4k TVs and Monitors

ddrueding

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This article led me to this one, and now I'm interested in something with a resolution higher than the 2560x1600 that I get with the 30" Dell monitors.

However unlike JTR, I have no interest in paying for pixels that I don't see/can't appreciate. So I wouldn't want to go much below the 0.25mm pixel pitch of my current screens.

Anyone else have one of these or researching them?
 

jtr1962

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I'm nearsighted, which means if I sit further away from my monitor than about 18" things start getting blurry. I'm not wearing glasses because a) they're annoying b) they introduce significant perspective distortion c) they cause eye fatigue. That and the space on my desk means nothing bigger than about 24" widescreen or 21" 4:3. Any larger and the top/bottom or sides are out of my field of view. Getting to paying for pixels I can't see, I can clearly see the pixels on the 20" 1600x1200 monitor right in front of me. They're less annoying that the ones on my 19" 1280x1024 monitor (which I use as a second monitor now), but present nonetheless. I think something with at least 2000 vertical lines will get to the point where the pixels aren't all that noticeable (although I'll still see them if I really try). Unfortunately, all of the 4K monitors which are in the pipeline are just too big. They may suit some people, but I'm sure there are enough people looking for a regular sized monitor with nearly indistinguishable pixels. I'm glad to see 4K monitors are finally here. I just hope the technology eventually trickles down to smaller monitors. Hopefully it should. We didn't see 1080P TVs in the smaller sizes in the beginning, but now you can buy them in 23".
 

LunarMist

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I'm nearsighted, which means if I sit further away from my monitor than about 18" things start getting blurry. I'm not wearing glasses because a) they're annoying b) they introduce significant perspective distortion c) they cause eye fatigue.

Find a new ophthalmologist.
 

jtr1962

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Find a new ophthalmologist.
My glasses work fine doing what they're designed to do-namely looking at distant objects. Glasses don't work well for stuff that's far enough away to be blurry but still close enough to fill up a lot of your field of vision. Case in point-a 30" 4K monitor. In order to not notice the pixels, I would need to sit about 30" to 36" away. That's also a good distance for me to easily see the entire screen. Unfortunately, it's also far enough away that things are getting blurry. With glasses, anything not directly in front of me will be distorted. And I'll also have ambient light reflecting off my glasses. None of these things are a problem watching a 42" TV in a darkened room from ~8 feet away, but they're a huge problem using a 30" monitor from the distances I mentioned. If anyone making monitors is reading this, please, please make 4K monitors at least down to 23" or 24". Better yet, make 21" or 22" 4K 4:3 (4000 x 3000) monitors. Those would find a huge market among cubicle bound CAD users.
 

Howell

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Find a new ophthalmologist.

+1

I enjoy the ability to see sharply without filling my entire field of view with the subject. I would have a hard time using all five of my monitors if I had to press my nose against them to see them rather than being able to move between 2 and 3 feet away.
 

LunarMist

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At 50, you should have progressive lenses to cover near-far, or use different glasses for different purposes. WY home I have a single vision lens for the computer display specifically. I use progressives at work, since I don't need a full field that is all sharp at the same time. I also have high magnification bifocals for. Very close work.
 

Bozo

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I could not get used to the progressive lenses. I have triple focals fo general use and dedicated glasses for computer work.
 

Mercutio

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It's always funny to me to see which of my students didn't bring their reading glasses. I can tell because they're the ones who will pull a 22" LCD close enough that many of them have noseprints on them.
 

jtr1962

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At 50, you should have progressive lenses to cover near-far, or use different glasses for different purposes. WY home I have a single vision lens for the computer display specifically. I use progressives at work, since I don't need a full field that is all sharp at the same time. I also have high magnification bifocals for. Very close work.
I don't need anything at all for close up vision. I still solder 0805 SMD parts just fine without magnification. In fact, I can still read the numbers off them no problem. My glasses at this point are used for one thing only-watching TV when I'm more than a few feet from the screen. Point of fact I find wearing glasses exceedingly distracting for anything requiring any sort of extended concentration, like what I do on a PC. Anyway, glasses or not the point is if I'm sitting any distance where the screen fills most of my field of vision, I'm going to see pixels on any monitor which exists today, whether it's the 20" 1600x1200 monitor I'm using, or the 2560x1600 monitor Dave is using. I'm just surprised more people don't have this issue, glasses or not. Whether your vision is 20/20 or corrected to 20/20, you can still resolve to a certain number of arc-seconds, and that number is smaller than typical pixel size unless your monitor is so far away it doesn't fill up most of your field of vision.
 

