OK so we are jumping the gun on this a little but I thought it merited a little post. I am writing this back in January (the day before your prelim) and I am guessing at where we will be today.

Screen resolutions for television have traditionally been described in terms of the vertical pixels, 576i, 720i, 720p, 1080p but the new standards are now describing them in the horizontal. So a 4K UHD (Ultra High Definition) screen has in the order of 4096 horizontal pixels this is twice the resolution of 1080p HDTV (High Definition TV).

Lets have a look at this in a little more detail. The following image is from wikipedia, it gives you some idea as to the number of pixels on the screen, around 8 megapixels, compared to 1080p’s 2 MP.

Now all that is very nice but how will we get content on to these beasts? Like all new technology there is always something bigger on the horizon, 8K has an image size of 33MP. These screens are not designed for small scale use (less than 40″) they are meant to be viewed on giant wall sized screens. The one thing you can be sure of is these screens are coming, the question is when will they be affordable and will our networks be able to deal with the demands they will place on it?