DisplaySearch Sees 8K Displays Coming in 2018, but Technical Challenges Will Abound

Ultra HD resolution is becoming “mainstream” in the high-end TV market, with shipments of 4K TV panels having jumped to 19 million in 2014 from only 63,000 in 2012, Yoonsung Chung, director-large-area displays and flat-panel display materials analysis in the DisplaySearch Korea office, said Monday in a blog post. DisplaySearch parent IHS forecasts 4K TV panel penetration will double in 2015 to 15 percent and double again to more than 30 percent in 2018, Chung said. But as resolution “continues to be pushed even higher,” the logical “next question” is when will 8K displays start to penetrate the market, he asked. Based on historical trends in the migration to higher resolutions, “it seems possible that 8K display penetration could start around 2018,” he said. Not only is that the general time frame when Japan wants to start commercial 8K broadcasts in preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but from an “industry perspective,” 2018 also seems “a reasonable year” to introduce 8K displays, he said. It’s possible 4K will have “become mature around then,” so 2018 “could be the year that industry players need another driver,” like 8K, to help stimulate the market, he said. But technical challenges will abound in making 8K displays a mainstream reality, Chung said. For one thing, 8K will need four times more data processing and pixels in the display as 4K, he said. “This means that high-speed electron-mobility-backplane technology is required,” he said. It’s also believed that 8K displays “cause poor transmittance compared with typical panels, creating lower brightness, higher costs, and greater power consumption,” he said. “Finding ways to overcome these issues will be a big challenge for panel makers.”