Advanced Television

Sharp offers ‘near’ 8K

June 16, 2015

By Chris Forrester

In the Ultra-HD marketplace tomorrow’s designs have a habit of appearing in the stores in a matter of months. Such is the case with Sharp Electronics. A presentation at the SID Display Week in San Jose, by Sharp Electronics US president Jim Sanduski outlined what Sharp has in the lab today, and what’s coming to the retail sector tomorrow.

As to the ‘what’s next?’ question, Sanduski said that Sharp is now on its 3rd generation of 8K displays, and using Sharp’s branded Quattron sub-pixel rendering to create 4K images “that look like 8K”. The Sharp technology, in addition to the usual Red, Green and Blue (RGB) colour sub-pixels, it adds a fourth, Yellow, sub-pixel (RGBY) which – they claim – increases the range of displayable colours.  The technology appears in current Aquos sets from Sharp.

Sanduski said that Sharp anticipates considerable consumer demand for this technology and well ahead of ‘true 8K”.  As to 8K (and there’s next to zero programming or footage in 8K) Sharp now has an 85” display with 120 frames/second capability, and 12-bits of depth and conforms to the much-desired Rec 2020 colour scale.

According to trade specialist publication Large Display Monitor, Sharp is also working to removing frames and bezels from its displays, and sees true transparency (the “invisible display concept”) as being popular.

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