Streaming services and TV makers are still slowly inching towards an 8K future, but China’s BOE thinks consumers deserve better than having to subject their eyes to screens with a mere 33 million pixels. The company recently debuted a 16K TV featuring over 132 million pixels, each too small for the human eye to perceive, even with your face pushed up right against the screen.
Vincent Teoh, best known for the YouTube channel HDTVTest, which performs exhaustively comprehensive reviews of TVs, monitors, and projectors, was the first to spot BOE’s new 16K TV at Display Week 2023, currently taking place in Los Angeles. The show is similar to CES, except it focuses on next-generation display technologies.
Forget 8K. Here’s the world’s first 110-inch 16K display unveiled by BOE at #Displayweek2023. LCD-based, max 400 nits. The resolution is unreal though, no visible pixels even right up close. pic.twitter.com/kS7Tx0r4ZN
— Vincent Teoh (@Vincent_Teoh) May 23, 2023
The 16K TV boasts a resolution of 15,360 x 8,640 (which amounts to 132,710,400 pixels in total), a contrast ratio of 1200:1, a 99% DCI-P3 colour gamut, and a refresh rate that tops out at 60Hz (because you need some serious processing power to go any higher than that on a display like this).
If you’re having trouble visualising just how many pixels 16K really is, here’s a handy graphic we whipped up. A 16K TV has four times as many pixels as an 8K TV, and 16 times as many pixels as the 4K screen you’re probably currently using at home. At this point, HDTV, which was a huge leap in resolution for TVs when it debuted decades ago, almost feels as ancient as the standard definition tube TV collecting dust in your parents’ basement.
Teoh also took the opportunity to capture some video of BOE’s 16K TV, which was actually displaying 8K content that had been artificially upscaled to 16K using AI. This highlights one of the problems that even 8K TVs are still currently facing: native content at those extreme resolutions isn’t easy to come by. But our favourite feature of the 110-inch TV is that you’ll find two pairs of handles on the back, making the screen easier to carry around and minimising the risk of an accidental drop. There’s no word on what this beast will cost, but dropping it while trying to mount it to a wall will probably be as costly as totaling a sports car as you pull out of the dealer’s lot.
Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.