MediaTek is to enter the flagship smart TV market, with the announcement of its Pentonic 2000 chipset presenting aspirations beyond its flagship mobile (Dimensity) and computing (Kompanio) platforms.

Although MediaTek already provides chipsets in a huge range of current televisions, Pentonic 2000 sets a new benchmark. Critically, it is capable of supporting 8K resolution with up to 120Hz refresh rate (or 144Hz for gaming PC hardware), and the latest Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos audio technologies.

Pentonic 2000 "integrates powerful AI-engines, MEMC, VVC decoding and picture-in-picture technology," reads MediaTek's official release. That means artificial intelligence support, motion smoothing and complex decoding.

VVC is otherwise known as H.266, the latest standard for video compression, which ought to be a game-changer for providing high-quality streams at lower package sizes. Pentonic 2000 is the first commercial 8K TV chip with this support.

Picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture support allows for multiple media sources to be streamed simultaneously, which will no doubt bring support for various TV operating system platforms.

So when will we see Pentonic 2000 TVs arriving? There's no word on exactly which sets will utilise the chip, but the company expects to deliver 8K flagships globally sometime in 2022. Given that the trademark was registered back in 2019, it's clearly been a long time in the works.