A real storm is coming to the screen industry, and it is “made in China”. BOE, the eastern display giant, rocks the tech world by previewing a 110-inch display with a monstrous 16K resolution.
Mind-boggling numbers
The surprising prototype just presented offers a refresh rate of 60Hz. It does not mind a maximum of 400 nits of brightness and a contrast ratio of 1200:1. Interesting numbers, but the amazement comes only when the real star makes its entrance: the 16K resolution.
The panel appears to be a single piece of glass the size of the equivalent of four 8-inch 55K displays in a 2x2 matrix, or 16 4-inch 27,5K screens in a 4x4 matrix.
The Race to Resolution: Is 16k a New Arrival or Starting Point?
If you are surprised by this news (because you are not sufficiently informed) know that BOE is not the first brand to produce a 16K panel. How many of you knew this?
Innolux, Sony and Samsung have already presented prototypes of modular displays with this resolution, but with a cost that would shake any wallet (we're talking millions of dollars). So, the technology is proven, mature and available – what's the catch?
The 16K tops plenty the 100 million pixel threshold, reaching over 132 million tiny dots (15360 × 8640 pixels, or 160 pixels per inch). That's a lot of detail, especially for gaming and applications that require high refresh rates.
The hard truth
In 2016 (which in technology is a bit like saying a thousand years ago) AMD declared that it wanted to produce graphics cards capable of supporting 16K resolution at 240Hz. However, at the moment, there is no sign of such a graphics card. Why?
The hard truth is that there won't be much to do with a 16K monitor or TV for a while, simply because there is virtually no content produced at that resolution. It's not that it's impossible to produce: Sony had the technology to do it even in 2014, and a small company made Prairie Wind, the first movie in 16K, using two Canon cameras.
Not to mention that since 2019 there are 200 million pixel camera sensors and smartphones with 200 megapixel cameras (for example, Motorola Edge 30 Ultra).
16k, too far ahead
If it's still unclear to you why 16K isn't an option, consider the fact that even “simple” 8K isn't faring well. There are very few (non-TV) monitors with that resolution: the Dell Ultrasharp UP3218 is perhaps the only 8K monitor available at a mainstream level, and it doesn't look like it will have any successors.
I fear that 16K will remain just a dream, because the market is too small to be relevant. Connections and processors don't hold up, the idea that we'll all go back to watching films on stand-alone media and players is simply ridiculous. Not to mention the content: most of it is still produced, consumed and viewed in Full HD, a resolution 64 times lower than 16K.
It seems counterintuitive: a vision technology that we won't see easily.
