this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
540 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
74831 readers
2623 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
8K content is too storage hungry. My pirate ship is already bursting at the seams with some 4K but mostly 1080. I have 130TB of media, if it was in 8K I would need a water cooled server farm.
That's the REAL reason for lack of 8K interest, the pirates are not demanding it. Not until 100TB drives are available for a reasonable price.
Wait what? Are you implying that if there was demand for 8k content, then pirates would make it available? The content has to exist in order for pirates to release it.
I can download a remux of the 4K Lawrence of Arabia transfer because it was filmed in 70mm and the studio transferred it at 4K. It’s 70mm film, so it’s ~8-12K equivalent, but to actually get that resolution they would have to scan that film at that resolution, then go through the whole video workflow, color correction, whatever tf idk I’m not a video engineer, at that resolution, and render out the final version at that resolution.
Pirates aren’t doing that, they’re ripping physical or digital releases. And there’s no point in downloading an 8K upscale of a 4K release, just let your TV or your Shield or Infuse handle the upscaling.
I am saying that the ability to store the content is needed before people will be able to make the demand for it. So take streaming platforms for instance. They won't want to build more server farms and instead just upgrade what they have. So once 100TB drives are readily available they will start upgrading and then influence the media companies to start scanning at 8k. The people scanning the damn movies will need to store it too. You know whoever is the first to start offering the content be it Netflix or Disney will start a chain reaction and then 8k will take off but I'm sure it will be a slower build up compared to 4k.
Ah ok I see what you were saying. Honestly I think we’ll see physical media first, like multilayer Blu-ray Discs or something, that drive the initial adoption, just like with 4K. One people get a taste of it, demand will force streamers to offer it at a premium tier, until it eventually just becomes normalized.
But yeah I think it’s gonna be way slower than the buildup to 4K also.
The real reason for lack of interest is streaming quality of 4k has been getting worse for years, and is still like 1/10th the quality of 4k BluRay, with enormous levels of compression and artifacts.
8k requires 4x the data. We all know that means every subscription would charge at least 2x more to maintain profit margins of unlimited growth for vulture capitalism, and they'd skimp on the extra data too; leaving users with nothing better than the current 4k.
That's true, and to add to that, most mobile phone and many land Internet based connections are not unlimited and have caps. Nobody wants to stream a few 8k movies and use up their entire monthly cap in one shot.
-speaking as a US user, many countries offer unlimited as standard but not the evil empire.
Yeah, storage/bandwidth is the overall limiting factor regardless for 8k. Also, most peoples xp with 4k is streaming, so there would likely be 100x more of a market for increasing bitrate from the current "compressed as all fuck" up to 4k Bluray bitrate, before anyone cares about 8k... but of course, that isn't something that TV manufacturers can control or use to sell more products.
If your phone is 1080p you won't be being served 8K video on any streaming service. 8K phone screens aren't coming any time soon, as even 4K is overkill and rarely done - and even then, netflix etc still don't stream 4K to them.