New CE Association Formed to Promote 8K Ecosystem

The group's mission is to help educate consumers and professionals about the 8K ecosystem.
At CES 2019 it was announced that several leading display technology manufacturers have formed a new coalition to help promote 8K products to consumers and other commercial industries. The so-called 8K Association (8KA) will work on developing the entire value chain for 8K, with an initial focus on supporting the early commercialization and adoption of 8K displays.
The new 8KA nonprofit organization includes founding companies AU Optronics (AUO, a panel supplier) Hisense, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics and TCL Electronics, which have all signed a Memorandum of Understanding to advance their common vision and mission.
Stated goals of the organization include:
- Promoting 8K TVs and 8K Content to consumers and professionals
- Helping educate consumers and professionals about the 8K ecosystem
- Helping secure 8K native content for members
- Encouraging service providers (especially OTT) to develop 8K offerings
- Facilitating communication within 8K ecosystem to help with commercialization
- Developing initial technical requirements for 8K input signals
- Developing initial 8K TV categories and minimum specifications for image quality
“The 8K Association will not only provide an effective introduction to 8K technology but will also accelerate the beginning of the 8K era,” said Hyogun Lee, Executive Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “By leading the early stages of ecosystem development, Samsung will further solidify its global leadership in the 8K market.”
"8KA helps to accelerate the development of 8K eco-system and the popularization of 8K products,” said Dr. Weidong Liu, the chief scientist of Hisense Electronics. “Hisense will bring 8K ULED products to market and will provide consumers with excellent picture quality and extraordinary visual experiences.”

Will 8K replace SD HD and 4K?
Building on the newly founded 8K Association and powered by major investments in the latest-generation large-screen 8K-ready panel production facilities—the newest of which enters production in early 2019—TCL will pave the way for an 8K era and actively encourage a wide range of business partners—from streaming services and hardware manufactures—to take the lead in making 8K widely available and accessible.
“AUO has long been devoted to the development of advanced display technologies and was among the first to have introduced 8K technology to large-sized TV displays,” said WeiLung Liau, CTO of AUO. “It is hoped that through the founding of 8K Association with partners of the ecosystem, globally consistent standards will be established to accelerate the adoption of 8K technology, delivering the best image performance possible for viewers worldwide.”
Thus far there has been little to no interest from consumers (in the U.S. or elsewhere), even though 8K TVs have been shown at CES since at least 2012 (Sharp showed an 85-inch prototype that year). And programming is sorely lacking, although Japan’s NHK is now delivering BS8K channel broadcasts in 8K for 12 hours each day via satellite service.
You might also like...
Learning From The Experts At The BEITC Sessions at 2023 NAB Show
Many NAB Shows visitors don’t realize that some of the most valuable technical information released at NAB Shows emanates from BEITC sessions. The job titles of all but one speaker in the conference are all related to engineering, technology, d…
Celebrating BEITC At NAB Show
As we approach the 2023 NAB Show in the NAB centenary year, we celebrate the unique insight and influence of the Broadcast Engineering & IT Conference that happens alongside the show each year.
Network Technologies At IBC 2022 - System Configuration & Control Key Themes
Will any new digital solutions on display at IBC 2022 not have an IP address?
Playout & Delivery At IBC 2022 - Cloud-Native & Workflow Efficiencies Key Themes
One of the key trends at IBC 2022 is virtualization and moving to cloud-native infrastructures. Manufacturers and users want to improve workflow efficiencies with whole cloud ecosystems and data.
US Open Golf Puts Spotlight On Latency And Scale For Live Streaming
Every big global sporting event exerts stress on streaming infrastructures and challenges providers to deliver further improvements in the viewing experience as demand and traffic levels go on increasing. The 2022 US Open Golf Championship in Brookline, Massachusetts, is particularly under…