Not long ago, Ai Faner was at Sony's headquarters to experience the Z9G, the 8K TV they showed at CES and AWE, which is one of several 8K TVs on display at AWE this year, and Sony's first true 8K resolution TV.
Sincerely, after talking with Sony's TV designers and engineers, we realized that the TV is really just the beginning of Sony's 8K efforts.
Microscopically, it's a carrier of technology; but macroscopically, One Sony is like an oil mine that Sony has just dug up, with all sorts of creativity spewing out of it, and the 8K TV is really just the first barrel of oil for Sony.
8K is just a parameter, the key lies in the core
The TV industry is actually the same as the cell phone industry, in addition to the common Sony, Samsung, LG and other overseas brands, Hisense, Skyworth and other Chinese companies have also been in the home appliance market in recent years in different competitive ways.
And 8K TVs have become a must for all manufacturers, just like the current "price-performance" wave of cell phones.
The Z9G that Sony showed us this time is one of a dozen 8K TVs at AWE, but it's the most eye-catching of the bunch, because in addition to its price tag of 529,000 yuan, it's also one of the most highly configured of all the exhibits.
This year, Sony is offering the Z9G in 85- and 98-inch sizes, and while it's still a knuckle's worth of diagonal length away from the 100-inch Z9D that Wang showed off two years ago, the vertical 98-inch TV is already almost even with me at 1.8 meters tall.
So I made a point of reminding myself not to touch the TV when I took photos of it on display, and even though I noticed a pair of V-shaped brackets underneath the screen, I kept reminding myself that it's worth the price of a Mercedes-Benz E-Class.
Sony's designers explained to Avant that the floor stand is unique to the 98-inch Z9G, and that there were two aspects to the stand's design.
For example, the bracket is kept in a uniform charcoal black body, in fact, in order to make the bracket will not be affected by the immersive feeling of different color schemes; and the choice of a rounded chassis is in fact to cater to the style of some of the film and television creators home, studio equipment, and to maintain the beauty of simple mechanical.
The thermal design of the Z9G actually comes from Audio Labs.
It's worth noting that after introducing the stand design, the designers also told us about the design changes to the Z9G.
▲Microsoft's anechoic chamber
In fact, the design of the striped bezel on the front of the Z9G was inspired by the Audio Lab's spiked sponges, and the reason for this design is actually to make it easier to dissipate the heat of the TV when it's being used under high loads. After all, 8K TVs generate a lot more heat than 4Ks, so it's only natural to re-design the cooling layout, and we can see the irregular diagonal cooling holes on the back of the Z9G.
▲Sony Z9G bezel cooling grille
▲Sony Z9G back
Just as we were looking at how the TV dissipates heat, we also noticed a set of horizontal speakers on the left and right sides of the top cooling bar. Audio engineers told Avant that the Z9G has four sets of speakers on the front***, with three units in a group, two being designed on the back of the screen, and two being designed inside the top cooling bar we've seen.
The engineers added to us that half of the two sets of high-frequency speakers on the top of the Z9G are tucked inside the grille rather than on the back of the screen, in order to combine both aesthetics and audio effects, but this solution is bound to affect the speakers' penetration.
▲Sony Z9G's speaker set
Sony has therefore also developed a special acoustic wave-guiding structure to counteract the grille's effect on sound. Sony has now filed a patent application for this technology, and it's expected to be used in other future TV products as well.
In the grand finale of the hardware configuration, the Z9G is equipped with Sony's own X1 flagship version of the image processor, in the "8K Rapid Sharp Image Processing Engine PRO", "8K Elite Optical Control PRO Master Edition", "Bright Sharp Dynamics", the Z9G's picture quality has been more clear than friends to play, which is the reason why Ichiro Takagi in an exclusive interview, said that "the resolution does not represent the quality of the picture
Panels are only 8K, but they are not the only thing that can be used to improve the quality of the picture, which is why Ichiro Takagi said that "the resolution does not represent the quality of the picture. p>
The panel is just the foundation of the 8K resolution, the image processor is the essence of the image quality improvement.
In order to prove that "one inch is as strong as the next", Sony has even taken out a million-dollar 8K TV product from a friend to make a comparison.
▲ Sony TV on the left
▲ Sony TV on the left
With the same 8K resolution panel, the Z9G is slightly less saturated in terms of color saturation, but in terms of clarity and sharpness (clouds, stone textures, foggy textures, etc.), the Z9G's display has an edge over the Friends.
▲ Comparison of screen details. Top: Sony Z9G, Bottom: Comparison products
IMAX Enhanced is going to turn your living room into a movie theater
Besides the screen, the design, and the audio, Sony showed us another big trick for TVs, and that's IMAX Enhanced.
IMAX Enhanced is a collaboration between IMAX and Sony. Enhanced is a home theater certification standard created by IMAX and DTS to create mini home theaters in small spaces. In layman's terms, IMAX Enhanced is like Zeiss for cameras, 4K HDR for pictures, and Hi-res for audio - it's a sign that the content and equipment meets the standards of an IMAX theater.
