8K Association Sets Minimal Specs for 8K Ultra-HD TVs
by Anton Shilov on September 4, 2019 11:00 AM EST
The 8K Association, a group led by leading makers of TVs and display panels focused to facilitate growth of the 8K ecosystem, this week introduced a list of minimal technical specifications that should be met by a TV carrying an 8K logotype. If the initiative is embraced widely by the industry, it will ensure that next-generation 8K televisions and monitors will offer consistent performance levels and therefore experience.
While resolution is a key characteristic of any display or TV, it clearly is not the only feature that defines quality and experience they provide. Nowadays, there are hundreds of mediocre 4K Ultra-HD 'HDR'-badged displays and TVs which use cheap panels and backlighting that lack proper bit depth, luminance, and color gamut that are essential for proper reproduction of 4K and HDR content. Such hardware ruins user experience and slowdowns adoption of new technologies by content creators.
To avoid such a situation in the looming 8K era and develop strict guidelines for next-generation TVs, AU Optronics, Samsung Electronics, Panasonic, Hisense, and TCL formed the 8K Association in January, 2019. Since then, the 8KA was also joined by Astro Design, ATEME, Chili, Innolux, Intel, Louis Pictures, Novatek, Samsung Display, Tencent, V-Silicon, and Xperi.
Recently, the 8K Association rolled out its first set of specifications covering 8K input parameters, display performance, interface, and media formats. In a nutshell, the 8KA wants an 8K TV or display to meet the following minimums:
- Feature a resolution of 7680×4320 pixels
- Support 24p, 30p, and 60p frames per second input framerate
- Have a peak luminance of at least (a minimum of) 600 nits
- Support HEVC codec
- Use HDMI 2.1 interface
The 8K specification by the 8KA also covers things like bit depth, frame rate, chroma sub-sampling, black level, color gamut, white point, HDR modes, and additional codecs.
It remains to be seen whether 8KA’s initiative is embraced by other suppliers of televisions and SoCs, but the idea of making 8K Ultra-HD TVs and displays more appealing to the end user by guaranteeing certain experience certainly looks attractive.
Related Reading:
- VESA Rolls Out Updated DisplayHDR Standard for OLED Displays: DisplayHDR True Black
- VESA Announces DisplayHDR Specification: Defining HDR Capabilities In Performance Tiers
- Sharp to Demonstrate 120-Inch 8K LCD TV & 8K TV with 5G Modem at IFA
- AU Optronics's New 85-Inch 8K LCD TV with 1,024-Zone Backlighting
- Honor Set to Enter TV Market with New Honghu 8K CPU
- VESA Announces DisplayPort 2.0 Standard: Bandwidth For 8K Monitors & Beyond
- Realtek Demonstrates RTD2893: A Platform for 8K Ultra HD TVs
Source: 8K Association (via Hexus)
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JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, September 4, 2019 - link
I'm hoping this is where the resolution race ends. Further increases in resolution have minimal impacts on visual fidelity while massively increasing the video bandwidth needed.Assuming better scalers are integrated into TVs or even native integer scaling support, 8K can support integer scaled 240p (18x18), 480p (9x9), 720p (6x6), 1080p (4x4), 1440p (3x3), 2160/4K (2x2) content, and could (with a good integer resolution scaler) therefore function "similarly" to CRTs of the past with good support for multiple resolutions with minimal (if any) loss in quality. 4K TVs could not support an integer scale for 480p or 1440p content while keeping the screen filled.
After this, I hope TV manufacturers stay on 8k, but focus on features like better video scalers, better refresh rates, better pixel response times, better input lag, better contrast ratio, wider color gamuts, etc, as these are all going to have larger effects on picture quality over just increasing resolution yet again.
UltraWide - Wednesday, September 4, 2019 - link
It won't ever end, progress can't be stopped. ;)GC2:CS - Wednesday, September 4, 2019 - link
Do not worry. We might soon reach a point where eco-activists will be protesting the power, e waste and CO2 cost of this.aenews - Wednesday, September 4, 2019 - link
There should not and will not be an end. Depending on distance and size of the display, higher resolutions will be still be useful (especially for applications like VR). However, it's definitely true that we don't need anything higher than 8K for a TV. Even 4K is a bit more than needed for many people since they maintain a pretty fair distance from the display.nandnandnand - Wednesday, September 4, 2019 - link
By my estimation (based on pixel count, not necessarily aspect ratio), VR will go to "16K" and 360-degree cameras will go to "32K".TVs? 720p often looks just fine to me, and it's hard to imagine 8K being insufficient. Maybe projectors will go beyond that.
SirMaster - Thursday, September 5, 2019 - link
Well for VR we need much more resolution than even 8K though.drgigolo - Wednesday, September 4, 2019 - link
One can only hope that this will force Hollywood's hand to actually render the CGI @4K and not 2K.Santoval - Wednesday, September 4, 2019 - link
It's not just CGI. I looked up Avenger's Endgame technical specifications and bizarrely I found out that while it was entirely shot with the (large format) Alexa 65 IMAX at 6.5K it was mastered at a mere 2K, not 4K. Why on Earth would they do that? Unless the list below is incomplete that means there is no 4K version of this film?https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154796/technical
quiksilvr - Wednesday, September 4, 2019 - link
Because the rendering and time constraints are ridiculous. People think that a frame can be rendered in a secondBMNify - Thursday, September 5, 2019 - link
making bad assumptions helps noonea UHD2 8K FRAME CAN BE RENDERED in a second with a current top end single cpu
theres no excuse for the pro`s...
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1831137#p...
piping HDR Rec.2020 from Vapoursynth to ffmpeg via vspipe
20th January 2018, 10:50 #2 | Link
dipje
Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2014
Posts: 270
(Most) of the HDR content is no different than most other YUV videodata, just YUV420P10.
If your script outputs something like YUV420 P10, with 2020 non-constant YUV matrix, limited range / tv range, 2020 color primaries, smpte2084 transfer characteristics, I would go with something like this:
Code:
vspipe -y <input.vpy> - | ffmpeg -i - -vf zscale=min=bt2020nc:m=bt2020nc:rin=tv:r=tv,pin=bt2020:p=bt2020:tin=smpte2084:t=smpte2084
Followed by any other filters and other ffmpeg parameters you might need.
Piping the data from Vapoursynth to ffmpeg isn't the problem,but you need to tell ffmpeg what the characteristics of the videostream are, that's where the big zscale filter comes in.
It's just basically a no-op, converting from input to output without change, but in doing that the videostream gets tagged with the correct parameters so ffmpeg (and other filters / codecs) know the characteristics of the stream.
Now, what you want to do with that HDR stream in ffmepg is up to you and I don't know much use-cases besides trying to tonemap it to SDR... but good luck.