8K TV Take-Up Is Looking Bleak
My support for and opinions of 8K have been well documented on this web-site. I see absolutely no reason for it, see the links below. Well according to the research company Omdia the worldwide general public seem to be in the same boat as me and the originally projected uptake of 8K has fallen flat on its face.
According to Omdia’s research, 8K TV is failing to entice customers at anything more than a drip. Their research has found that just 2.7 million households worldwide are expected to have an 8K TV by the end of 2026. Omdia’s research showed that in 2021 shipments of 8K TV’s only accounted for 0.15% of all TV shipments. This translates into a little more than 350,000 units globally, with Samsung shipping the lion’s share of all 8K TV’s. Even during the 4th Christmas quarter of 2021 total 8K shipments only increased by 13,600 units compared to the previous 2021 quarter.
Image Credit: Omdia
Image Credit: Omdia
With consumers being very “skeptical” about the format and the virtual complete lack of content and format support, Omdia is currently projecting no more than 2.7 million households worldwide owning an 8K TV by the end of 2026. With no regions having at least 1% of households owning an 8K TV, no commercial reasons for supporting the format can be made. Just to re-iterate from my earlier posts, many broadcasters and program producers are still HD and have not even converted to in-house 4K production, let alone 8K. So right now there is absolutely no financial justification for many companies to do more than just up-convert to 4K, let alone consider 8K production. As for 8K Blu-ray; looks like a “pipe” dream to me!
It is also yet to be seen if ATSC 3.0 will be supporting 8K. If it does the level of compression will have to be huge as it only supports a theoretical maximum bit rate of 110Mb/s. Also there are technical challenges to distributing OTA signals at 8K, including the possible use of dual antennas and/or additional network connectivity.
The Omdia report goes on to point out that in Western Europe, China and even Japan that already has the NHK 8K channel, that the 8K TV uptake market is minimal.
It’s true to say that 8K TV prices are on their way down and slowly entering the “affordable” zone. However, 8K TV brings you nothing more than resolution. So unless you purchase a HUGE 8K TV or sit very close to a smaller display it will provide very little benefit to your viewing pleasure. With video compression rates of >150:1 for a 110Mbps signal (ATSC3.0) or >300:1 for a 50Mbps signal (cable) how much of that 8K fine detail data are you throwing away before you get to see the image?
So with virtually no programming on the near or even distant horizons, it looks like consumers have spoken, well at least for now.
Read the full news article on the Omdia web site here.
Earlier 8K posts:
