The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K • Hacker News Board

Re: The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

#61

Post by compsciphd » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 11:52 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #33

Kon5ole wrote: post #11

55 inch 8k tvs make for great monitors. Basically your whole field of view is a retina canvas for apps, equivalent to a 2x2 grid of 4k monitors. The last ones I saw for sale were below 600 usd in physical stores from name brands (LG). Mine was just under 1000 when I got it. Why we can’t buy the same panels as monitors is a mystery to me.

I am jealous that you were even able to find a 55 inch 8k monitor. I couldn’t find one. For my computer monitor, I ended up going with a cartoonishly large 85 inch 8k. It was somewhat of an adventure getting it into my house, but once it was set up I absolutely love it. I don’t really see the point of 8k for anything but computer monitors but it’s absolutely great for that.

I'd think 85" even at 8k wouldn't be that great for a productivity monitor.

it seems conventional wisdom (for good or bad) would say 32" at 1440p isn't that great for productivity and one wants a full 4k monitor at that size for productivity use, and 8k at 85" would be about the same pixel density of 1440p at 32"

Re: The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

#62

Post by ttoinou » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 12:18 PM UTC

Kon5ole wrote: post #56

xxs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monitor - I prefer higher refresh rate. The other part is that you should have the entire picture in your eyesight w/o moving the neck. Personally, I'd consider that large of a screen, a bad working area.

>The other part is that you should have the entire picture in your eyesight w/o moving the neck. I agree, but that is still the case here. The difference is that the "full picture" no longer occupies the whole monitor. The amount of windows and content you arrange on a normal office monitor is about one third of my available space. I can arrange my windows in that space and not have to move my neck. But at a glance,…

Nice thanks. What OS are you using and what tools to organize windows ?

Re: The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

#63

Post by account42 » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 1:13 PM UTC

I have a big 4K screen and while I'm glad that I got it I have to admit that the increase in effective resolution compared to 1080p is already small for most film content - and when there is a difference is more from the encoder being allowed to use more bandwidth than the nominal number of pixels.

Re: The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

#64

Post by account42 » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

zihotki wrote: post #60

Underqualified wrote: post #9

We were talking about TVs recently in the office and pretty much everyone agreed that even 4K is overkill for most TVs at a reasonable viewing distance. I got a 65inch TV recently, and up close HD looks pretty bad, but at about 3m away it's fine.

One just need to get a big house so that the 8k 77 inch TV can be put like 6m+ away (/s). See the https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-r... for more accurate distance calculations. For normal size apartments 55-65 inch is indeed the best size considering the distances. It's a pity that the manufactures don't make 8k 55 inch TVs..

These calculators never made much sense to me. The whole point of getting a bigger screen is to cover a larger portion of your field of view. Sitting close to a giant TV is like being in your own cinema.

Re: The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

#65

Post by account42 » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

JasonADrury wrote: post #17

alex43578 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your Mandalorian test was via streaming, that's also a huge factor. 4K streaming has very poor quality compared to 4K Blu-ray, for instance.

Yeah, I have a hard time believing that someone with normal eyesight wouldn't be able to tell 1080p and 4k blu-rays apart. I just tested this on my tv, I have to get ridiculously far before the difference isn't immediately obvious. This is without the HDR/DV layer FWIW.

It very much depends on the particular release. For many 4K releases you don't actually get that much more detail because of grain and imperfect focus in the original film.

Re: The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

#66

Post by account42 » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

zihotki wrote: post #59

It baffles me that the 8K is discussed without taking the screen size into consideration. 8K in 77 inch TV is not that much different from 4k in 50 inch TV if you focus on PPI. Such big TVs also require certain distance to be able to watch them. Good luck finding an apartment or house in EU where you can fit 77 inch tv to comfortably watch it.

A 77 inch tv is very comfortable to watch at ~2m distance. The main concern with space constraints is the size of the TV itself.

Re: The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

#67

Post by xxs » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

Kon5ole wrote: post #56

xxs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monitor - I prefer higher refresh rate. The other part is that you should have the entire picture in your eyesight w/o moving the neck. Personally, I'd consider that large of a screen, a bad working area.

>The other part is that you should have the entire picture in your eyesight w/o moving the neck. I agree, but that is still the case here. The difference is that the "full picture" no longer occupies the whole monitor. The amount of windows and content you arrange on a normal office monitor is about one third of my available space. I can arrange my windows in that space and not have to move my neck. But at a glance,…

I have been using ultra wide monitor for years.

>Perfect for open offices too - no need for desk dividers if everyone is behind a huge screen! ;-)

Folks have been using 2-3 monitors for quite some time with the same purpose, but I also don't get the idea of the dividers.

Re: The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

#68

Post by zihotki » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #64

zihotki wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One just need to get a big house so that the 8k 77 inch TV can be put like 6m+ away (/s). See the https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-r... for more accurate distance calculations. For normal size apartments 55-65 inch is indeed the best size considering the distances. It's a pity that the manufactures don't make 8k 55 inch TVs..

These calculators never made much sense to me. The whole point of getting a bigger screen is to cover a larger portion of your field of view. Sitting close to a giant TV is like being in your own cinema.

The point they use is that our vision angles are fixed and if you sit too close you won't see the whole screen at once. What's the point of having bigger screen in that case? Also the angles of viewing won't let you see that juicy colorful picture at the sides even if you turn your head.

As for the cinema, there are a limited amount of seats where you can get the best immersion and they are in the sweet spot of screen size/distance

Re: The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

#69

Post by laughing_man » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

ksynwa wrote: post #25

Aardwolf wrote: post #5

> Gaming was supposed to be one of the best drivers for 8K adoption. While the step from 1080p 1440p to 4K is a visible difference, I don't think going from 4K to 8K would be a visible since the pixels are already invisible at 4K. However the framerate drop would be very noticeable... OTOH, afaik for VR headsets you may want higher resolutions still due to the much larger field of vision

AAA games have been having really bad performance issues for the last few years while not looking much better. If you wanna game in 8K you are gonna need something like a NASA supercomputer.

AAA games are struggling for a lot of reason, and consoles are struggling as well. PC gamers tend to use a more traditional monitor setup and won't buy a gigantic television. At least, not for gaming.

Re: The TV industry concedes that the future may not be in 8K

#70

Post by Kon5ole » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

ttoinou wrote: post #62

Kon5ole wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The other part is that you should have the entire picture in your eyesight w/o moving the neck. I agree, but that is still the case here. The difference is that the "full picture" no longer occupies the whole monitor. The amount of windows and content you arrange on a normal office monitor is about one third of my available space. I can arrange my windows in that space and not have to move my neck. But at a glance,…

Nice thanks. What OS are you using and what tools to organize windows ?

I have several computers attached to the screen and run Windows, Linux and MacOS.

Of these I think Windows has the best solution with a utility called Fancyzones (part of a collection called Powertoys). I can define areas of any size and shape and easily move windows around so they occupy the defined spaces.

In Linux I have used KDE, which has at least one similar mechanism which works fine too, but was more trickly to set up and configure.

Lately I have also been running hyprland more often and the setup actually works well with a tiling WM. You can tile many times before the windows get too small to be useable!

One thing worth mentioning is that it's kinda tricky to get 8k/60hz working under linux since the TV only does HDMI. I tried several 8k DP to HDMI adapters before I found one that worked. Windows and Mac work fine with a normal 8k HDMI cable.

On the mac I just use manual window management, since most of what I do on the mac tends to just use one main window anyway (garage band, lightroom, photoshop and such).