8K The future (or the past?)

Matt_Fox

Matt_Fox

Member
Shopping for a TV the last three or four years, all the high end sets were proudly 8K. Look again today... and it's a different story entirely.

The current gen consoles touted 8K but still struggle at 4K. Will the Pro or the next gen be 8K?

I must admit I do not own an 8K set and have never played a game in 8K - have any Gaffers?
Has 8K already had its moment and not been accepted, like the curved TVs or 3D TV fads, or is it about to blow up and become the next big thing? What think you?

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Matt_Fox said:
Shopping for a TV the last three or four years, all the high end sets were proudly 8K. Look again today... and it's a different story entirely.

The current gen consoles touted 8K but still struggle at 4K. Will the Pro or the next gen be 8K?

I must admit I do not own an 8K set and have never played a game in 8K - have any Gaffers?
Has 8K already had its moment and not been accepted, like the curved TVs or 3D TV fads, or is it about to blow up and become the next big thing? What think you?

R9tSh7P.png
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Who honestly sits close enough to their TV to really be able to see a substantive difference? Particularly one that not only justifies the extra thousands on consumer cost, but would justify the allocation of console resources to support it in a game?

IMO it's pointless, and little more than a reason for tv companies to slap a bigger number on a box 🤷‍♂️
 
There's just no need unless we're all gonna have 150" TVs. 4K was a useful upgrade over 1080p at 55" and up or so (although a lot of people sit too far from their TV for even that to really make a significant difference).

I don't expect your average consumer to think in those terms though, but clearly the marketers haven't been successful in convincing people they need 8K. Which they don't.

Console games aren't gonna be native 8K for a long, long time, if ever. It's a 4x increase in pixels over 4K, so you'd basically need 40TF+ JUST to make a 4K PS5 game 8K with no other visual improvements. And we're still nowhere near native 4K most of the time anyway.
 
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It's a giant meme. There's barely anything in the world you could possibly watch/play at 8K while noticing a difference and as RoadHazard said, you'd need some insanely huge TV, or at least to sit with your nose against it.

A lot of average consumers barely care about 4K as it is.
 
8K is never going to take off due to lack of content, and the content isn't coming. Movies and TV shows are going to max out at 4K and that's because most movies are still filmed on 35MM film and there's no more detail you can pull from a 35MM scan higher than 5K. As a result 4K has become the standard for all film archiving in Hollywood.
 
8K was, is, and will never be anything. Definitely not a future. It's one of those nonsensical marketing things that was intended, or at least hoped to be the next driver of TV sales.

Now, they quickly found out that that driver is TV sizes, not 8k. In the next 2/3 years we will be seeing 100"+ TVs for under $3k. That is going to be the next major driver in display sales and tech.
 
8K is an absolute waste of power with the bare minimum gains we're getting gen-on-gen. 4K is already a waste, but tech like DLSS makes it achievable and it makes sense since that's what most TVs resolution is.

Even just for consuming content, as many have said above, there isn't much native 8k content available, and it doesn't seem the situation will change any time soon. It's pretty obvious that better panel technology and bigger size (for same/cheaper) are where the market is going
 
From where I sit in my living room, I can't see a difference between 1440p and 4k on my 65 inch LG C1, so for me personally, 8k means fuck all. We're getting to the point of nearly indistinguishable diminishing returns.
 
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Roughly ten years ago people said similar things about 4K, (you don't need it, people don't see the difference, etc..) but look where we are now. Almost all TVs are 4K, most new devices would like to output 4K image.

I think soon we'll use AI for video compression as well as gaming, making 8K more achievable on more platforms. It will come but it will take some time, maybe after 2030?
 
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Maybe the industry can finally start concentrating their efforts on something actually useful, like higher refresh rates, better color accuracy and viewing angles, reducing lag and so on..
 
Europe banning 8k due to their power hungry nature basically kneecapped the 8k market, although it was not doing well before that either.

