Who is 8K good for?

[_J.G.M_]

Sony has released its first 8K television – the ZG9. Announced at the 2019 International CES, this is a ground-breaking moment for technology, with 8K TV boasting around 16 times as many pixels as conventional 2K broadcasting, and four times as many as 4K.

Yet the true value of 8K is about much more than impressive numbers. The ZG9 is part of the Sony BRAVIA® MASTER Series - technology approved by Sony’s finest engineers, designed to bring the creator’s intent to life.

So who is 8K good for? We take a look.

Do we need 8K?

Few people own 8K televisions; in fact, few people have even watched one. Sony sell many great 4K TVs, so it’s natural to wonder “Is 8K even necessary?”.

Every time there are advancements in resolution, these questions arise. People questioned if the jump from Full HD to 4K was worth it, and now they want to know if there’s value in 8K.

Toshiyuki Ogura, Chief Distinguished Engineer at Sony, explains 8K is valuable for customers and content creators. He says this value can be explained in one word: “reality”.

Even when there are subtle steps in gradation, our brains pick up on them and recognise that what we’re watching isn’t real. Ogura explains, “8K, with its highly sophisticated video quality, has very little impediment to reality, making it possible to reproduce images that are full of reality.”

To get the best realness from 8K, it is necessary to view it from a “proper distance”, which Ogura defines as between 1.2 and 1.5 times the screen height.

Will 8K drive higher quality content?

In the words of Ogura: “No one is moved simply by a blank TV. People are moved by the content.”

The invention of 8K TV gives content creators the opportunity to start making and distributing 8K content. He believes that by raising the expressive capability of the content, it can only get better, making the entertainment market more exciting for audiences.

8K TV uses more than 33 million pixels whilst 4K TV uses over 8 million. It’s this considerably greater pixel density that Ogura identifies as the key to enabling content creators to deliver what they want the audience to see. He notes the de facto master monitors that those in the production industry work on, specifically referring to the BVM-X300, a 30-inch 4K organic EL master monitor. What they see on this monitor represents the “creator’s intent” - a premise Sony has long-used to create televisions capable of reproducing that intention.

Ogura says, “With 4K and the HDR that came with 4K, it became possible to match the output colour and brightness with those of the BVM-X300 at a very high level. However, there is still something different. We tried hard to find what was different, and finally now with 8K, we understand that it came from the pixel density. If you use 8K, you can reproduce the sense of image density of the BVM-X300 that cannot be achieved with just a large-sized 4K TV.”

With the development of 8K TV, it’s now possible for creators to deliver high reality straight into peoples’ living rooms, demonstrating just how valuable 8K is for creators and consumers.

We’ve had 4K, now we’ve got 8K…should we be expecting 16K, 32K, or even higher?

Ogura says yes, “because the resolution of the real world is infinite”. However, he does stress that the technology must possess true value for customers in order to make it to the market, maintaining the evolution of value should not merely rest on image quality, but on the evolution of the experience itself.

Progress in this field relies on a continuous cycle of improvement at all levels. We create the environment that facilitates an enhanced content experience, we provide it to creators, and they in turn create more sensory content that can be delivered to audiences. Sony is well-positioned to keep this cycle going, making innovative devices for both producing and reproducing content.

Ogura believes we are at a point where “digital technology has finally begun to speak of quality”. He remembers when analog was first digitised; users were quick to say how convenient and efficient digital media was, but it took the introduction of high-resolution audio for us to enter a world of quality that can only be achieved in digital format. Ogura says the same is happening with video, owing to the irrefutable quality of 4K, HDR, and now 8K.

Learn more about Sony’s first 8K TV here »

This article is based on an interview with Toshiyuki Ogura. The original source can be viewed here.