Samsung Electronics is finally able to offer 8K TV owners some native, premium content in 8K resolution.
The company has said it will stream the third season of the hit series Das Boot in 8K starting later this month. However, the series will only be available in Germany, for now.
The availability of Samsung’s first 8K content comes almost four years after it launched its first 8K television back in 2018. However, those early adopters will miss out on the action, even if they do live in Germany, as it will only be available for models made in 2020, 2021 and 2022 through the Samsung TV Plus app. The third season of Das Boot was reportedly filmed natively in 8K resolution.
While the news is certainly welcome, it is unfortunately very limited in its scope and the vast majority of 8K TV owners still have very little native content to enjoy on their shiny boxes. There is a selection of user-created 8K content on YouTube, but none of the major video streaming platforms - like Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+ - currently offer anything higher than 4K resolution. Due to this, 8K TV sales have struggled to take off and many analysts have reduced their forecasts going forward.
Samsung is at least showing it is possible to deliver 8K content, but it remains to be seen if this will be the start of something big or just a one-off. Most likely, it will still be several years before series such as this one are regularly produced in 8K.
“As a pioneer of 8K technology, Samsung makes an important contribution and enables the TV audience to achieve high-resolution image quality," insisted Samsung Director of Marketing Mike Henkelmann.
There’s no word if or when Das Boot in 8K might be made available in other territories. For those who do live in Germany and own an 8K TV set, Samsung is recommending a minimum internet speed of 40 Mbps. It’s not clear if the stream is using HEVC or AV1 video compression, but the fact that only 2020 and later models are supported could point to the former.
In other news, Samsung has offered us the somewhat tantalising prospect of watching Das Boot in 8K with Ambilight-style lighting effects. That’s because the company has announced an update to its SmartThings app that will add support for Philips Hue Sync on Samsung TVs. The update will apparently be launched in the “coming months”, Samsung said.
At present, Philips is the only TV brand that provides built-in mood lighting for its TVs. However, it’s possible to ‘decorate’ other TVs with Philips Hue smart lights by synchronizing the picture through an expensive HDMI box. Samsung’s update would apparently integrate this synchronisation directly into the TV, eliminating much of the hassle and expense.
