CONNECT WITH US

8K TV development gaining momentum

Tom Lo, DIGITIMES Research, Taipei

Development of the 8K TV industry has gained momentum recently, highlighted by the releases of an 8K TV chip by Realtek Semiconductor, the Xbox console Project Scarlett by Microsoft, and the world's first 8K OLED TV by LG Electronics, Digitimes Research has observed.

Realtek 's RTD2893 TV chip can upgrade a 4K TV platform to a fully functional 8K one, as the chip supports 8K AV1/HEVC/VP9 video decoding, and is able to convert low refresh rate 8K video into 8K 60Hz content using FRC technology, or upscale front-end 4K TV SoC output into 8K 60Hz images.

The RTD2893 chip is also able to secure HDMI 2.1 8K input and output and video bit stream transmission over USB/PCIe, and supports all 8K video processing including HDR formats, making it a very cost-competitive 8K TV solution.

Project Scarlett comes with product specifications that are comparable to Sony's PS5 with regard to CPUs, SSD storage capacity, CD-tracking and support of related 8K technology.

Since both Sony and Microsoft are planning to launch their respective gaming consoles supporting 8K images in 2020, household gaming titles are likely to become an important source of content for stimulating 8K TV demand, Digitimes Research believes.

LG's 88-inch 8K OLED TV, which is priced at over KRW50 million (US$42,550), features a next-generation in-house developed Alpha 9 Gen 2 chip that is able to optimize pixel effects via AI-based applications and to automatically adjust the quality of images and sound depending on different video content.