THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO...Next gen TV tech

Goggle boxes are ever evolving and your televisual experiences are about to be enhanced in different exciting ways

- Words: Steve May

Could 2025 be the year that 8K finally comes of age? Once seen as the natural and inevitable successor to 4K UHD, the ultra high resolution format appeared to flounder when the sheer cost of 8K production put an end to any dreams of a native 8K ecosystem for programme makers and movie studios.

But now, there's new impetus in the shape of AI. Suddenly, advances in AI-powered upscaling are opening up fresh avenues when it comes to 8K home viewing.

Offering four times the resolution of 4K TVs, that's a pixel density of 7680 x 4320, the appeal of 8K video has always been ultra fine detail presentation, and with it the ability to scale screen sizes up with no compromises when it comes to picture presentation.

The brand is leading the charge here is Samsung. The TV giant first launched 8K back in 2018, with the Q9F QLED model, and it's refined the technology consistently on its Neo QLED 8K models ever since.

Not only have 8K UHD panels evolved to better showcase the detail and dynamic range of 8K content, picture processing chips have grown exponentially more powerful.

Samsung's latest TVs, including the Neo QLED 8K QN900D and the Neo QLED 8K QN990F, are powered by the NQ8 AI Gen3 Processor, an advanced processor with 512 AI neural networks able to upscale 4K (and lesser resolution) picture quality by analysing and optimising content in real-time. It does a remarkably good job emulating native 8K. AI-powered 4K upscales look very like the real thing.

The broadcast industry may have shied away from 8K, because of the demands it puts on bandwidth and infrastructure, but smartphone makers have been far more receptive.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 can shoot 8K resolution video, albeit at 30fps. This has opened the door to content creators. There's already a fair amount of honest to goodness 8K video content on YouTube.