In the past 4 decades, entertainment media has rapidly changed. Just look at the trajectory of music media. Vinyl records, surprisingly, entered the world at the start of the Great Depression. In the post-war era, vinyl began to flourish. Music was no longer a happenstance on the radio, but could be played at will on home-bound record players. Eventually, compact cassettes and 8-track tapes came along in the 60s. CDs (Compact Discs) would enter the zeitgeist in the early 80s. These sleek, futuristic-looking discs would be the new king of the hill, that is, until digital music saw a boon with the advent of MP3 players and iPods. From a physical perspective in the digital age, vinyl, cassettes, and CDs have all found a niche market for music collectors looking to stock a physical library of music. But the debut of the digital option sealed the deal on CDs being the final mainstream physical iteration of music media.

Movies will ultimately follow a similar trajectory. Film buffs who’ve been around for a few decades have gone through the frustration of updating their home movie libraries from VHS to DVD. Then, it was a shift from DVD to Blu-Ray after Blu-Ray reigned supreme over the lost HD DVD format. High definition wasn’t the ceiling that the term sounded like it was, however. As it turned out, visual clarity and definition could go even higher. Enter 4K. The new peak resolution took over the TV market and squashed another format that was allegedly destined for the future: Blu-ray 3D. The market judgment determined 3D displays at home were more of a passing gimmick then a true distinct new home movie format that’d become the future of the medium. Now, we’ve been purchasing 4K Blu-rays for several years, or watching 4K/UHD digital versions of our favorite movies and TV series.

The first 8K TV hit the market in 2015

For a while, companies seemed absolutely determined to continually bring humanity a new level of precision and clarity on their TV sets. When HD was the new kid on the block, I had thought that HD movies were so crisp and sharp that my eyes would bleed. But then when 4K inherited the crown of the best picture on TV screens, I was absolutely amazed that visual fidelity could improve beyond traditional high-def. After only a few short years following the debut of 4K, there was already chatter of 8K screens that were about to hit the market. In 2015, the first 8K TVs were sold commercially. It’s wild to think that 8K, a step beyond 4K, actually entered the market over a decade ago. This is a resolution that is 16 times the pixels of the traditional 1080p high-definition format.

The question is: whatever happened to the 8K market? To be frank, it fizzled. Sharp pushed an 8K TV model to market in 2015, only 3 years after 4K TVs made a commercial debut. So, a few things happened here that ultimately doomed 8K to fail. For starters, this is the classic story of tech companies being a tad overzealous and aggressive, seemingly forcing a new upgrade on the public when it was absolutely not ready for one.

Then, there’s human biology. There’s only so much clarity the human eye can see. And if you’re like me, you’re genetically predisposed to awful vision. Most critics of the new hardware highlighted the absurdity of 8K. To truly see the new level of precision, you’d have to be sitting pretty close to the screen, something most living rooms are not organized to do. At the average distance of a couch from a television set in most living rooms, most viewers would not be able to visibly distinguish 8K from 4K. Then there’s the lack of support. Streaming giants like Netflix didn’t feel like the juice was worth the squeeze as the lack of demand coupled with higher infrastructure costs were simply not tenable.

It’s a snowball’s chance, if you know what I mean

For the fans of physical media collection, the worry of having to update 4K Blu-rays to 8K Blu-rays was likely a real concern at one point. Some of us have already upgraded our movie libraries at least 3 times in our lifetime. There’s no way anyone would want to do this yet again. Truth be told, there was never any real threat of this happening. That is, in part, another reason 8K TVs are still not seeing a strong demand. There was never any industry push to commercialize 8K into a new Blu-ray format. Once streaming giants backed out of the “8K” picture, updating physical media was never going to be a priority.

Now, 8K TVs make up a ridiculously small portion of overall TV units sold globally. 4K still remains the dominant format. That doesn’t mean that 8K won’t see potential growth in the years to come. But for hardware that has been on the market for over a decade, there’s no chance there will ever be a new physical media format beyond 4K Blu-rays. So, rest easy, physical media collectors. Continue building your 4K libraries, and lock in that Spider-Man: Brand New Day pre-order. There is no doubt that it will be the last physical media format we ever see.