Howell

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My vision is corrected to 20/15. Most of the time I can't tell the difference between pixels and sneeze marks. I sit 24" from a 22" 1920x1080.
 

jtr1962

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My vision is corrected to 20/15. Most of the time I can't tell the difference between pixels and sneeze marks. I sit 24" from a 22" 1920x1080.
That's just about the same pixel size as the monitor I'm using but you're sitting 50% further away (I just double checked and my normal viewing distance is 16"). With a widescreen instead of 4:3 I would need to sit at least 19" away to keep the entire monitor in my field of view. Things already start blurring at 18" so that wouldn't work for me. Largest widescreen I could use would be about 20" but then it would be too small from top to bottom. That's why I prefer 4:3. It just seems to work best for filling my entire field of vision, which is what I want for computer work. TV is obviously different. I rarely sit close enough to the TV to notice the pixels.
 

ddrueding

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I consider being able to see a hint of pixels a good thing, particularly in CAD and Photoshop. It is nice to know that something is exactly spot on (down to the pixel) than just as close as I can see.
 

jtr1962

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Pixels are moot for the PCB design I do. The CAD software does things to the thousanths of an inch, and represents it on screen with vector graphics. Even I wouldn't want or need a pixel pitch of 0.001". When I'm worrying about individual pixels with image editing, I'll typically have the image greatly magnified. Reading is one of the strengths of ultra high resolution. My eyes get less fatigued when the display looks more like paper instead of a screen door. I've seen some of those e-book readers with electronic paper, then thought how great it would be if we had monitors which display text this clearly.
 

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ddrueding

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Several review sites (including the one I linked to above) bought and reviewed that exact TV. Apparently no gotcha, but everyone believes this is a limited time offer.

If the "maybes" become "yes" I'll be ordering 5 of those by tomorrow.
 

jtr1962

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Ok, that's almost impossible. 4K TVs were over 20K$ just 6 months ago. How can we have a 1500$ 4K TV now. Don't get me wrong, it was very predictable that the 4K TVs were to drop to this price eventually, but I expected it to happen in two years, not now.

There has to be a gotcha somewhere.
It actually doesn't cost all that much more to make an LCD display with 3840 x 2160 resolution, as opposed to 1920 x 1080. The only reason it's taken this long is there just wasn't the market to sell enough of them. I think Apple got people to realize the advantages of ultra high definition with its retina displays. Now it seems everyone wants higher resolution. The irony here though is 4K is wasted at the typical distances most people sit from a television unless the screen is over about 60". That said, I'm a little surprised myself 4K is available at this price level so soon. When we start seeing 23" or so 4K displays, I'll be in the market for a new monitor. Not that the 1600x1200 screen I'm using now is horrible. It's actually better than anything I've used up to this point. It's just I'll be happy when pixels aren't an issue because I just can't see them.
 

ddrueding

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The biggest market for 4k will be TVs first and monitors second (for quite a while, the cheapest way to get a ~2MP screen was to buy a 1080p TV). And as a TV, 50" is just about the minimum size anyone could appreciate 4k. As such, I doubt anyone will ramp up production of 4k displays much smaller than that until they become ubiquitous.
 

jtr1962

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You're probably right, although I tend to think smaller 4K displays might happen a bit sooner if they want to get people to buy new monitors. Right now, unless of course it breaks, most people who are using any monitor made within, say, the last 8 or 10 years have no compelling reason to replace it. I'm not talking about gamers who might want to get higher refresh rates, or people who do a lot of image editing and might need better contrast ratios. Rather, I'm talking about your average user who checks emails, looks at videos on you-tubes, etc. That's the mass market for monitors. And any monitor made probably since 2003 still works fine. Backlights may dim with age, but they're usually still bright enough 8 or 10 years later. My 1600x1200 monitor (made c. 2004), which I got second hand from the next door neighbors, has close to 20,000 hours on it according to the info display on the menu. The backlight is still plenty bright. I would imagine lots of people are using monitors they're happy with. Once enough people see large screen 4K TVs in stores, they're probably going to say the picture looks better than my monitor. That will drive the next cycle of upgrades. The only show stopper might be people with machines too old to support higher resolutions. DVI and VGA won't support anything past 2560 x 1600. The DisplayPort on my new M/B supports up to 4096 x 2160. I don't think there's any standard yet for 8K displays. Then again, 8K is overkill for anything except huge displays.
 

