World's first 8K TV costs $133,000

Sharp will begin selling the world's first 8K television just in time for Halloween.

 

Interested? You'd better be prepared to pay up. The 85-inch "LV-85001" ultra-high definition TV set will cost you ¥16 million ($133,000) when it goes on sale October 30.

There is another big caveat: There is hardly any 8K video to watch (heck, there is hardly any 4K programming available). Google made a big stink in June when it announced that its  "Ghost Towns" YouTube video  was available in 8K -- before any 8K monitors were in production.

The 8K TV standard has a resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels. That means there are nearly 38 million pixels on the screen.

8K offers four times the resolution of 4K TVs (9 million pixels and a 4096 x 2160 resolution) and 16 times the resolution of a 1080p HDTV (2 million pixels with a 1920 x 1080 resolution).

Though 4K (let alone 8K) is still a rarity, the television industry is pushing hard to increase the standard broadcast resolution from HD to "ultra-HD" in the next few years. But there doesn't appear to be too much momentum behind that push.

To watch an 8K video on Sharp's new LV-85001, you'll have to use all four HDMI connectors and have a computer that supports 8K video output. 

That's why Sharp says it is targeting "mainly corporate users" for the new LV-85001 8K TV. It suggested that museums might want to display art using the new TV, and industrial designers could use them to display blueprints.