Just adding more pixels isn’t enough to entice consumers who are looking for wider improvements to their viewing experience, according to industry experts.

Speaking to IBCTV after a “4K vs 8K” panel at IBC2019, HIS Markit technology fellow Maria Rua Aguete said that high quality content is more important to the average consumer than the pixel count of that content.

Rua Aguete said: “We can keep pushing pixels up, but will consumers buy more? We don’t always think about the consumers first. They want good quality content but they don’t care if it is 4K or 8K. More important is that they have content to watch in their TV – that’s their priority.”

She was joined by fellow panellist Mike Zink, who is VP of technology at Warner Bros. Zink explained that studios had learned lessons from the transition from HD content to UHD about what consumers are looking for.

Zink said: “With the introduction of 4K, we started looking at how much can you see a difference from your regular HD channel. We learned very quickly that just adding more pixels by themselves wasn’t sufficient, so we started adding in HDR, wider colour gamut and other parameters to create this package that is UHD that provides a very different to package to consumers. That’s the main driver – showing them something new, something better, that they can really appreciate.”

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