Samsung’s FIRST 8K TV is coming to UK before Christmas – but there’s a catch
FORGET 4K – Samsung has finally unveiled an 8K telly that you can actually buy.
The Samsung Q900R was revealed at this year's IFA 2018 tech show in Berlin, and goes on sale in the UK from mid-October.
The new telly will be available in four different room-dominating screen sizes, ranging from 65 inches right through to 85 inches.
All models come equipped with Samsung's Ambient Mode tech, which uses clever sensor systems to blend the telly into the wall when not in use.
But the real selling point (at least in Samsung's opinion) is the 8K screen resolution.
That means the images you see on screen should be seriously sharp.
So what exactly does 8K mean?
Most televisions you see in stores today are Full HD. That refers to the number of pixels on your screen, which we call "resolution".
The pixels are tiny dots that light up to produce the image on your telly. The more pixels you have, the more detailed the image will be.
With a Full HD TV, you have a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels – 1920 pixels along the bottom row, and 1080 up the side.
That means you get a total of around 2million pixels on your screen.
For 4K TVs, you end up with four times the number of pixels compared to a Full HD screen.
So a 4K TV promises 8million pixels total. Of course, you need highly detailed 4K content to take advantage of it – but you can find that from the likes of Sky, Netflix, Amazon Video and YouTube.
Now Samsung is launching an 8K TV, which gives you a resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels – or around 33million pixels.
The bad news is that there's no real reason why you should buy an 8K TV.
Because the pixels are packed so close together, it's basically impossible to notice a difference from 4K unless you're sitting just a few inches away from the screen. The TV would need to be enormous too – well over 100 inches.
The other big problem is that there simply isn't enough 8K content available yet, so you'll end up watching stuff in 4K at best.
Samsung is promising upscaling tech to combat this.
The 8K TV will use software tricks to guess what certain pixels should look like, converting normal footage to near-8K quality.
But it won't be true 8K, and it's probably not enough to justify the price.
Samsung hasn't actually confirmed a price yet, but it will almost certainly be very high – likely thousands of pounds.
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Top analyst Ben Wood, of CSS Insight, called 8K a "key theme" at this year's IFA convention, but warned over the tech.
"Understandable TV makers want to offer future-proof "8K-ready" products but it's going to be a while before content chain is ready for mass market support," he explained.
He added that current home broadband systems will struggle to cope with heavy 8K streaming: "Content distribution will initially be limited due to bandwidth constraints."
What do you think of Samsung's new 8K telly? Let us know in the comments!
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