Samsung’s 8K TVs are getting certified by the 8K Association

The 8K Association wants to make it easy for consumers to know they’re buying a quality TV that meets certain minimum requirements when 8K eventually becomes mainstream. Understandably, Samsung’s keen to be among the first to use the fledgling organization’s stamp of approval to help it sell TVs including, potentially, its new “zero-bezel” ones.

This wouldn’t be particularly interesting news were it not for LG’s refusal to join the 8K Association and its previous digs at its arch-rival's 8K displays. Samsung and LG have long butted heads over their respective TV tech, with LG extolling the virtues of OLED (and helping it become the most widely used premium display technology) while Samsung’s stuck to its proprietary QLED tech.

Cutting through the clutter — One of the problems with new TVs is the sheer abundance of jargon and TLAs (three-letter acronyms) that can make it hard to understand. Terms like 4K, UHD, QLED, and OLED all vie for consumers’ attention and dollars without making meaningful comparisons easy.

If the 8K Association can mitigate against this, we’re all for it. Some of the specifications TVs seeking certification need to include: having four times as many pixels as 4K televisions (for a resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 pixels or greater), offering peak brightness greater than 600 nits, supporting image transmission via HDMI 2.1, and support for the high-efficiency video codec (HEVC).

Companies that get certified will be able to put the 8KA Certification logo on their products or marketing materials. With Samsung, Hisense, Panasonic, TCL all joining the 8K Association, we have to wonder how much longer LG will hold out. Though it probably doesn’t need to rush too much, given we’re so far from 8K TVs being remotely affordable (it took many years before 4K TV prices came way down) or having true 8K content available to make them desirable anyway. We’d love a ceiling-mounted LG 8K set, though, make no mistake.