Don’t get too excited about 4k TVs… yet.

Awhile back, I had the opportunity to go to the National Association of Broadcasters event. (I called it “nab,” and was made fun of. But that’s another story.)

There, I saw 4K television sets. Complete, total AWESOMENESS. It’s hard to describe the quality in words – it’s something you just have to see.

It didn’t end at 4K. Tokyo’s NHK also had a mind-blowing example of 8K footage. All I can say is that you feel like you’re really, really there.

Amazing technologies and impressive demonstrations, but … It doesn’t mean anything unless there is 4K+ content to watch.

If you have the 25k to buy a 4K TV, then I know someone that needs to be adopted (me).

However, when you turn on that massive beast of a TV, you’ll notice that everything looks a bit fuzzy. Why?

Because the highest quality consumer media format available is Blu-ray. That format was created to feed the frenzy of 1080p TVs that have been on the market for quite some time now. When you pop in a disc, you’re only going to get 1080 lines of resolution. So you’re either going to see this image shrunk down on your new albatross of a TV or, if you make it fit the size of the screen, you’ll feel like your myopia just got a lot worse.

Don’t be fooled. You’ll see Blu-ray discs that say “Mastered in 4K!” But that doesn’t have anything to do with how many lines of resolution are in the video on that disc. Again, it’s limited to 1080.

So before you blow that kind of money on an ineffective TV set, think about some of these other luxury goods first.