A real storm is coming in the screen industry, and it's "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 equivalent of four 8-inch 55K displays in a 2x2 matrix, or 16 4-inch 27,5K displays 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 modular display prototypes with this resolution, but at a cost that would make any wallet tremble (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 its intention 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 you can do with a 16K monitor or TV for quite 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 you're still not sure why 16K isn't an option, consider the fact that even "plain" 8k isn't doing well. There are very few monitors (non-TVs) with that resolution: the Dell Ultrasharp UP3218 is perhaps the only mainstream 8K monitor available, and it doesn't look like it will have any successors.
I'm afraid 16K will remain just a dream, because the market is too small to be relevant. Connections and processors don't hold up, the assumption that we all go back to watching movies 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.