Content is barely catching up to 4k, most TV channels are 720p FFS. Many movies don't have a 4K rerelease. Consoles just can't for the vast majority be 4K 60 fps

It's a shitshow. 8k is nonsense.
 
It's the future, but not quite what people think

TVs got 4K basically because of size, and size needs distance too. Still, 1080p holds up well. The problem with games is some artifacts in the distance that gets fucked up, and the rendering needs better resolution and stuff. Nintendo learn that with the Wii U, making some stuff in the screen at 1080p, some 900 and so on. So for gaming, adaptive resolution even in the kinda distant future with 16K will be the glorious thing, not the fixed per se. Doesn't need to be that way
 
You can definitely tell the difference from 4k to 8K from a reasonable viewing distance.

That said, it is a waste of computing to run games at such high resolutions because a lot of people are happy with 4k for now, and most people have shit eyesight from staring at phones all day.
 
8k might have some benefit as an internal resolution step for the upscalers before supersampling the picture still as 4k. But it will take a long time before any hw will comfortably be rendering with (faux or not) 8k with all current and future bells and whistles still active.
A TV set with 8k seems not be likely make sense anytime soon.
I hope they work on better framerates at the gaming side and improved refresh rates on the panels.
 
crazepharmacist said:
To those saying the difference between 4K and 8k is imperceptible, where did you demo both TV's side by side displaying native content?
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I rather think that it has something to do with the maximum perceivable PPI of humans. 8K might make sense on a screen size that is below the human-perceivable max PPI at 4K at your viewing distance. But I don't think 8K makes sense at screen sizes where the PPI is already "maxed out" at 4K at your viewing distance.

Afaik, human eye has an angular resolution of 3e-4 radians. So one could calculate the max amount of perceivable PPI at the distance.
 
I can defiantly tell the difference on a 4k tv with a good signal so I'm sure 8k would be even better but this only makes sense if we have the ability to get that good feed. Our digital 4k is compressed but still looks fantastic.
 
I'd rather have high refresh rates with an implementation of rolling scan. (IE The screen would update similar to a CRT) That's So we'd get good motion clarity with content that's 30/60 fps.
 
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Mr.Phoenix said:
8K was, is, and will never be anything. Definitely not a future. It's one of those nonsensical marketing things that was intended, or at least hoped to be the next driver of TV sales.

Now, they quickly found out that that driver is TV sizes, not 8k. In the next 2/3 years we will be seeing 100"+ TVs for under $3k. That is going to be the next major driver in display sales and tech.
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Housing is getting more expensive and inflation is high.
The average Joe would have to be an even more gullible idiot than he already is if he even thinks of buying a 100"+ TV to watch from 2 meters away because that's all the space available in his living room.

Then again, not a few people bought a 42" LG OLED as a computer monitor to use from 2 feet away, so what do I know.
 
8K was a marketing gimmick aimed at gullible people who hadnt the braincells to think why in the fuck would i buy an 8k tv with no 8k content and suffer from FOMO, even those with more money and sense who bought into the hype, there TV would be rendered useless even if/when 8k becomes an actual standard as the the codecs for running the content will probably have changed in the interim.. honestly when i seen the TVs up for sale i had to laugh at the people buying them... same sort of people with magic beans in their pockets
 
crazepharmacist said:
To those saying the difference between 4K and 8k is imperceptible, where did you demo both TV's side by side displaying native content?
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I flip my TV between 1440p and 4k. I can't perceive a difference between those two at my regular viewing distance. I think I can safely assume I won't be able to perceive a difference between 4k and 8k.
 
I thought this was a gaming enthusiast forum.
People saying 4k is already overkill and calling 8k nonsense? lol
When the RTX 5090 comes out 8k gaming will be significantly easier to run current gen games, and especially so if you're willing to use DLSS, and double especially so if you want to play last gen games or older. Sure, it won't be mainstream for a long time but PC gamers can definitely take advantage of 8k on large displays like living room TVs. Im not the kind of person to sit super far back from my screen or mount my TV way up above a fireplace and I'll take all the pixels I can get. If people only cared about "good enough" then we'd still be stuck on 1080p.
 
