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Tech Intervention: There’s such a thing as too many Ks

Molly Wood Aug 26, 2016
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A visitor looks at 4K SUHD curved TVs at the Samsung stand during a press day at the 2015 IFA consumer electronics and appliances trade fair in Berlin. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Tech Intervention: There’s such a thing as too many Ks

Molly Wood Aug 26, 2016
A visitor looks at 4K SUHD curved TVs at the Samsung stand during a press day at the 2015 IFA consumer electronics and appliances trade fair in Berlin. Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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When it comes to TV screen resolution, apparently you can never have too many Ks.

Panasonic and Sony are teaming up to produce and sell 8K TVs by 2020. Those screens would essentially offer eight times the resolution of a standard high definition television set, so it seems like a good time for the return of my new segment: Tech Intervention.

You know what? You can have too many Ks. We’re not going to need 8K TVs in 2020.

Manufacturers are still trying to get us to buy 4K TVs, you know, the ones with ultra-high definition? Remember when we all moved to high-def and there was hardly any content in HD? Well now there’s almost no content in 4K, so almost no one is buying 4K TVs.

About 6 million have sold in the U.S. There are more Apple Watches than ultra-high-def TVs out there.

The industry has been tanking as televisions become a commodity, so trust me when I tell you that making even higher resolution televisions at even higher prices just to show off a couple of nature videos and one or two Sony Pictures films is not the jump-start you’re looking for.

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