UHDTV Gets Not One, But Two Specifications


720p? Positively archaic! 1080p? Eye-bleedingly bad! Throw away that old junk — the future belongs to Ultra High Definition television. If you thought the confusion between “HD” and “Full HD” was bad, it looks like you’re in for a bumpy ride in the future, with the International Telecommunications Union adopting two UHDTV specifications.

The ITU’s draft recommendation for UHDTV calls for two specifications that can share the UHDTV moniker. There’s UHDTV 4K (3840×2160) and UHDTV 8K (7860×4320), respectively. As Simon Sharwood at The Register notes, the confusion grows from there, as the 4K standard packs an 8MP resolution while the 8K one is technically speaking 32 megapixels. That’s going to make for some fun in-store labelling and consumer confusion if this makes it beyond the draft stage; at this point it’s still got to pass an administrative stage before then — and it’ll be a number of years before we’re sitting wide-eyed in front of our 4K or 8K UHDTV screens in any case. [The Register]