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There is literally zero consumer benefit in owning an 8k display unless you want a 120"+ display in your living room.
 
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Celcius said:
I thought this was a gaming enthusiast forum.
People saying 4k is already overkill and calling 8k nonsense? lol
When the RTX 5090 comes out 8k gaming will be significantly easier to run current gen games, and especially so if you're willing to use DLSS, and double especially so if you want to play last gen games or older. Sure, it won't be mainstream for a long time but PC gamers can definitely take advantage of 8k on large displays like living room TVs. Im not the kind of person to sit super far back from my screen or mount my TV way up above a fireplace and I'll take all the pixels I can get. If people only cared about "good enough" then we'd still be stuck on 1080p.
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4k is perfect, it's not overkill and when you have games making a £2000 video card sweat at native 4k, I think we're good for a few years yet.. 8k is utterly moronic
 
The human eye can only resolve up to a certain PPI at a certain distance. Beyond that you can't distinguish or resolve more details, like two head lights of a car becomes a single one at roughly 4km distance. Give or take depending on your eye sight.

So if you sit in front of a 120 inch TV only 1 meter away you'll see the benefits of 8k over 4k.

But I don't see our living room setups and conventions drastically change in the next decade. So 8k doesn't make much sense.

In terms of rendering resolution I personally think that upscaling is the short term and mid term solution because raw performance requirements for native resolution rising faster than the capability of hardware (mass market products).
 
RJMacready73 said:
4k is perfect, it's not overkill and when you have games making a £2000 video card sweat at native 4k, I think we're good for a few years yet.. 8k is utterly moronic
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People said the same thing about 4K years ago. Most games (at least the ones that I play) are easy to run at 4K these days. An RTX 5090 should have no problems running Persona 3 Reload at 8k 60 fps for example.

Most of the people in this thread calling 8k pointless have never even seen native 8k content on an 8k TV.
 
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Celcius said:
People said the same thing about 4K years ago. Most games (at least the ones that I play) are easy to run at 4K these days. An RTX 5090 should have no problems running Persona 3 Reload at 8k 60 fps for example.

Most of the people in this thread calling 8k pointless have never even seen native 8k content on an 8k TV.
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I have seen native 8K and you know what, it's barely indistinguishable from native 4K and this is side by side, sure it's a slight bit sharper but who the hell sits 3ft from an 80" screen.

It's not just the resolution, it's the massive bandwidth requirements, the sheer amount of pixels needed pushed and all for a indiscernible difference to the average consumer, sure in 10yrs time things may be different but selling/buying 8k now is in the magic bean/Nigerian mine territory, waste of money
 
Theres pretty much no major content in 8k, only way itll become a thing is with some really good auto-upscaling, because even if there was content none of the streaming services would be willing to spend money to stream it to you, seeing as they already throttle or limit the bitrate while losing money, same goes for TV stations, it would be too expensive and physical media is slowly declining unfortunately.

8k might be a thing only for some niche gaming purposes in a few years, which is not what most TV are used for.

The pixel count difference between 8k and 4k is massive, but none of that matters unless there is actual content for it, perhaps TV manufacturers decide to jump on some AI buzzwords in an attempt to sell the 8k TVs with some advanced real-time upscaling to uninformed customers i dont see it taking off, but given that even 4090 lacks power to do that in real-time while running at full power and using 400W+ its like 2 decades away before it becomes feasible at an acceptable power consumption and cost.
Mr.Phoenix said:
8K was, is, and will never be anything. Definitely not a future. It's one of those nonsensical marketing things that was intended, or at least hoped to be the next driver of TV sales.

Now, they quickly found out that that driver is TV sizes, not 8k. In the next 2/3 years we will be seeing 100"+ TVs for under $3k. That is going to be the next major driver in display sales and tech.
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I dont think there will be that many 100inch TVs, definitely not 4k as it has way too few pixels to look good at that size (44ppi), which is why 8k TV already exist, even past 60inches the pixel density is getting a bit too scarce at 4k, cant even imagine just how poorly 8million pixels would look spread across a 100inch panel. If you want to increase the size you need to increase the resolution along with it.

