4K TV

The latest development in television technology is giant, ultra-high-resolution, 4,000 pixel smart TVs with displays that provide views similar to full-size movie screens.

If your old TV set is just too small and pixilated you might want to look into the latest development in the television industry called 4K TV. The 4K designation comes from the new set's horizontal resolution capability of approximately 4,000 pixels. That number is a bit misleading though, as the 4K resolution enables the new sets to display 8 million pixels with a resolution four times that of full HD. The 4K phenomenon just hit the market this year and a variety of manufacturers have already gotten into the game. Sharp, Panasonic, Samsung, and Toshiba have all released 4K sets in the last year. All boast views with sharp detail equal to that of a full-size movie screen with resolution that equals that of professional cinema cameras. This means viewers can get as close as they want to the screens without being able to see a single pixel even if they are only a few inches away. 

Sony's new 4K set is the latest and largest of the 4K bunch available so far. The new Sony 4K set is a giant, ultra-high-resolution smart TV with an 84-inch display that provides a view similar to a full-size cinema screen that you can view at home. The Sony XBR-84X900 4K set is a 3840 x 2160 resolution LCD TV that features a detachable 10-speaker audio system delivering virtual 5.1 surround sound and also incorporates built-in WiFi so that viewers can watch video and music from Netflix, Pandora, and dozens of other providers that are already hooked up to the Sony Entertainment Network. The Sony 4K set will also play in 3D mode and it comes with the usual 3D glasses too.

The only downside is that the 4K technology is so new that there is not that much to watch yet in the 4K mode. Sony has addressed this with a short list of 4K movies that are currently available online and there are also a number of 4K videos posted on YouTube. YouTube allows a resolution of up to 4096 x 3072 which equals a whopping 12.6 megapixels, making it the only video hosting service that currently allows 4K videos to be streamed to date, but others are sure to follow if the 4K phenomenon catches on. The word from Sony is that its new 4K set will be available for purchase before the end of 2012 but the price has not been disclosed yet, but judging from the $12,000 price tag on Toshiba's smaller 55-inch 4K TV set released earlier this year, the larger Sony 4K set will be accordingly more expensive than that.