I recently did some work in a law firm conference room where we were trying to review some PowerPoint slides that contained patent excerpts and, even after walking right up to the big flat-screen TV it was impossible to see text and figures clearly. A diverse (and therefore strong) group of female scientists of color created the first 8K television 22 years ago:
Why can’t we buy these today? Dell made a 32-inch monitor with 8K resolution and, therefore, an absurd PPI of about 275. It seems to be discontinued. Meanwhile, they continue to sell a 43-inch monitor with 4K resolution, an inadequate 100 PPI (it would be a great monitor with 6K resolution and, therefore, 160 PPI). At the typical desktop viewing distance of about two feet (24 inches), 150 PPI is supposedly near the limit of human perception.
100-inch 4K TVs now seem to be down to consumer prices ($1500). Especially if used as a digital picture frame and approached closely, it would be great to have more than the 44 PPI resolution that 4K affords. Samsung actually does make an 8K 98-inch TV… for $35,000.
I would love to know who is willing to pay 20X for the resolution bump! Zohran Mamdani, AOC, and Bernie Sanders should perhaps try to get a list of these folks and hit them with a new “fair share” tax.
In other TV news, I decided that our boys should be able to watch their beloved NFL in 4K. Our house is in the middle of an Xfinity-only ghetto and the neighborhood of 1/4-acre lots isn’t dense enough for AT&T or Hotwire/Fision to be willing to invest in burying fiber. Three cable boxes and basic cable TV are bundled into our HOA fee. I traded in two of our Xfinity cable boxes for the latest and greatest XG1v4 version (not regularly stocked at the local Xfinity store, bizarrely, considering that every customer now has a 4K television). After being plugged in for a day, and presumably after an Artificial Intelligence review of my weblog posts, both boxes locked themselves to showing only a single station: South Florida PBS. They wouldn’t respond to the channel up/down and Guide buttons on the remote. I would love to see this implemented on a national basis by President AOC! Imagine how much erroneous anti-Science thinking could be corrected if Americans were restricted to watching only PBS.
Circling back to the main question of the post… Why aren’t 8K televisions littering Costco and Best Buy? “There is no 8K content” doesn’t make sense in light of the fact that the latest smartphones can take still photos in 8K resolution (48 megapixels) and some can capture 8K video (e.g., Samsung, Google Pixel). Also, for progressives who claim to be defending the U.S. Constitution against the hated dictator, the idle screen of a TV could be a display of the sacred document (four pages handwritten or, typically, closer to 20 pages with modern typesetting). Lying down in front of the TV could be the progressive’s pit bull tearing apart a Donald Trump chew toy:
Circling back to expert witnessing, maybe someone in China realized the world was better off if at least 1 software patent wasn’t enforced, so stopped the 8k TV factory before Greenspun’s next assignment.
Resolutions over 4k are now manely used for virtual sets.