LAS VEGAS—Now that 4K is well-established and available to consumers, the TV industry is getting ready for the next big resolution jump: 8K.
At 7,680 by 4,320, 8K resolution has four times the pixels of 4K, which itself has four times the pixels of 1080p, which was a six-fold jump from standard definition. That's a lot of pixels, which means all new panel, image processing, and content distribution technology to handle it. To get the myriad 8K TV makers on the same page, several of those manufacturers have formed a new industry association.
The 8K Association (8KA) is a coalition of TV and display companies working together to both develop 8K industry standards and promote 8K to consumers. 8KA was announced at a press conference here at CES; its founding members are TV makers Hisense, Panasonic, Samsung, and TCL, and panel manufacturer AU Optronics.
"8KA helps to accelerate the development of 8K ecosystem and the popularization of 8K products," Dr. Weidong Liu, Hisense's chief scientist, said at the conference.
Those two goals seem to be 8KA's fundamental dual purposes. 8K TVs are only now seeing consumer release, and will likely be extremely expensive for the next few years as panel manufacturing technology expands to accommodate it, if the production and adoption rates of HDTVs and 4K TVs are any indication. For consumers who have only recently started to broadly embrace 4K TVs, a newer, even higher-resolution, much more expensive TV is a tough sell. It's even tougher with no consumer 8K video content available and no formal media standardization or studio adoption yet.
To these ends, 8KA plans to encourage streaming media services and other video-distribution companies to adopt 8K, and to ensure that 8K content is available on 8K TVs. No content partners have been announced yet, but 8KA is currently seeking new members in addition to the founding five companies.
8K content has yet to be standardized for consumer release, which is the other major purpose of 8KA. While the association has not announced plans for a single 8K media standard yet, it will develop technical requirements and specifications for 8K media, and work with both TV manufacturers and content providers to create certification standards for content and displays.
8KA consists of five committees, each focusing on a different aspect of promoting or developing 8K. The certification committee works with panel manufacturers and TV makers to create compliance standards for 8K displays and develop strategy for 8K features. The content committee works with content creators like studios to prosthelytise 8K video and license content for its members. The distribution committee works with content providers, including streaming services, to encourage the production availability of consumer 8K media. The promotion committee creates marketing and promotional materials to spread the word about 8K video to consumers, and organizes 8K workshops. Finally, the technology committee focuses on addressing specific technology hurdles for 8K adoption, like 8K codecs and HDMI 2.1 implementation.
The formation of 8KA could be a major step in ensuring that the development and adoption of 8K TVs goes smoother and faster than previous jumps in resolution. Several industry associations have addressed specific high-definition and 4K video issues, like the UHD Alliance for 4K quality certification and the HDMI Forum for HDMI standards. 8KA looks like a solid start to getting TV makers and content distributors on the same page early, hopefully reducing the uncertainty and standards-fighting we've seen in previous resolution generations (DVD versus DivX, Blu-ray versus HD-DVD, and the current multiple standards of HDR content in 4K video). We'll see as the organization grows.