In the 20-square-meter enclosed demo room at Sony's headquarters, they used the X9500G and a dozen speakers to create a 360-surround-sound home theater, showing us what it's like to be in an IMAX theater with thunderstorms and rocket launches.
The feeling of being wrapped up in sound is really great, and it's like being there for an Apollo rocket launch.
IMAX Enhanced uses a two-pronged "Content + Hardware" approach, with content certification consisting of four items: picture, sound, size, and content.
In terms of picture, the content must have IMAX's proprietary DMR (Digital Media Remastering) high-resolution processing, and the size of the picture must be suitable for large-screen specifications, so the movie needs to be shot with an IMAX camera. As for the sound, DTS:X technology was used to achieve the surround sound effect.
The content is one part of the equation, and the hardware is another.
First, the graphics device must support HDR and IMAX mode displays to bring out the best in DMR-optimized content.
Secondly, there's the audio equipment, which also needs to be IMAX Enhanced certified, but also needs to be set up with speaker layouts such as 2.1 (entry), 5.1.4, and 7.2.4 (optimal), which means that certified speakers need to be installed in the front, back, and ceiling in order to achieve the IMAX theater's surround-sound effect.
Sony's IMAX Enhanced demo room uses the layout shown below. However, due to copyright issues, we didn't have a camera in the demo room, so we had to use a simple hand-drawn drawing for reference:
There aren't a lot of IMAX Enhanced-certified devices out there, and Sony is one of the vendors that has the certification, which includes the X1 flagship processor X9500G, Z9G, and A9G, and the X1 Advanced A9G. The A8F, an advanced version of the X1, is also in the certification queue.
8K is still a long way from being popular, but the content is starting to catch up
On the way back home, I kept thinking that 8K is actually very similar to AI and 5G, which are cutting-edge technologies that represent a forward-looking view of human hardware technology. The first is a new technology that will be used in the next few years.
Why?
Content has always been at the heart of these high-end TVs, from 4K in the past to 8K today, but at the same time they've been an obstacle to the popularization of high-resolution TVs.
At present, most TV programs are dominated by 720P resolution, although some channels also provide 1080P signal source, but the actual only a few; and the movie is still dominated by 1080P, even if there are already a lot of 4K quality sources online, but the network speed has become the last wall of air.
If I want to watch a 4K movie at home, for example, I have to turn off my computer's download tools or set a speed limit, or else the video will be a lot smoother.
So 8K resolution is also closely linked to today's 5G networks, and just as smart systems have made TVs multifunctional, AI has made TVs human, and IMAX Enhanced has turned living rooms into IMAX theaters in the past, so 5G plays a key role in high-definition video playback.
In the long run, everyone's living room will be an IMAX theater box.
Entertainment, of course, is just one branch of what 8K brings to the table, but it's even more critical in healthcare. During endoscopic surgery, high-resolution TVs give medical teams a clear picture of what's going on so they can avoid the risk of surgical malpractice.
According to Nikkei News, 4K image quality is already equivalent to 4.27 of human eyesight, and 8K images can already clearly show the human body's muscles and nerves, so the risk of surgical errors will be greatly reduced with the support of clear images.
High-definition image quality will play an important role in future 5G remote surgery.
But since 8K-quality sources aren't widely available yet, what's there to watch when you buy an 8K TV?
Sony's solution is to add 8K X-Reality PRO technology to the X1 flagship image processor, which utilizes Sony's own customized image database to algorithmically enhance the clarity of the image, bringing 1080P / 2K / UHD / 4K images directly to the 8K level of image quality using hardware algorithms.
This is especially useful in light of the current lack of 8K content.
Of course, since these optimizations require on-the-fly calculations, what's essential is the processing power of the hardware and the vendor's experience in optimizing image data.
So technically speaking, there are only a handful of TV makers that can do on-the-fly image optimization, and Sony is one of the ones that can build its own processor and algorithm data.
In fact, in addition to using algorithms to address the clarity of existing content, Sony is also trying to use the One Sony concept to create movie and TV resources for 8K TVs.
I don't know if you remember Ichiro Takagi mentioning "from the camera to the living room" in many of his past media group interviews?
In fact, this also refers to the image and movie and TV departments under One Sony working together. Driven by this idea, Sony is creating an 8K content ecosystem that runs through filming, production, and broadcasting:
Sony will take advantage of the strengths of One Sony, and the movie department*** will launch 8K resources together. Ichiro Takagi told Lovefilm
On top of that, the PlayStation Games division also brought new news. In this information sheet, PS5 not only supports light tracking and 3D sound, but also supports 8K image quality output. Although the date of arrival of PS5 has not yet been revealed, but in terms of picture quality and sound experience, Sony's own TV should be the best game display for PS5.
▲ Net rumor PS5 will be equipped with a new processor, support for 8K image quality, SSD, 3D sound, etc.
So although from the book data, we may feel that talking about 8K now is just chatting about how good 2K is in the era of 720P, in reality, it is less than 400 days away from our face-to-face contact at the earliest.
In 2016, NHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, announced that it would broadcast the Tokyo Olympics live by satellite on July 24, 2020, and that this broadcast would be in 8K Ultra HD across Japan.
This will be the first time that an 8K broadcast will be available to us.