CES is less than a week away, which means there are less than seven days before we’re inundated with news of crazy new TVs, laptops, and random crowdfunded gadgets that probably should never make it to market. LG Display (a subsidiary of LG), clearly hoping to get ahead of the rest of the news, took the opportunity yesterday to announce a giant, potentially gorgeous 8K OLED – the first of its kind. I’m pumped, but what I really can’t wait for is to experience it in person and see if it really is as precise, with as rich black levels as the image above suggests.
I mean look at those black levels around the edge of the frame at the bottom. They look borderline Vantablack, absorb-all-known-light levels of black. And the detail on the jewellery is crazy too. Sharp and so crisp it almost makes your eyes hurt to look at it.
But this is a single image provided by LG, so I’ll be curious about whether that 8K resolution – twice the resolution of the 4K displays available today – is really the next big step in TV displays, or if it’s just a flashy set of numbers to wow people who still own 1080p sets from 2008.
8K resolution means a display that is 7680 x 4320. A 4K display is 3840 x 2160. The 1080p displays still found in most laptops and many older TVs is 1920 x 1080. So 8K is four times the resolution of a 1080p HD display. That means there’s a lot more room for detail that normally disappears in lower-resolution displays.
LG’s 8K display is the first one we’ve heard of ahead of the giant consumer electronics show in Vegas next week, but it likely won’t be the last. TV technology has stabilised recently, with the price of 4K and even 4K HDR sets looking for a cheap TV with a gorgeous display, but it makes it difficult for TV makers to set themselves apart.
Announcing an 224cm 8K display is just the kind of big, showy move a display maker like LG needs to set itself apart from the competition. But how long LG will be the only 8K display maker remains to be seen, and while LG has announced the display, it has not made it clear if this set, in its current form, will ever see the light of day in a JB Hi Fi or Harvey Norman near you.