Sharp's 8K TV tech was on show at CES 2015 earlier this year, but until now it hasn't been available to buy. From next month, the company will begin taking orders in Japan for the first ever commercially available 8K TV. The panel, which offers a resolution 16 times that of Full HD, will enter the market at an eye-wateringly high price point.
The IGZO panel features a resolution of 7,680 x 4,320, a contrast ratio of 100,000:1 and 176 degree viewing angles. The full 8K resolution, which pushes as many pixels as four 4K panels working together, is achieved through the use of four HDMI 2.0 inputs, each contributing an Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160) picture.
If you're familiar with 4K TVs, then you'll know that getting Ultra HD content isn't all that straightforward at the moment. Some streaming services such as Netflix are offering a limited amount of 4K content, but you'll need a pretty decent internet connection to access it. Samsung is also set to release a 4K Blu-ray player, but it's not scheduled to land until next year. That being the case, it's likely to quite some time before worthwhile 8K media makes its way to 8K televisions.
Sharp is therefore aiming the new TV at professionals rather than consumers, and it may be used to help test 8K broadcasts down the line. Which is probably for the best, as it's priced at a somewhat wallet-unfriendly ¥16 million, equivalent to around US$133,000.
The panel is set to go on sale in Japan on October 30, with deliveries expected some three months later.
But I want one of these myself for computer use, I'm no longer interested in buying a small computer display to use with tiny text from from less than two feet away. ideally I would like a 65 inch display with this resolution set at 300% or 288ppi text size giving a desktop area equivalent to 2560x1440 at the old 96ppi. This gives a text size which is about double that of normal print so its ideal to be read from 40 inches or less distance which would make it great to use mounted on the wall behind a desk. Perhaps even a clamshell desk design is possible were the display can fold down like on a laptop covering the whole desk, this should be possible with future lightweight oled displays.
For living room TV use this resolution would give 2x retina sharpness at a viewing angle that matches a 35mm lens, Since 2x retina can be considered perfect using this resolution for a smaller viewing angle would be overkill. From about 10 feet away this requires a 150 inch display to get this 35mm equivalent FOV so unfortunately it will be quite some time before TV's big enough for this resolution to make sense in the living room become affordable.
Something else to consider is that standard video content is framed too tightly and shot with the wrong lenses to be suitable for such wide angle viewing. Viewing angles like this will require content that is shot more like Imax videos with wide angle lenses.
You would need an >80 inch TV to benefit from such resolution.
However higher resolutions are needed for "pseudo holographic light field displays".
These screens require a sharpness of greater than 520 ppi, but also require some way of steering the light beam from each pixel, and some way of tracking where a users' eyes are. The first application of these displays will probably be in VR/AR headsets as they overcome the eyestrain problem that stereoscopic 3D causes for some users.