or convinced that it was the future. That and they got it super cheap and since they had a $500 budget anyway they went with what they figured was probably the better $500 investment.

4k at least had the sales perspective of walking a foot in front of it at the store and it looking great. What does 8k do? How will Best Buy even trick consumers over the differences between 4k and 8k? I guess they could play DVD content on the 4k display and 4k content on the 8k to fool people.

You hit part of it with the money, but I don't think it's that they were necessarily "pressured" into buying a 4K set, it's just that that's what is widely available now, especially if you are wanting a higher-end or more featured set. As I noted earlier, I did a quick search at Best Buy and 75% of the TV's they had for sale were 4K or 8K.

When one of my friends bought his last set(maybe 5+ years ago-still HD) we actually went into Best Buy with my nanoFLASH with some footage from my VariCam and played it back directly on the sets that he was evaluating, so that he knew 100% what he was looking at on-screen.