The 8k screens are niche because 4k is enough for the screen sizes that a majority of people can accomodate when it comes to space and budget.
 
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This thread is exactly what I read when 4k was being pushed at first and yet here we are. I play on a 28" 4k and have been now about a decade, my 60" 4k TV (which was $300 many years ago on clearance) is clearly more pixelated. I welcome large 8k TV's. Will I buy one soon? No, not at all, but I'd love to revisit some older games maxed out at that res.
 
ID almost never tell you to buy an 8k TV at least here in the US if your primary reason is for gaming alone. Hell TV is mostly still 720p and 1080 for a lot of channels and older shows. Some do 4K now but it doesn't seem to be the "standard" like you would expect. No PC gaming rig out today will handle 8K except on maybe some indie games for the most part.

I would say get the best 4K gaming TV you can get right now and in about 5-7 year replace it again. Buying an 8K tv at 3500+ when you won't use it seems wasteful. Since that tv will be 1200 in 24 months.
 
I would prefer companies focus on higher performance at 4K than higher resolutions. It would be great to see more lower cost 4K panels that run at 120hz standard before pushing for 8K.
 
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Do you know how you needed 4x the power to run games at 4K than 1080p? Well now, let's think about 8K. A PS5 Pro will not hit 8K very well unless their DLSS alternative is amazing, and even then it won't be native.
 
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ResilientBanana said:
Do you know how you needed 4x the power to run games at 4K than 1080p? Well now, let's think about 8K. A PS5 Pro will not hit 8K very well unless their DLSS alternative is amazing, and even then it won't be native.
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Why are you thinking about 8k native when AI upscaling is a thing?
 
Celcius said:
People said the same thing about 4K years ago. Most games (at least the ones that I play) are easy to run at 4K these days. An RTX 5090 should have no problems running Persona 3 Reload at 8k 60 fps for example.

Most of the people in this thread calling 8k pointless have never even seen native 8k content on an 8k TV.
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Fully agree. I can easily tell the difference between 1440p and 4k and I can also easily call the difference between 4k and 8k. Also, the horsepower in GPUs is nearly there. With smart AI upscaling tech I can definitely see PS5 pro being able to handle the following games at 8k/60 or 8k/40: Monster Hunster Rise, Gran Turismo 7, God of War. Basically anything that has a pretty good 4k/60 mode right now.
The push for 8k tv's is not as big as it was when 4k tvs were released, but rendering at resolutions near 4k and upscaling to 8k using clever techniques definitely has its merits.

I fully expect to see the first 8k games with the PS5 pro. As someone who has always critized image quality and wants higher fidelity, this is a great thing.
 
ResilientBanana said:
gross. Absolutely disgusting. Everyone knows native looks best.
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4k being upscaled to 8k is going to look better than native 4k just as current 1440p being upscaled to 4k looks better. 4k is already hard enough to push for most people and 4k / 8k are the only resolutions that can justify upscaling IMO. I'm not a fan but when implemented right, especially if you use the highest quality mode it's fine.
 
Not sure why people are bashing 8K. I would fully embrace it. Just native 4K content makes a massive difference if you actually give a shit.

I play on a 2018 model, 55 inch LG OLED E8 and can now tell the difference between 1440p and 4K.

So if you have a TV bigger than that, 8K will make a difference. However, of course, we won't see that really commeercialized for common consumers for the next 15-20 years at least.

We are barely hitting the baseline for 4K content now. At least most streaming apps are embracing it and 4K blu-rays exist.
 
At 8k you'd be beyond what most movies film scans could provide, not to mention that a huge chunk of films are mastered at 2k to 3k in the past and scaling them to 4k just about worked. Gaming wise we're still chasing 4k with a majority of it being upscaled and well TV wise we've just about landed at 4k being the norm.

Unless you're watching 8k scans of 70mm/IMAX movies you're not really going to have enough content for the resolution.
 
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