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Sharp bringing 'greater than 4K' TVs this year

Sharp has announced its Beyond 4K television which splits individual pixels to bring resolutions greater than Ultra HD, but do you need it?

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
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Ty Pendlebury
2 min read

LAS VEGAS -- In 2014, Sharp debuted its Quattron+ technology, which was designed to bring 4K-like pictures to a 1080p screen, but it was held back by the limitations of HD pixels . Sharp is now taking this four-color spinoff to its (il)logical extreme by installing it inside a 80-inch 4K screen.

Calling this new beast "Beyond 4K Ultra HD TV," Sharp splits the red, green, blue and yellow subpixels on the fly in order to generate up to 66 million onscreen pixels, As this screen likely won't be able to display 8K or whatever standard comes next, the answer to "Why are they doing this?" seems to be "Because they can."

But the reason to consider this screen isn't for the whizz-bangery of the pixel-splitting tech but for the other, more useful picture-enhancing features it offers.

The display will use the " Quantum Dots-like" SPECTROS technology to display even more colors than before with Sharp claiming it will display more than more than 100 percent of the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) Color Space used in theaters, though not yet in the home.

In addition, the TV will include High Dynamic Range technology -- though no word yet if it is Dolby HDR -- and a full-array LED with local dimming for what promises to be excellent contrast for an LED screen

How much would you expect to pay? Well, don't answer yet because sadly you'll need to wait to the end of 2015 before you can get one. Watch this space for more info on Sharp's most feature-packed television yet.