One thing you’re able to be sure about with technology, is that it will never stay still. It is always looking forwards, always seeking out the next big thing. It’s about improving, tweaking, developing - and while that can sometimes feel exhausting to keep up with, for anyone who loves technology, embracing those advancements and celebrating the technological achievements is all part of the fun.As a TV reviewer, I particularly love to see these strides forwards inTV technology. The improvements seen in OLED displays this year as pushed forwards by the rivalry with QD-OLED has been fantastic to see, as has the continued improvement in Mini LED panels and the future potential of Micro LED too.But when I heard about the world’s first 16K TV (Sony did do one in 2019 but it was modular - this is a single display panel), as shown at Displayweek 2023 and spotted byVincent Teoh from HDTV Test, I struggled to muster any of that usual excitement at all. I just can’t help but feel like it’s missing what the industry really needs.
Now don’t call me a party pooper - I know that companies often invest in the R&D to produce a headline-grabbing prototype that is miles away from any sort of commercial development. That seems exactly what the 110-inch, 15630 x 8640 set from BOE is trying to do, and, it could be argued, has done so pretty successfully too.
However, it feels like something of an own goal for the industry when the response is “meh” instead of “ooh”, from even the industry’s biggest cheerleaders. Take that same proposition to Joe Public, and the industry is at risk of alienating them entirely.
Despite 4K TVs being commercially available for almost a decade for example, as recently as March 2021,only 44 per cent of American television households had a 4K TV. That means more than half of US homes with a TV were still using an HD TV or - gasp - a standard definition set for their television watching.
With price considerably less of a barrier than when 4K TVs were for cash-rich early adopters only, the industry has clearly struggled to translate the incredible improvements that 4K can bring to your home cinema experience to the average TV buyer.
We have to ask why that is. Are they jaded by the whole resolution race? Or frozen by the fear of making such a big tech purchase, in case it’s about to be eclipsed by new technology?
Are we really ready for 16K?
Either way, it hasn’t stopped manufacturers like Samsung, LG and Sony pushing forward with8K TVs,of course. While it can be argued these sets offer benefits for big-screen watching, the jury is still out as to whether they offer enough to recommend to most people at more humble sizes - especially when there is no native content available.
That makes it a little bit hard to get excited about right now. Pretty test footage is all well and good but until I can watch my favourite TV shows and movies in glorious 16K, it doesn’t really mean too much to me. And whether that will ever happen is very much up for debate.
For a start, there are no cinematic cameras routinely capturing 16K content, and even if those trialling it went into mass production - getting that content into your home is currently impossible.
Whether you look to physical discs, streaming or OTA broadcast to make that happen, there is a whole lot of development and advancement in infrastructure needed elsewhere to make that happen. AI may play a big role in this, and instead upscaling from 8K once it arrives, but how much of a difference you will truly see at common home screen sizes is something of a question mark too.
In all of this, it is perhaps most important to remember that resolution is only one part of the picture when it comes to television performance - in the same way that megapixels only say so much about a camera’s photography performance.
There is so much more that goes into making a television picture great, from HDR to backlighting, colour handling to motion processing. More pixels might sound impressive but there are better areas of focus. They might not be quite as headline grabbing, but if it can make the content I can watch at home look the very best it can be - that to me, is far more exciting.
