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4K Computer Monitors Are Coming (But Still Pricey)
First time accepted submitter jay age writes "When TV makers started pushing 4K screens on unsuspecting public, that just recently upgraded to 1080p, many had doubted what value will they bring consumers. Fair thought — 1080p is, at screen sizes and viewing distances commonly found in homes, good enough. However, PC users such as me have looked at this development with great hope. TV screens must have something to do with market being littered with monitors having puny 1080p resolution. What if 4K TVs will push PC makers to offer 4K screens too, wouldn't that be great? Well, they are coming. ASUS has just announced one!"
You could hook a computer up to one of the available 4K displays, but will generally be paying a lot more for the privilege; this one is "only" about $5,000, according to ExtremeTech.
The question is... what content will take advantage of this? Most consumable content is at 1080p and I've yet to see a game which can run at these resolutions yet alone the newest Cryengine.
FFS, why do I need to enable ajax.googleapis.com in NoScript just to view Asus's website?
I'm sick of creepy Google gathering info on me.
Then, when I later email someone with a Gmail mailbox, Google will link my IP address (contained in the email's header) with my unique email address and add that intel to their already overflowing collection of 'big data'.
You know what? Stuff it, I won't enable it. Asus just lost me as a website visitor.
$5000 for a 31.5" monitor with a 3840x2160 resolution?
$800 gets a 30" monitor with a 2560x1600 resolution.
$1400 gets a 50" TV with a 3840x2160 resolution.
$2200 gets a 15" laptop with a 2880x1800 resolution.
Sure, none of these are directly comparable, but at the same time it's disappointing to see Asus at such an extreme price point.
Thirty four characters live here.
The monitor for my 4k computer (a TRS-80 Color Computer) was just an ordinary television.
Why spend $5,000 for a 32" when you can get a 50" 4k for under $1,500. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7674736 (groupon and a few other places have had it down to around $1,100 over the past few months) I know, some people probably find the 50" way too big. But it seems a bit silly that 32" is so more expensive.
Would love to have a 4K monitor.. Cheez.. the PhotoShop experience alone..
First of all, the alleged price of $5000 is pure speculation. None of the other sources reporting on the Asus 4K monitor have mentioned it, and the Extreme Tech article describes the price as "our guess".
Secondly, the article is flat-out wrong when it says that Sharp's 4K monitor "doesnâ(TM)t seem to have been released" so far. In fact, the PN-K321 has been released and you can buy one on Amazon for $4900. A few other online retailers have it, too, for slightly lower prices. There is one weird caveat; you currently need an AMD card for it to work properly, because it uses DisplayPort 1.2 with MST and basically shows up to the OS as two 1920x2160 monitors. You have to use Eyefinity to get the OS to treat it as one large screen. This Youtube video (not mine - I only wish I could afford this thing!) shows how it's done.
The Sharp monitor isn't even the cheapest 4K device currently on the market. That distinction belongs to a 50 inch Seiki Digital TV which costs $1,399.99 on Amazon. But this device can only take a 30 Hz input, due to the limitations of the HDMI protocol. I've also heard some criticisms of the panel quality.
What I and many others are hoping is that the Asus 4K monitor can lower the price point on this technology. If it sells for the same $5000 as the Sharp monitor, it's a non-event since it does nothing to advance the state of the art. But if they can get it down to $2500 or lower, then we'll start to see it show up in "extreme" gaming rigs and some professional workspaces, and maybe in a year or two they will be affordable for mainstream power users.
DisplayPort 1.2 can already do 4K @ 60 Hz. What's so special about HDMI?
On my computer monitor I need more height!! Please bring back 16:10 for computer monitors! 16:9 is for tv's only.
It would be 2K if we kept using the vertical resolution that we have used since the beginning of TV. This move to horizontal resolution is pure marketing hype, and it sucks
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And my eyes can barely make out the width of a pixel as it is. What is it going to do for me if you increase pixel density such that pixel are now a quarter the size they are now? Give us 40" or more, and it might start to get interesting, but then you're constantly bending your neck to read what's on different parts of the screen.
Like I had a few years ago. I'm also wondering about how to drive a 4K monitor with graphics cards? I mean content and driving the thing will be problematic so if you buy one now you may be buying early first generation hardware when, by the time the second gen comes out, you'll have content and hardware that can take advantage of it.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The thing with "VGA" is there really isn't too much to it, three analog video signals and two sync signals with some loose agreements on timings.