Chewy509

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I would imagine lots of people are using monitors they're happy with.
I think this is a major point, a lot of people like you and myself are happy with our older monitors (I'm still using 2x BenQ FP202W (20" 1680x1050) monitors I purchased in '06). Over the last few years, there's been little compelling reasons to upgrade them to 1920x1080 units. (My desk only really supports 2x20", could go 2x24", but that's a stretch on space).

Give me 2x 20" 4K monitors for a reasonable price, and I would definitely factor in those in my next upgrade...
 

Will Rickards

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I believe the reviews I read indicated it is cheap because it doesn't include any functionality beyond having inputs and displaying them.
So no wifi or whatever software is loaded. It is just a TV in the older sense. I'm not even sure what it allows you to configure.
 

jtr1962

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"Just a TV" is fine for lots of people. I'd rather not pay extra for features which would be useless to me, like wifi.
 

LunarMist

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"Just a TV" is fine for lots of people. I'd rather not pay extra for features which would be useless to me, like wifi.

Just a TV may be fine for a TV, but deficient as a monitor due to limited gambit, purity angle, lack of internal LUT, high delta-E, etc.
 

jtr1962

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Just a TV may be fine for a TV, but deficient as a monitor due to limited gambit, purity angle, lack of internal LUT, high delta-E, etc.
Yes, I'm aware that TVs don't necessarily make good monitors. Then again, I wouldn't be using a 50" screen for a monitor, no matter the resolution. Like Chewy, I'm severely constrained for desk space. Besides that, anything much taller than what I have would block access to the book shelf which is part of my computer desk. That said, I'm really looking forward to Dave's review.
 

LunarMist

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That's why wallmounts are for.

And since the sale is apparently for a limited time, there might not be any TVs left when David posts his review.

It depends on where your desk and walls are. :)
I'm sure there will be other, better 4K TVs in the future.
 

jtr1962

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That's why wallmounts are for.

And since the sale is apparently for a limited time, there might not be any TVs left when David posts his review.
The wall in this case is behind a bookcase. Besides that, the issue is that I can't use a monitor more than about 18" away on account of my eyesight, so no big screen monitors for me in the future. I'm not wearing glasses to use the computer. Can't afford $1500 now anyway, as great a price as that may be on a monitor like that. I'll hold out for the 22" to 24" 4K monitors, even if I need to wait a few more years. Maybe by then OLED or some other type of self-emitting screen will be perfected, giving me yet another compelling reason to upgrade.
 

ddrueding

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I believe the reviews I read indicated it is cheap because it doesn't include any functionality beyond having inputs and displaying them.
So no wifi or whatever software is loaded. It is just a TV in the older sense. I'm not even sure what it allows you to configure.

All my TVs ever do is display from a single output. I don't even need speakers. The only thing I care about is the quality of the video, but I don't think I'll be getting much there either at this price. Mainly it is a technical demo of what 4k is and can be used for.
 

ddrueding

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Seiki SE50UY04 arrived today, exactly as the pcper unit. However I am having the hardest time getting it to display anything above 1080P. I'm at home, and all I have here is a single GTX690. This card has 3 DVI ports and a single compact display port. As I don't have a DVI-HDMI adapter at the house, I was trying the mini-DP to HDMI adapter. No love. So I tried the GT610 on the wife's machine as a secondary display to the 27" Dell. Still only showing 1080P as the highest resolution. Now I've tried connecting it to my T410 via DP-HDMI cable and still only 1080P.

I know only the latest HDMI spec supports 4k (@30Hz), but I thought some of my hardware should qualify?
 

sdbardwick

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Also, I hope I am misinterpreting this from the spec sheet:
Code:
Component & HDMI supports: 480I, 576I, 480P, 576P, 720P, 1080I ,1080P, 4k2k 30HZ
'cause that implies only a 30Hz refresh at full resolution.
 

sdbardwick

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Edit time expired...
Quick scan of reviews indicates that indeed 30Hz is the limit due to bandwidth of HDMI, but screen refreshes at 120Hz (paints same image 4x). Not optimal, but not as bad as the worst case scenario I was envisioning.
 

Handruin

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I haven't touched it today. We'll see about tomorrow.

if anyone has a good source for 4k video I would be interested.

I remember mercutio sending us some 4K material not too long back. It may have been in a PM.
 

Mercutio

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That was 2560x1440.
I've seen a few things in various shady places but it's relatively easy to find camera samples and the like.
 
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