The 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display may have the highest resolution screen in the world today, but it seems Apple will have to up its game next year if it wants to retain that title: 8K displays are expected to arrive sometime in 2016.
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has announced Embedded DisplayPort standard version 1.4a, which uses a new compression standard to support higher resolution panels, together with greater color depth and faster refresh rates. The new standard allows manufacturers to pipe around four times as much data to displays to support panels with resolutions of up to 8K.
The standard will also benefit machines with lower-resolution screens by enabling displays to be thinner, and extending battery-life in laptops by reducing the power required to transfer data to them.
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The display industry need to slam the breaks on screen resolution and concentrate on other areas of the display features. Most broadcasters are still adopting HD, let alone 4K. You think they are thinking about 8K?!
yes, screen tech is way ahead of content – waste of effort and money
No, not in the slightest but hey, what would you know, right?
I agree it’s pointless but not because of lack of content… screens are for more than watching movies (do any of your cameras shoot more than 8 megapixel stills, for example?) but if a 5k 27″ iMac already has enough pixel density to be called ‘Retina’ then yeah, any more than that is pointless. It suggests you literally can’t see the difference, unless you are sitting close to an even bigger screen, which sounds uncomfortable.
Agreed entirely in principle (and 8K in a laptop, arguably even most desktops, is beyond silly – the differences vs. 4K are not visible on screens smaller than 40″+), but note that this spec was pushed by Samsung, not broadcasters. TV isn’t the only application for high-definition displays.
Yea and this 5k iMac I’m using is just silly!!!
Or, wait…no….it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen and I don’t know how I worked without it before. Yep that’s it.
No way. I’ve been waiting for desktop screen DPI to go up. I want 8K, and I want a quality IPS screen that’s around 39″.
Why?
Crisper graphics and text
Lots of room for the work I do (video and audio editing, programming, and more)
Currently I use a crappy SEIKI 39″ 4k display err TV as my secondary, and an old Dell 30″ as my primary. The Dell is getting old. It really wants more pixels. The SEIKI is just a miserable display, good only for parking things or stuff I can glance at (mail, etc) and not stare at (code, video, waveforms, etc.).
This really has nothing to do with TV, and gladly so. Until 4k came about, the PC industry was held back by 1920×1080 “HD” for years. No one bothered making screens with any higher pixel density because TVs were what sold panel design. Then Apple introduced “retina” and the industry woke up to the idea that there might be a market for higher DPI.
Bring on 8k. More pixels, please!
Of course many people had the same negative criticism when 1080p came out. The same old cliche holds true, people are resistant to change. But thank goodness that technology doesn’t rest in the hands of a bunch of nobodies who opinions don’t mean anything. Heck, if it did, we’d still be using candles for light in our homes..lol
“Twice as much data”?
MOAR NUMBERS!
BFD! Higher resolution to watch reality shows. Helloooooo! How about less resolution and better content? What a freaking waste of bandwidth.
who said it was for tv? the article actually implies otherwise
The only benefit I see with 8K is that the 4K (and even HDTVs) will get much cheaper. Then, I may be able to afford a 4K at HD prices. Bring on 8K!!
I doubt we’ll see an 8K display any time soon given that the iMac 5K’s GPU just has enough grunt to run the screen and easily reaches 105°C when playing games. There is the other option which is a Thunderbolt 8K display with a refreshed Mac Pro refresh – something like a high high end screen, Thunderbolt 3 connector with a refreshed Mac Pro and GPU configuration to drive the screen.
Or they could be for high end macs and PCs with additional video cards. A couple nVidia cards should handle this without any real problems.
True hence the reason I bought up the Mac Pro – I could imagine a dual GPU configuration running being able to drive some nice 30″ 8K displays. For me I’m hoping that we’ll eventually see a refresh of the iMac 5K with an AMD M300 or nVidia GPU with a personal bias of mine towards nVidia.
VESA may support 8K next year, but that doesn’t mean anyone will use them. Actually, 8K displays were demoed at CES the same year as 4K displays. Some manufactures were hoping to get the industry to leapfrog the 4K standard. Obviously, 4K TVs and content are proving to be more popular than 8K and that’s because of the major headache with 8K. There is no content. You need special equipment to work with it. Cables that can transfer the data to your TV don’t exist on consumer markets. Your broadband doesn’t support 8K streaming unless you live in Kansas city.
To date, we’ve seen that content is lagging far behind possible resolutions. This I think will lead to a shift in how we achieve high resolution content, where upscaling becomes common place – for everything – TV, Netflix, Blu rays. Obviously, overtime content production will increase in native resolution, but it can’t be changing every year or two. Content creators can’t afford that.
It would be nice if there was enough 4k content first.
How high does the resolution have to get before my eyes no longer give a shit?
Depends on the physical size of the screen.
I’d rather have more memory…
OLED 5K > 8K