Sony and Panasonic work with Japanese national broadcaster on 8k televisions
According to the Japanese business newspaper Nikkei, Sony and Panasonic have entered into an alliance with Japanese public broadcaster NHK to develop 8k televisions. The Japanese companies would like to release such TVs before the 2020 Olympics.
Nikkei writes that the NHK will oversee the development and that the companies will work together on, among other things, data compression techniques needed for 8k broadcasts. The newspaper reports that Socionext will probably develop the image processor for the TVs. That company was created after the merger of divisions of Fujitsu and Panasonic. Sony plans to launch its 8k TVs in 2020. Panasonic has not yet specified a specific date, but would also like to have its televisions on the market for the 2020 Olympics.
The 2020 Games will take place in Tokyo and national broadcaster NHK has set itself the goal of using the 8k technology at the sporting event in a big way. Panasonic and Sony are working not only on 8k TVs, but also on cameras that can record in this resolution. Sony already has such models in its range for professional use, and Panasonic previously said that the company wants to show the first prototypes of consumer cameras with 8k film function in 2018 and launch them in 2020. The Korean LG announced an 8k television at the beginning of this year. That model with 98 “panel should be released this year.
The alliance of the Japanese television makers and the broadcaster is being set up with the aim of regaining a larger market share in the television market. In recent years, South Korean manufacturers LG and Samsung, and Chinese companies such as Hisense, have seen their market share grow at the expense of Japanese television makers.
It is not the first time that Sony and Panasonic have collaborated. In 2012, the two companies set up a plan to jointly develop OLED panels for televisions, but that came to an end a year later. The two did start a new OLED collaboration with a number of other companies in 2014, but that ‘Joled’ alliance focuses on making smaller screens.
Sharp already developed an 8k television in 85″ format together with NHK in 2011. In 2012, Panasonic made a prototype of a 145″ plasma television with the 8k resolution in collaboration with the broadcaster.