Sony debuts 84 inch ultra-high-def TV that is utterly useless

Dan Seitz Contributing Writer, Tech

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If there’s one thing that I hope I can pound into the head of you, the Guyism reader, when it comes to gadgets, it’s that a higher number is not always better. Most numbers in gadget brochures are inflated crap or have no bearing on the real world.

Photo Credit: Sony

Case in point, Sony’s 84 inch, 4k resolution television. It’s got at least four times the resolution of your current TV, and there is literally nothing to watch on it.

Why? Because it’s a 4K resolution TV.

To understand why this is a problem, if you play back media on this beast, you will have one of two options to keep the playback from looking like ass. You can either not use all of your 84 inch TV and have a crisp resolution. Or you can use all of your 84-inch TV, and have your Blu-Rays suddenly look like VHS tapes. Netflix? Hulu? Forget it. Sports? They’ll look terrible. It’d be one thing if your Blu-Ray player could upscale, but it can’t.

Oh, sure, there are 4K movies. They just don’t have a format yet, something I’m sure Sony will try to force on you in, oh, a year, when the PlayStation 4 comes out and it repeats the whole Blu-Ray debacle all over again.

Did I mention this machine that makes everything look terrible will likely cost well over $20,000?

Sony’s 84-Inch 4K TV [Wired]