{"id":100559,"date":"2022-10-18T11:12:07","date_gmt":"2022-10-18T11:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/eu-rules-will-effectively-ban-sales-of-8k-tvs\/"},"modified":"2022-10-18T11:12:07","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T11:12:07","slug":"eu-rules-will-effectively-ban-sales-of-8k-tvs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/eu-rules-will-effectively-ban-sales-of-8k-tvs\/","title":{"rendered":"EU rules will effectively ban sales of 8K TVs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The European Union is about to ban most of the best TVs you can buy. And if you think that couldn’t affect you, think again.<\/p>\n
As of the time of this article’s publication, a revised restriction on TV power consumption goes into effect in the 27 European nations that make up the EU on March 1, 2023. If nothing changes between now and then, there won’t be a single 8K TV that can be sold in the EU. The rule also will affect a couple of 4K OLED TVs, 65-inch QD-OLED TVs, and at least one high-performance 4K QLED TV.<\/p>\n
In short, most of the best TVs that you can buy today can’t pass the new power efficiency restrictions and will effectively be banned.<\/p>\n
When I first caught wind of these headlines, I was dismissive. But as I dug deeper, I realized this issue is not something at which we should simply shrug our shoulders. While it may seem like this issue will only affect consumers in the EU, it will likely have a ripple effect throughout multiple industries in many nations. This move has some huge implications, which I’ll detail shortly, but first, how did we get here?<\/p>\n
Good intentions gone bad<\/h2>\n
Several years ago, the EU developed what it calls the Energy Efficiency Index, or EEI for short. In order to figure out what the energy efficiency of a display was, the commission looked at data from displays that were sold between 2012 and 2017. That is, TVs that are now 7 to 10 years old. I’m curious about the methodology used to determine these efficiency numbers and am investigating them for a future article, but for now the takeaway is that the TV industry generally felt like the numbers the commission came up with were sound and fair and that meeting the efficiency standards were manageable. Thus, TVs have met the standards for several years.<\/p>\n
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8K TVs, by nature of how LCD panels function, consume considerably more power than 4K TVs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
But these efficiency standards were developed for HD and 4K TVs. When the EU decided to update these standards a few months ago, it not only increased the efficiency requirement \u2014 meaning HD and 4K TVs will have to consume less power than they do now \u2014 it also decided that it would copy and paste the power efficiency standard for 4K TVs to apply to both 8K and micro-LED TVs.<\/p>\n
Therein lies the problem. Either someone in the governing body doesn’t understand the fundamental science behind how TVs and displays work, or they just don’t care. The fact is that 8K TVs, by nature of how LCD panels function, consume considerably more power than 4K TVs. And, in fact, several 4K TVs consume enough power that, while they passed the requirement before, as of March 1, 2023, they no longer will.<\/p>\n
According to a detailed report by FlatpanelsHD, it appears no 8K as presently manufactured has an EEI low enough to pass the currently proposed standard. Some 65-inch 8K TVs are just over the line, while others would have to see their EEI cut in half in order to pass. It also appears, based on current EEI, numbers, that neither Samsung’s S95B QD-OLED or Sony’s A95K QD-OLED would pass, nor would Samsung’s QN95B 4K QLED TV.<\/p>\n
It’s not as if 8K TVs are treading just over the line, either. Many 8K TVs on the market blow past the limit by like 300%, so they are nowhere close to compliance. There’s no quick fix to this, either.<\/p>\n
Why 8K TVs consume more electricity<\/h2>\n
I spoke to Chris Chinnock, who heads up the 8K Association and recently penned a paper on this topic. He points out that an 8K TV panel has four times the pixels of a 4K TV panel. And because of the way LCD panels work, it is significantly harder to pass light through the tiny aperture of those tiny pixels. The harder it is to pass light, the harder you have to push, and that means increasing the brightness of the TV’s backlight system, which as you can imagine, requires a lot more power.<\/p>\n
Because 8K TVs necessarily need far more power just to be as bright as 4K TVs \u2014 let alone a bit brighter, as is expected of the premium TV category \u2014 significantly reducing 8K TV power consumption would require reinventing the LCD panel as we’ve known it for decades. That can’t happen overnight \u2014 if it can happen at all.<\/p>\n