8K

8K is a video resolution standard with a horizontal pixel count of approximately 8,000 pixels. The primary standardized format is 8K UHD (UHDTV2) at 7680 × 4320 pixels in a 16:9 aspect ratio - exactly four times the pixel count of 4K UHD (3840 × 2160) and sixteen times that of Full HD (1920 × 1080).¹

Standards

8K UHD is defined in two complementary standards:

• SMPTE ST 2036-1 (2007, revised 2014): Defines UHDTV2 at 7680 × 4320, with frame rates up to 120 Hz, 10 or 12 bits per channel, and colorimetry per ITU-R BT.2020.²
• ITU-R Recommendation BT.2020 (2012): The international UHDTV standard that adopts the SMPTE parameters. ITU uses “8K” informally to refer to the 7680 × 4320 system.³

The DVB project’s UHD-2 standard also uses 7680 × 4320 for 8K broadcast distribution.⁴

History

Early development

NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, began researching what they called Super Hi-Vision (SHV) - their internal name for 8K - in the 1990s. NHK conducted the first public demonstration of 8K at the IBC conference in 2003.⁵

In 1984, Hitachi’s ARTC HD63484 graphics processor had already supported monochrome resolutions up to 4096 × 4096 interlaced for desktop publishing, but this was a single-chip display controller, not a video broadcast system.⁶

Broadcast milestones

NHK began experimental 8K test broadcasts in Japan in 2016 using BS satellite. The first regular scheduled 8K broadcast service, NHK BS8K, launched on December 1, 2018 - making Japan the first country with a commercial 8K broadcast service.⁷

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics (held in 2021) were produced partly in 8K by NHK and served as the largest 8K production project to date.⁸

Consumer market

Samsung released the first mass-market 8K consumer television, the Q900R, in 2018. Consumer 8K TV adoption has been extremely slow compared to 4K, due to the near-absence of native 8K content, extreme bandwidth requirements for distribution (streaming 8K requires approximately 50-100 Mbit/s), and the limited perceptibility of 8K vs 4K at typical living-room viewing distances for screen sizes under 85 inches.⁹

AV Relevance

At typical professional AV installation viewing distances, 8K provides a perceptible resolution benefit only on very large displays (typically 85 inches and above) or at unusually close viewing distances. Most 8K content distributed today is upscaled from 4K sources.

Interface requirements: 8K at 60 Hz with 4:2:0 color requires HDMI 2.1 (48 Gbps) or DisplayPort 2.0/2.1. No earlier interface standard supports 8K at full frame rates.

8K ecosystem: The end-to-end chain for 8K content - including cameras, storage, editing infrastructure, encoding, distribution, and displays - is still maturing. Native 8K production is limited primarily to NHK, select high-budget cinema productions, and flagship consumer devices.

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Footnotes

1. SMPTE ST 2036-1:2014. Ultra High Definition Television - Image Parameter Values for Program Production. SMPTE. §5.2 (defines UHDTV2 at 7680 × 4320). ↩

2. SMPTE ST 2036-1:2014. §1.2 (frame rates up to 120 Hz), §6.2 (sampling structure), §7.7 (colorimetry per ITU-R BT.2020). ↩

3. ITU-R. “Ultra High Definition Television: Threshold of a new age”. Press release, May 24, 2012. ↩

4. DVB Project Office. “Phasing in Ultra High Definition” (PDF). February 2017. Archived 2018-12-22. ↩

5. NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories. “Super Hi-Vision Research” (PDF). NHK R&D, No. 147. ↩

6. Peddie, Jon. “GPU History: Hitachi ARTC HD63484”. IEEE Computer Society. 2018-10-07. ↩

7. NHK. “NHK BS 8K Schedule”. NHK. (Service launched December 1, 2018.) ↩

8. NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories. “Super Hi-Vision (8K) Research”. NHK STRL. (NHK’s 8K production program, including coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games as the world’s largest 8K production project.) ↩

9. Cambridge University Research. “Is your ultra-HD TV worth it? Scientists measure the resolution limit of the human eye”. University of Cambridge. Retrieved 2026-04-29. ↩