That means that there is very little theoretical limit on resolution* but it also means that.
1: All components in the chain have to actually have sufficient analog bandwidth. Lack of strong standards and gradual failure (rather than the brick wall failure you get with digital systems) if the analog circuitry is skimped on encourages skimping on the analog components. This is particually bad with TVs (monitors seem to make an effort to give acceptable performance on VGA at their native resoloution).
2: When driving a screen with discrete pixels the receiver has to guess where each line starts and ends. They are generally pretty good at it but again poor implementations, unhelpful content (completely black screen, screen with black bars from the source) or just plain bad luck can cause mis-locks which are annoying.
3: The individual pixels will inevitably not be completely isolated from each other.
* The connector probably imposes some limit but using the rule of thumb that structures less than a tenth of a wavelength can be regarded as of negligable size it should be usable up to a few gigahertz with careful termination..
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I hate coders like you: I have to jump all over the place to see what's happening in some function you call that isn't located right where the call is located. So now I end having to use 3 monitors and a couple dozen windows just to see all the logic of what is happening.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Heres the real benefit I see to 3840x2160 (or 3840x2400). Whatever. I'll call it 4k like everybody else is.
The real benefit is that you can start treating your monitor like a CRT again, feeding it arbitrary resolutions. First off, 1080p would work fine on a 3840x2160, and with any luck the monitor would just display it pixel-doubled so it wouldn't be any more blurry than a native 1080p monitor. That would be awesome. You can also run 1280x720p natively, as 3840x2160 is triple that, just like its double 1080p. But heres the real kicker - say you have some old game that tops out at 1280x1024 or something. You'll have to accept the black bars on the sides for games that aren't widescreen, but given that, you can upscale 1280x1024 to 2700x2160 or whatever. It'll still look good because theres so many excess pixels - more than double. Back when we were switching from CRTs to 15 and 17" or maybe a 19 if you're lucky, we had the issue that 800x600 looked like junk on a 1024x768 monitor and 1024x768 looked like junk on 1280x1024. At 3840x2160, we can display 1080p and 720p with literally no artifacts, and anything in between with minimal artifacts. In fact, the dot pitch of a 3840x2160 24" monitor is smaller than that of a typical 21" fine dot pitch aperture grille CRT. 3840x2160 at that resolution is only .13mm dot pitch. Remember when we thought .25mm dot pitch was awesome? Obviously we've got that beat, and that's why 3840x2160 is worth it even when not displaying native 3840x2160 images.
No matter how many pixels you have, trendy web guys and even OS UI designers will design as if they don't exist. You'll have to move your mouse pointer to the side to make a menu appear, or click "More" to access more than six options on a horizontal menu. You'll probably have to drop your morning Danish and smudge the monitor with your fingers too.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What I find interesting about these high resolutions, is that while they're unnecessary for many things, there are also many graphics techniques such as antialiasing, cleartype, perhaps noise filters etc. that will in many cases no longer be necessary. At these high resolutions, when viewed directly on a single screen, you can't make out individual pixels and jagged edges.
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I got the SEIKI 4K TV from TigerDirect not long ago. I hooked it up as a 4th (!) monitor. It dwarfs the 3 30" dells I have next to it since, well... it's frikin 50"!
Despite being a lot bigger the pixel density is roughly the same as the 30" Dells which are only 2560x1600. The SEIKI 4K is rocking, obviously the 4K resolution of 3840x2160.
So is it cool?
Kinda of.
The fundamental problem, of course, is that the refresh rate is only 30 hertz. This is driven by the fact that current 1.4 HDMI spec can't push faster than that. So the screen has a soft pulsing. It also tears badly on fast moving things, but this may be a separate issue not related to the TV, not sure. Been messing with my video card to try and solve that. VSync doesn't seem to help, so maybe it is the TV.
Color reproduction is just ... meh. You have to switch modes to get things to look right depending on what you are doing... say work vs. play. Games do look spectacular at the high resolution and the big size. I have the monitor at a normal seated distance, so it's ... immersive. Much like the Rift in that way, but without the nausea and fatbits.
The bottom line is, don't get this TV unless you are a crazy early adopter who just likes cool toys and throws money away to do it. Wait until next year when HDMI 2.0 comes out and more monitor-class 4K units come onto the market. Then, yes... if you are a resolution junkie like I am, get one! Because even in this early form, the promise is quite clear.
Oh, and it impresses friends. Very important point. :)
David Whatley