8K TVs how big does a TV need to be before 8K makes sense who's even putting out an 8K
signal by the way where are all the 8K TVs it's 8K all day coming right up on You Asked
welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Denison and this is You Asked the show where I answer questions
that you asked in hopes that I can help you and others with similar tech questions if you have a
question you'd like me to answer please send it to youasked@digitaltrends.com and we'll see if your
question gets picked to be answered on the show today's episode is the first of a new edition of
you asked episodes in which we take a dive into one topic and answer a bunch of questions related
to that topic this time I asked and you answered and it sounds like a lot of you think that this
is a great idea so thank you today's topic is 8k TVs and if you have a topic suggestion let me know
down in the comments and we can proactively field questions for that topic from the community so
let's get going here @WebWay2000 said it's 2024 why are we still focused on 4K TVs where are my
8k TVs and Jimmy's Brand wrote in reference to my recent Sony 2024 TV overview video no 8K TV with
their nearly perfected mini LED formula so thanks to both of you for sending in questions that
kind of hover around the same curiosity where are the 8K TVs well I think a big part of answering
that question involves talking about what happened to 8K TVs already but let's first start with the
shortest 8K TV explainer ever just so that we're on the same page here 8K TVs are TVs
with extremely high resolution the 4K TV that you buy today has four times the resolution or four
times the number of pixels as the 1080p TVs that we used to buy 1080p TVs were called HD and 4K
TVs are called Ultra HD now 8K TVs quadruple down on that right they have four times the resolution
four times as many pixels as 4K TVs oddly though 8K TVs are not called super D duper Ultra HD or
anything they are just labeled as 8K Ultra HD you could essentially fit four 1080p TVs inside a 4K
TV and you could essentially fit four 4K TVs worth of pixels into an 8K TV now historically more
pixels or higher resolution has meant a sharper more detailed image but ironically and I'm just
issuing a pun alert right now with plenty of time to prepare yourself for the eye rolls
and groans here ironically 8K TVs have blurred the lines tying together higher resolution and
higher performance I'm sorry guys I don't get out much these days these puns are all I have please
forgive me anyway for those of you who don't follow TVs closely it used to be that most major
TV brands offered at least one 8K TV model in the US and Europe anyway high sense TCL Sony LG and
Samsung all had 8K TVs as their Flagship models in 2021 for example but in 2022 we saw fewer new
8K TVs than before and in 2023 at CES it became clear that 8K TVs were not a focus for any of
those Brands except Samsung now all those brands do make 8K TVs for other markets and to be fair
LG still has an 8K OLED that you can buy starting at 10 grand and the the Sony Z9K which has been
around for years now can still be purchased for $88,000 or so but those are all carryover models
from prior years only Samsung is delivering new 8K TVs every year this year that would be the
QN900D and QN800D and it seems like only Samsung is making them in more approachable screen sizes
like 65 in so what happened why did TV brands back off of 8K TVs well simply put they didn't
sell enough of them in order for it to be worth making making a product you need to sell enough
of them to make a profit and that is an uphill climb for 8K TVs because 8K TVs are more expensive
to produce for a variety of reasons so naturally the next question is why didn't 8K TVs sell well
and the answer to that question ultimately leads to because they were very expensive and they are
expensive to buy because they're expensive to make yes but also they necessarily needed to be
more expensive than 4K TVs I mean there's supposed to be an upgrade right and that notion right there
that 8K TVs need to be an obvious upgrade that's the other reason that 8K TVs have struggled to
sell and this leads us nicely to another viewer question it comes from bear Hall who asks who
puts out an 8K signal now I'm going to answer that question directly in just a moment this
is not a politician move it's just that first I want to call out the sentiment that that question
points to it's the where's the content question AK TVs just came out too soon if you ask me from a
consumer marketing perspective anyway see when AK TVs came out people were still complaining about
a lack of 4K content this was back before just about everything that you streamed on Netflix
was in 4k so the idea that you might buy an 8K TV when even 4K content was hard to come by
was laughable and in fact folks still laugh about that today in fact I'll be shocked if this video
doesn't already have a bunch of there's no 8K content comments sorry I don't mean to make fun
of anybody it's just that I've been seeing these comments for a long time but there's
