14 DAY TRIAL // Everybody talks about today's 4K Ultra HD TVs but not many people are buying them. That's understandable, as prices are still way too high for average users to afford en-masse new 4K TVs.
However, technology doesn't wait after the average consumer's wallet and moves forward offering in 2018 8K (7680 x 4320 pixels) UHD televisions that will probably barely manage to gain traction in consumer markets in the first year.
The researchers at NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, Japan Broadcasting Corp.), the very inventors of HD television, believe that 2D 8K resolutions are approaching the physical limits of what the human eye can perceive in two-dimensional images. Researchers believe that the next step beyond the 8K resolutions will be stereoscopic resolutions which require much higher resolutions than what we are using now, so 8K resolutions will most likely be used for a long time until stereoscopic TV research gives adequate resolutions to enter consumer markets.
In other words, 8K television manufacturers won't mind the slow start the new resolution will reach during the first two years of sales as it will have more than enough time to reach maturity, until being replaced by still, at the moment, experimental technology.
It is believed several factories in China are already preparing to gear its manufacturing hardware towards the new TV standard, so it's believed the first 8K TV users will be the Chinese themselves as they will buy them at the lowest costs.
Sources indicate that the first 8K panels were shipped already to special purpose-products operators for digital signage, professional users, military, healthcare and other specialized industries.