The recent 8K Display Summit in New York saw speaker after speaker explain why they thought 8K displays would break through into the mass market, and not just for viewers in Asia.

Florian Friedrich (Principal, FF Pictures) argued that many prejudices needed to be addressed. He said: “Some people say you need to sit 60 cm away from a 65-inch TV in order to see the resolution of 8K. Some others say you need binoculars at normal viewing distances to see a benefit compared to 4K or even Full HD. Both are terribly wrong. I knew I had to go after these prejudices, because the prejudices fundamentally conflicted with what I could see.”

According to Nutmeg Consultants’ and 8K expert Ken Werner, writing in Display Daily, he said Friedrich stressed that 8K virtually eliminates any aliasing/jagged lines in image reproduction. Friedrich added that almost any content looks better if it is shot on an 8K camera, even if it is intended to be released eventually in 4K, and that HDR was an essential part of the dynamic range, but that motion blur could be a risk.

Speakers also explained that there would be a shift to shooting content in 8K even if a show’s director later ‘zoomed’ or cropped into the final target 4K image.

Werner’s Display Daily piece reminds readers that while 8K video was being produced, he talks of the number of  recent movies shot on 65/70mm celluloid  and which would be more than suitable for remastering into 8K including Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017), and Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express (2017). In addition, several classic films were shot on 65mm film, including Ben-Hur (1959), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

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Categories: Blogs, Equipment, Inside Satellite, Production, UHD, Ultra-HD/4K