yet another important reason 8K TVs have been on The Struggle Bus since they were first introduced
folks literally can't see the benefit even with 8K native content the difference between a 65 in
4K TV and a 65 in 8k TV is negligible at best to the average consumer at 85 in you can see
a difference between 4K and 8K with 8K content anyway but you've got to look pretty close and
again the lack of 8K content makes that a problem the difference between upscaled 4K content and
Native 8K content on an 85in TV is really tough to see for most people and while 85 in TVs are a
rapidly growing screen size in North America they tend to be expensive enough as 4K TVs let alone
as an AK model I mean the 85 in Samsung QN800d is $6,000 and the 85in QN900D is $8,000 ouch
that's a rich person's game and this price talk leads us nicely into two other viewer questions
Ramanuj Lal writes what do you think about 4K at 98 in somehow I feel that 8K with upscaling is
required for screen sizes over 85 in for a modern apartment living room setup what do you think and
Alder98br writes do you think a 98 in TV requires 8K so I do feel that the 98 in screen size is the
point at which folks can recognize the benefit of 8K over 4K and that's not a scientific thing it's
just that 98 tends to be the next biggest size after 85 and that's even if the content being
viewed is just 4K content upscaled to 8K by the TV but here's the thing it has less to do with
the immensity of the screen size than it does the fact that screen sizes are getting bigger
but living rooms are not see from a great distance you can't see the benefit of 8K over 4K but when
you're sitting just 9 to 15 ft from a 98 in TV yeah you can see the resolution Improvement of 8K
over 4K but now we have to go back to the price because if an 85 in 8k TV is going for no less
than five or $6,000 there is no way a 98 in 8k TV could sell for anything less than $10,000 and
likely it's going to be way way more now I admit this video may not age well in fact I wouldn't be
shocked if in four years or so we look back at this and laugh because 98 in 8k TVs go for less
than 5 grand but for now a 98 in 8k TV would be prohibitively expensive and while I do think that
4K content upscaled to 8K looks better at these larger screen sizes I still think that a lack of
true 8K content to enjoy is going to be a part of the problem so now I kind of have to speak to the
challenges around 8K content but first we have to talk about the chicken or the egg conundrum that
has existed around TVs and content for decades now see you can just as easily ask why make 8K content
if there are no 8K TVs to watch it on as you can ask the much more popular question why make 8K TVs
if there's no 8K content to watch I mean it's easier to ask that latter question because as
consumers it's our money that we're talking about right making 8K content is about somebody else's
money but historically TV brands especially Sony which came out with the first 4K TV TV brands have
shouldered the burden by making the TV so that content creators had a reason to make the content
to play on those TVs and I think that's why we got 8K TVs so soon after 4K TVs were introduced
maybe the players involved thought well we might as well start now or maybe they saw an opportunity
to capitalize on the success that 4K was having by pushing this idea that if you really wanted
to futureproof you'd get the highest resolution TV that you could buy and admittedly I floated
that narrative a few times myself but even now there are precious few sources of 8K content and
the sources that do exist don't have a ton of the 8K content YouTube is where you'll find most of
the world's 8K content ready to stream you will also see 8K broadcasts happening mostly in Japan
because NHK especially is just a Pioneer like that but mostly YouTube is where you'll find 8K
content and I don't see that changing anytime soon I don't think we'll ever see 8K Blu-ray
discs and while we may one day see 8K downloads take off streaming 8K is going to be an issue
so long as bandwidth caps which are a ridiculous archaic idea in my opinion so long as those
continue to be a thing so that my friends is the State of Affairs around 8K TVs and the only way I
see it changing requires democratizing high speed internet for everyone with no data cap when we
all have gigabit internet for a flat monthly fee well then maybe the 8K content story will change
for now though the only way 8K TVs can take off is if TV brands decide to flip a switch and just make
8K the new standard panel manufacturers are going to need to transition to making mostly 8K panels
upscaling processors need to get more powerful for less money and TV brands will need to commit to
making 8K TVs the norm figure out how to make them energy efficient and less expensive to produce
then and only then will we see the 8K Revolution that we were promised over 5 years ago thanks as
always for watching everyone what did you think of this week's topic based episode let me know
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I'll see you on the next one and until then here's two other videos I think you might like