You may think that 75-inch 4K LED TV of yours is big, but Sharp is about to give your media room an inferiority complex thanks to a new, massive 120-inch 8K LCD monitor that it plans to reveal for the first time at this year’s IFA convention in Berlin.
The news is mostly a teaser as Sharp has released very few detailson the TV’s capabilities. What we do know is that it will have embedded 5G connectivity. TVs and 5G feel like an odd combination when seen through the lens of 4G cellular technology, which is typically used for mobile data connections. However, 5G’s enormous bandwidth makes it a perfect conduit for 8K content, which has the potential to overwhelm even decently speedy home internet connections.
Huawei is also reportedly working on a 5G-enabled TV, so Sharp wouldn’t be the first to future-proof its new TVs with the next generation of wireless connectivity.
If Sharp’s claim of having the world’s largest TV at just 120-inches feels a tad inaccurate, it’s a case of semantics. Technically speaking, both Samsung and Sony have shown off much larger displays, with Sony’s current 16K behemoth coming in at a staggering 17-feet in height. But these gargantuan TVs use microLED technology to achieve their size, something that’s made possible through microLED’s ability to scale up by combining smaller individual panels. Sharp’s new 8K TV, by contrast, is a single, backlit, LCD panel, which uses the same technology as every non-microLED TV. In this specific category, Sharp can lay claim to having the biggest bad boy on the block (for now).
So far, there’s no word on pricing or where Sharp intends on selling this beast when it eventually does come to market. The company may not even target consumers with this new 8K TV. “One field for which Sharp has particularly high hopes is learning,” the company said in its press release. “The company will display 8K Viewer for museum and school use at IFA2019. This Viewer, pairing with 5G connectivity, enables to display artistic masterworks with substantially greater detail and resolution than can be observed with the naked eye [and] opens up fresh possibilities for remote viewing. Such advances have massive potential in the fields of education and art restoration.”
So your first opportunity to see the world’s biggest LCD TV might be at your local museum or art gallery, and not your local big-box electronics retailer.
