Fancy New TV Selling for a Whopping $133K

Great news for anyone in the market for a prohibitively expensive, largely useless status symbol: Sharp is releasing the first commercially available 8K TV next month. The BBC reports the 85-inch set—which comes with a $133,000 price tag—has a resolution 16 times better than a regular HD TV, creating images so detailed they appear 3D. (Hey, finally a chance for three-dimensional characters on The Walking Dead.) Sharp's 8K TV boasts 104 pixels per inch and requires four HDMI cables simultaneously to reach its full, high-definition capabilities. But you can pretty much ignore all that, because 8K content is nearly nonexistent.

CNBC reports Japan isn't planning to broadcast anything in 8K until the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. And most companies are just now getting around to discussing 4K content to use with so-called ultra-HD TVs. The United Kingdom broadcast a single soccer match in 4K this year, and companies like LG and Samsung are only in the early stages of partnering with streaming services and movie studios to create 4K content for their ultra-HD TVs and Blu-ray players. According to the BBC, experts believe 8K TVs like Sharp's will mostly be used as digital billboards or with keyhole cameras during surgeries. Regardless, consumers can start purchasing their $133,000 paperweights Oct. 30. (More television stories.)