How 8K TVs are reshaping the way we watch, one pixel at a time

Big screen sizes. Real 8K resolution. A quantum processor with AI actively upscaling lower resolution content, remastering vintage films and shows into stunning 8K. Dazzling colors rendered in all their glory thanks to Quantum dot technology. All of this was on display at the IFA Convention in Berlin, where Samsung debuted an 8K QLED TV that made international headlines. “Immersive TV is here,” said TechRadar. “The future is now,” declared Forbes. “Beyond the hype, it turns out Samsung’s new set delivers some truly incredible television tech,” read one review at Wired. Just as the world was starting to catch on to 4K TVs, Samsung doubled down — actually, quadrupled down — on the next generation of televisions.

It’s hard to believe that less than 100 years ago, resolution for TV screens was measured in the double digits. The first electronic television, invented by Philo Farnsworth in 1927, displayed a resolution of just 60 lines on the screen. Even that was a huge upgrade from earlier iterations, where some screens used as little as 12 lines. Now, 8K resolution falls squarely in the eight figures — 7,680 by 4,320, for a whopping 33 million pixels on the screen (33,177,600, to be exact).

The century-long quest for resolution was driven by a desire for reality-bending content and created a landscape where rapid-fire advancements in television were the norm. But the emergence of 8K resolution isn’t just another entry in a long line of improvements, it’s the dawn of a new age in how we watch TV.

Cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions dominated the television market for most of the 20th century. CRT technology was dependent on a system of vacuum tubes that, when struck by electron beams, would produce images on a screen. Consider this the bronze age of television, where resolution was limited by both the TV technology and the quality of the images being beamed over the air. (Remember bunny-ear antennas? Not exactly the tech you want for crystal clear images.)

The switch from analog to digital TV is what opened the gateway to truly immersive TV, starting with HDTV. Standard TV resolution jumped from 480 to 1080, more than doubling the volume of pixels that could be displayed and creating more detailed and crisp images across the board, but HDTV was the true gamechanger. Inventors had been experimenting with high definition and resolution since the 1930s and ‘40s, but the Japanese were the first to perfect it. The Japanese network NHK had been working on it since 1968, and debuted the new technology to a worldwide audience in 1983. NHK scientists studied the complexities of human vision and the psychological factors that determine image quality, says author and technologist Philip J. Cianci. Their “initial studies found that physical factors such as screen size, brightness, and pixel count affected psychological evaluations of beauty, brightness, and texture,” he wrote in his book High Definition Television: The Creation, Development and Implementation of HDTV Technology. Along with an improved refresh rate, an aspect ratio that mimicked film (16:9), and improved color, HDTV was poised for worldwide supremacy.

But due to some in-fighting with the radio lobby, the FCC, and the National Association of Broadcasters, America nearly passed on HDTV, for fear that Japanese dominance of the consumer market would wipe out American (and European) gains. After a demonstration to the FCC in 1987, Congressmen were stunned. One noted that “to miss out on HDTV is to miss out on the 21st century.” HDTV made its American debut with the broadcast of John Glenn’s Discovery flight in 1998, and soon high-definition resolution became the industry standard.

Meanwhile, the digital age brought on new technologies in quick succession. The new millennium gave us LED backlighting, and made TVs lighter and slimmer in the process. Companies like Samsung released everything from 3D and smart TVs to their widely celebrated QLED, or Quantum Dot TVs. Quantum dots are microscopic crystals that emit a glow when light hits them, and the colors they emit are based on their size, which can be controlled down to the atom, giving new definition to “precision.” That technological leap redefined how we see onscreen color, but now 8K is poised to redefine resolution.

Before HD, TVs displayed a picture quality around 1.6 megapixels; HDTVs transmitted four times that. When 4K televisions first came on the market, they absolutely clobbered HDTV’s then-industry-standard pixel count. 4K TVs could display more than four times what HDTVs were capable of, cramming more than 8 million pixels into a screen. The jump from HDTV to 4K has enabled what wasn’t possible before — a clearer picture on an even larger screen. When you take a picture and stretch it, the pixelating becomes obvious if there aren’t enough pixels to fill the screen. So when given the choice between 2 million pixels stretched out over a 65-inch screen, or 8 million, the choice was clear. By June 2018, 31 percent of American households owned a 4K TV.

That evolution was to be short-lived, though. The 8K television doubled the resolution found in 4K TVs and quadrupled the pixel count; it also bumped up the screen sizes beyond 75 inches. Watching your favorite show on an 8K TV, it’s as if you had all of the pixels from four 4K TVs in one one screen, one that practically feels like a competitor to the one in your local movie theater. (The majority of films are still shot in 2K, and movie theaters are just now starting to use 4K projectors.) And while the rest of the world is catching up to 8K, Samsung has added artificial intelligence and machine learning to upscale (or remaster) HDTV and 4K content into 8K resolution, as well as something called Direct Full Array backlighting, a dynamic illumination technology that powers remarkable image contrast.

The hyperrealist detail and clarity has set a new benchmark for how we watch, an important progression given the golden age of TV and the dominance of streaming services. The next generation of television is already here, and it’s stunning.

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