Sony declares war on Samsung with enormous 98-inch ‘8K’ TV at CES 2019
The TV battlefield is getting more fierce every day
GADGET fans have two enormous 8K TVs to look forward to in 2019 thanks to Sony.
The Japanese tech giant has joined its closest rivals in doubling down on ultra-sharp 8K televisions for the year ahead.
At a press conference at the CES 2019 tech show in Las Vegas, Sony announced two new 8K televisions.
They’re both part of Sony’s super high-end Master Series, and are largely identical apart from size.
There’s a smaller (though hardly small) 85-inch model, and a frankly ludicrous 98-inch set too.
The latter is a direct rival to the new 98-inch Samsung 8K TV also announced at CES 2019.
Both ZG9 models are powered by Sony’s Picture Processor X1 Ultimate, which is capable of upscaling regular content to 8K resolution.
For the unaware, 8K is a way of describing the quality of a TV screen.
The majority of TV models you see today are Full HD. That’s how we describe the number of pixels on the screen – the “resolution”.
The pixels are tiny dots that light up and create an image. The more pixels you have, the more detailed that image can be.
A Full HD TV has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. That’s 1920 pixels along the bottom, and 1080 up the side.
So you end up having roughly 2million pixels on the screen in total.
On a 4K TV, you have four times the number – or 8million pixels.
With an 8K TV, you have a screen resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels – or 33million pixels in total.
There's barely any 8K content (like TV shows or movies) out there, which means an 8K TV might not be the best buy.
But the fact that these Sony televisions can upscale normal content to 8K is a big advantage.
However, it’s important to remember that you can never truly convert regular video to 8K quality.
The upscaling process is simply a matter of guesswork: Sony will look at a pixel on your screen, and guess at what colours nearby pixels should be, to produce a fake 8K image that looks very convincing.
The televisions run on Google’s Android TV operating system, which means you’ll have no shortage of apps and games to enjoy.
And the TV sets also come with Google Assistant built-in.
Google Assistant is Google’s equivalent to Amazon’s Alexa – a voice-controlled helper that can get things done for you.
The Google Assistant can tell you about the news or weather, playing music or videos, and even give you information about what you’re watching on-screen.
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Sony hasn’t revealed an official release date (the website simply says “available soon”), and there’s no pricing.
However, we’re expecting the top model to cost many thousands of pounds – likely with a five-figure price tag.
Are you tempted by the prospect of owning an 8K TV? Let us know in the comments!
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