Smart TVs: Is There a Demand for 8K?

4 min read
Feb 27, 2020

Entertainment technology always seems to develop at astounding rates. From 1080p to 4k and now the most advanced of the bunch, 8k, there always seems to be greater technologies being announced at the yearly Consumer Electronics Show. With the advancement in television quality and the emergence of smart TVs, there has been a higher demand for high definition TV, and streaming services have begun trying to fill that gap. 

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As technology continues to advance and steaming services continue to grow, demand will keep rising. With an ever-increasing population combined with the modernisation of nations worldwide, there is a huge untapped market segment that is quickly adding to the overall demand for top-of-the-line consumer products. 

What is the difference between 1080p, 4K, and 8K TV quality?

Though there are a variety of differences in the features available on smart TVs, the basic difference between 1080p, 4k and 8k come down to pixel count. With a 1080p screen, you get a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. A 4k TV, meanwhile, jumps to a resolution of 3840 by 2160 pixels. Finally, 8k TV quality is best in terms of picture, with a massive resolution of 7680 by 4320 pixels. Essentially, 8k is better because it has a higher resolution than the other available options. Doing the math, with 8k resolution, you get four times the pixel count as a 4k TV screen: a shocking 33,177,600 pixels. 

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What are Smart TVs? 

What adds to the variation in features and defines what is the best TV to buy goes beyond resolution. With smart TV technology designed into all higher-end TVs, a television is quickly becoming a multi-functional technology centrepiece for any home. 

Like phones, TVs are coming with built-in applications along with every major streaming service having apps for their members to login from. Comparing smart TVs to traditional TVs, these apps can turn the television into a smart home hub, a gaming centre, or transform the way you watch your favourite shows. As software development companies continue to expand the app selection, the top advantages of smart TVs will only continue to become even better as the televisions themselves become more and more diverse in their functions. 

What’s better: 4k or 8k TV?

Pixel Count

The overall pixel count is both the most important and least important factor in comparing 4k vs. 8k TV quality. Why the contradicting statement? Well, it has to do with the fact that the human eye cannot differentiate between the individual pixels on an 8k screen and a 4k TV screen unless you have an incredibly large television. 

To be exact, if you were watching the TV from 8 feet away you would need a 120-inch 4k screen to take full advantage of the pixel count, or a staggering 240-inch 8k screen. The primary reason for this is that according to experts, the human eye can only fully appreciate an 8k TV if you were sitting 2 feet away or less from a 50-inch screen.

Contrast Modulation 

What is even more important than resolution in the debate of why 4k or 8k is better is the contrast modulation. The primary reason for its importance is that it takes into consideration how individual pixels appear to the human eye. 

Specifically, when you see the stations at CES where they have cameras zooming in on a smaller section of the TV to compare the close-up quality, they measure the contrast modulation. In doing so, they measure the ability to distinguish alternating one-pixel-wide lines. Though this might seem strange, it makes for a significant change in the quality and helps demonstrate the differences that could help people decide what is the best TV to buy.

The required internet connection speed of Smart TVs

The higher quality video you stream, the faster your data speeds must be to ensure a smooth viewing experience. Surely everyone has had to suffer through the pain of loading up an HD YouTube video on a slow connection. The result as we well know is dealing with buffering every few seconds before admitting defeat and lowering the video quality so that you can watch it uninterrupted. 

If you want to enjoy full 8k TV quality, you should not have an internet speed of less than 50mbps. This, of course, assumes that no one else is using the connection while you are streaming 8k content. So to be safe if you have a shared connection, you should have closer to 100mbps.

If you happen to have data caps on your internet, streaming 8k video can burn through the data at incredible speeds. That’s one of the reasons why a 4k TV is better in terms of data usage. With a 4k TV, you will burn between 95 and 350 megabytes of data per minute. At 8k resolution, you can expect anywhere from 150 to 400 megabytes per minute of streaming.

 
From 1080p to 4k and now the most advanced of the bunch, 8k, there always seems to be greater technologies being announced at the yearly Consumer Electronics Show.Click To Tweet

 

Available Content 

This is where things get tricky. Grabbing a large 8k television will enable you to watch content at the max quality the content is capable of being displayed at currently. However, there is not much content being made to reach 8k TV quality. At the moment, there are no streaming services offering regular 8k content in the US, and even outside the US, the content available is very limited.

Upscaling

To get around the limited content issue, most 8k televisions have the built-in ability to upscale lower resolution content. This means that if you have a 1080p video, the 8k television will increase the pixelation and balance in order to make it look much better on your 8k screen.

Is 8K TV quality worth it?

There is no doubt that 8k is an incredible technology and can eventually win on all counts in any debate of why 8k is better. Plus, with the upscaling features built-in, you can drastically boost any viewing experience. What makes buying an 8k television even more viable is that the price range is competitive with a lot of 4k TV options. So, even though there are still some things 8k can do better, overall making a choice between the two smart TVs is an easy one because 8k TV quality is clearly the future.

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