14 DAY TRIAL // It's been a while since we last wrote about a release of television sets with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels, but that's precisely what has happened here. Sharp has begun shipping its 4K TVs at last.
Sharp has formally launched its range of 4K TVs, featured in 60-inch, 70-inch and 80-inch diagonals. Although calling them 4K TVs is always a bit presumptuous
After all, this 4K Ultra high definition television resolution doesn't actually reach 4,000 pixels per width. It only comes close.
Still, the 3840 x 2160 pixels resolution is the one that fits the 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio, so it can't be helped.
Besides, DCI 4K (native resolution), 4096 x 2160, equates to 1.90:1 (256:135) ~17:9 aspect ratio, so not exactly a good fit for TVs and monitors.
That said, Sharp has finally begun shipping its Quattron+ 4K TVs (marketed under the AQUOS brand), which is honestly a bit late considering that the first announcement happened back in January, at CES 2014.
Nonetheless, Sharp did take this long to announce full availability. Maybe it had some final work to do on the revamped SmartCentral smart TV software.
Anyway, the Quattron+ technology is the main subject of import here, which can "accept a 4K signal and play it back at near-4K resolution, with an effective resolution of 3840 x 2160."
If we understand it right, Quattron+ builds on the Quattron (which adds yellow to the RGS red/green/blue spectrum, for extra color range) and divides each subpixel in two, resulting in 16 million subpixels on the TV.
In other words, Sharp seems to have found a way to enable, in a sense, 4K resolution on 1080p panels (Full HD, as it were).
Another asset is the Revelation Upscaler, which takes HD content and increases the resolution to near-4K. It's not the same as actually playing a 4K movie from a Blu-ray disk, or watching a 4K TV channel, but the same can be said about every other upscaling technology out there.
And everyone has it, because there simply isn't much 4K content yet, and on a screen of 60, 70, or 80 inches you can really see the difference in resolution and image sharpness if you don't upscale the 1920 x 1080 / 1366 x 768 / 1280 x 720 resolution stream somehow.
Sharp's Quattron+ AQUOS LCD 4K UHD TVs have a starting price of $2,500, which translates into €1,800, according to exchange rates. EU prices will probably start closer to €2,500 though. The top price is $6,000 / €4,300 – €6,000.