Japan Starts 8K TV Broadcasts In Time For Rio Olympics (pcworld.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld: Japan began the world's first regular 8K television broadcasts on Monday, five days ahead of the opening of the Olympic Games. 8K refers to broadcasts with a resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 pixels. That's 16 times the resolution of today's full high-definition (FHD) broadcasts and four times that of the 4K standard, which is only just emerging in many other countries. The format used by NHK, which it calls "Super Hi-Vision," also features 22.2-channel surround sound. Public broadcaster NHK launched a satellite channel that will broadcast a mix of 8K and 4K content as it prepares to launch full-scale 8K transmissions in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. The channel will be on air daily from 10am until 5pm, with extended hours during the Rio Olympics. Japan's early lead in 8K broadcasting is thanks to NHK and its Science and Technology Research Laboratories in Tokyo.

Comments

Re:Overkill for the vast majority of viewers

[ErikTheRed]

We got a lot of this when 4K came out, but we were ready to upgrade our television (something we don't do very often), so I said screw it and went with 4K (65" at about 3 meters / 10'). It looks great with upscaling, but when I switched our streaming to true 4K with a Roku4 my wife said "Wow - this looks awesome! Did you change anything?" To me, that's the real test - when somebody with average visual acuity who doesn't give a crap about pixel count and whatnot notices that it looks a lot better.

I don't think 8K will be worthwhile until 120" screens are the norm, and even then cinematography will have to change to accommodate the changed field of vision. Even at 4K I notice that I'm annoyed when my eyes can't wander to the corner of the screen because the depth of focus blurs everything out there.