Ultra high resolution screens, which offer four times the pixels you'll find on a 4K panel, or 16 times 1080p, tend to be pretty sizable affairs, even the world's first commercially available 8K TV from Sharp measures 85 inches diagonally. That's about to change with the development of a brand new monitor from Japan Display that packs a full 8K resolution into just 17.3 inches.
Japan Display's LCD module features a resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 over 17.3 diagonal inches, which works out to a pretty crazy 510 pixels per inch. For perspective, that's only 12 percent less than the 577 pixels per inch than you'll find on a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone, which only has a 5.1-inch panel. Other specs for the 8K display include 176 degree viewing angle, a 120 Hz refresh rate, 500 cd/m2 luminance and a 2,000:1 contrast ratio.
Japan Display believes that its screen could prove popular in a medical setting, for video editing professionals, and for use in PC gaming monitors (though no pricing or availability has been announced). That last use case is a little far fetched, at least for the time being, as you currently need a pretty beefy gaming rig to run games at high settings in 4K, let alone 8K.
Japan Display's new panel is likely quite the sight to behold, but you might have to get pretty close to really appreciate all those extra pixels. It'll be on show in in the NHK/JEITA booth at CEATEC Japan later this month.
Source: Japan Display
24" minimuum.
Of course we are gonna need a lot more graphics power as well and lately it seems the growth in that part of the tech world has slowed down, so it may be we gonna find our self in a situation where the monitors are there but the graphics power is only good for desktop work and not gaming. That would of course be a real 1st world problem.
Being able to view an image in its native format be it 17" screen or larger is a fantastic concept.
For reference, part of the reason why I opted for a 4K TV was to see 1080p Portrait videos in their native (not scaled) resolultion. You can most certainly tell the difference. This screen will be able to play 4k video content in portrait without scale in a similar fashion.
Anyway, this reasoning explains why 4K TV is a waste of space because the ideal viewing distance for good eyesight is the diagonal width of the screen (eg five feet away for a sixty inch screen) and even a third person would feel very much at the side of the screen (I suppose some people like the front row of the cinema, though).