CES 2013

We are just a week into 2013 and the tone of this year’s technology is already being set. New televisions are popping up left and right from manufacturers like Sony, Samsung, LG and Visio and this time they’re bringing with them some new tech. What new tech? Well, 4K to be more precise and sure it’s going to look fantastic but I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit of overkill.

First off what exactly is 4K television? Well, I have addressed this in an earlier post that goes into a little more detail, but to gloss over everything it’s basically twice the resolution of current 1080p television. This new high resolution has been named UHD or Ultra-High Definition. UHD also includes an even higher resolution known as 8K UHD (7680 × 4320).

Now, all of this looks great and I can’t say I’m against moving technology forward, but my main issue with UHDTV is that it just seems like overkill. There is only so much that we can see with our eyes and unless you’re sitting right in front of your display, like less than 4 ft, I don’t think most people will be able to see the difference. Perhaps I am wrong, I didn’t think that I would be able to tell the difference with Apple’s Retina display, boy was I wrong. Plus these new resolutions will allow for some ridiculously awesome television sizes. I have seen some TV’s pushing the 80″+ range and they still look amazing.

A big issue with UHD is cost. These TV’s are selling for around $25,000 which isn’t exactly appealing to a very large audience. However, this year’s CES press conference from Sony has shown that 4K is becoming more affordable. Content is king, this is true for many things in life and it’s also true for UHDTV. There just isn’t much 4K content out there to enjoy on your new UHDTV set. This is the same problem we ran into when we first got into HDTV, there was little to no content and cable/satellite providers took years to get a decent amount of programming together, not to mention all of the issues they will have trying to get enough bandwidth together to broadcast 4K or even 8K.

Here is the new 65″ 4K TV that Sony unveiled at their CES Press Release.

The industry will catch up and the move to UHDTV is most likely inevitable, so these problems will eventually be overcome. For the average consumer we will just have to wait and watch until something more affordable comes down the line.