LG Electronics has started shipping the 8K upgrade boxes that are necessary for its OLED88Z9 8K TV and 75SM9970 sibling to display content at their full resolution.
While both sets more than meet the pixel requirements to display 8K, neither shipped with the video decoding required to handle most sources of 8K content, wrote John Archer in Forbes.
The 8K upgrade boxes have started shipping in the U.K., the U.S. and various other countries in the world free of charge to all OLED88Z9 and 75SM9970 TV owners, LG said. Most boxes should be delivered before the end of the year, it added.
Archer also mentions that the box is a cinch to install, and so there’s no need for an installation service.
LG Electronics said it had decided to go with an external decoder box with its first generation 8K TVs as it was the best method of future-proofing those sets, given the rather fluid state of the 8K video codec situation at the time of their launch.
Now, things are more settled, and Archer said the 8K upgrade boxes from LG will support the AV1 codec that seems likely to become a standard with 8K resolution. Archer also confirmed that LG’s 2020 8K TV range won’t be needing an external decoder.
