Dude, I'm fully with you on this.
The space needed, the costs involved and the lack of availability of anything being able to reproduce the images necessary to make these sorts of screens worthwhile, it's just an ego trip for the companies involved.

Annesia, you say £/$500 to rent the films? Does that include the cost of the hardware to actually hook-up to the screen, because no domestically available hardware (that I'm aware of) is currently able to reproduce the images that these screens are likely to be created for.

Saying they can reproduce CAD stuff is all well and good, but who is going to spend £22k+ on a screen that can only be used at it's best for that?
Certainly not your average consumer.

I'm all for advances in technology, but it'll take inbuilt obsolesce to have people keep on replacing their home TV every couple of years, and even then these prices are going to have to come down to todays prices for these to become commonplace in households.

Mark

BBC's 'Click' show did a report this morning.

Fnatastic looking TV but

a) Most people won't have the space for it
b) Even the makers admit there's virtually nothing to watch on it. Best suggestion seems to be get a bluray and let the set upsample it .

I wonder if HDMI has the bandwidth for 8K or it we're looking at yet another connector. I'll have to check. Note the "3D? it's rubbish, get this instead" line has already started, now they've finally realised hardly anybody wants or will pay for 3D

Well it may never be a success in the UK with the smallest homes on average in the EU.

I would. But I'm not your average prosumer either.

Very nice, and I know a few people who would be willing to sacrifice an whole wall in the living room to have it (cost aside for the moment). I think massive TVs in the home are a bit... tacky, but I still have a 32" 720p TV; which I am looking to replace with a 1080p screen, although I doubt I'd go for anything bigger than 37" and may even stay at 32" - and give the old TV to the kids for the xbox.

There's a chap across the road with a frikkin enormous TV - it must be 60" - it's pretty vulgar.

We've a gorgeous view across a valley from the living room. It's always changing - in winter I can see the sea and even across to Dartmoor. In summer, it's a riot of green and victorian mansions peeking out amongst it all.
What did the last owner have in front of this window? A 50"+ plasma. "It's the biggest I could get in here, because well, you gotta ain't you?"
Twat.

This. My parents live on a steep hill and their house is effectively upside down - bedrooms on the lower floor, kitchen, living room etc on the upper floor because the upper floor is much bigger due to the slope. One side of their living room is basically entirely a panoramic window. I mean seriously, it's like ten foot by four foot. It looks out over farmland to the lancashire moors beyond and, at most times of the year, is utterly spellbinding.

I would happily have a large, high quality TV if I had their house - they have much more room than I do - but I'd be damned if I'd put it in front of that view.

Only if it came to it, I'd put the big TV by the window and walk outside , possibly to a chair

Never, ever, ever would I put a TV infront of any window.
Until me living in my current place the TV has always been either against a wall or adjacent to two walls in a corner.
Now I have the TV sort of defining the boundary between the dining/kitchen area and the living area (it's all one big space) but the TV still doesn't block any window.
I don't know why people would do that.

Mark

I have a 32" TV up against the wall but not blocking the window. I was looking at a 46" 3D TV in PC World and as great as it was huge. I doubt that I would want one that big.

You want the screen with a pixel density suitable for the distance you'll be viewing the screen at. Sharpness of image is better than size of image, that means if you have a small living room, the best TV for you is unlikely to be over 35 inches.

40" looks sharp to me at my 2.5 meter viewing distance, even down at 720p. I certainly can't see the pixels at that distance.

I guess it's partly down to how good your eyesight is at that distance!

Yeah but I also think that people are willing to accept a less sharp, less realistic image for larger screen size, without really realising what they're missing out on, I think that's why TV is stuck at a pants resolution compared with computer screens, because tv's incorporate the cheapest tech to provide the "bigger, bigger, bigger" upgrade path.

You should aim for as realistic a recreation of real life as possible, just as audiophiles do with hi fis.

My iMac screen is better than my HD TV, by a long way.