4K Displays Ready For Prime Time

An anonymous reader writes "After the HD revolution, display manufacturers rolled out gimmick after gimmick to try to recapture that burst of purchasing (3-D, curved displays, 'Smart' features, form factor tweaks, etc). Now, we're finally seeing an improvement that might actually be useful: 4K displays are starting to drop into a reasonable price range. Tech Report reviews a 28" model from Asus that runs $650. They say, 'Unlike almost every other 4K display on the market, the PB287Q is capable of treating that grid as a single, coherent surface. ... Running games at 4K requires tons of GPU horsepower, yet dual-tile displays don't support simple scaling. As a result, you can't drop back to obvious subset resolutions like 2560x1440 or 1920x1080 in order to keep frame rendering times low. ... And single-tile 4K at 30Hz stinks worse, especially for gaming. The PB287Q solves almost all of those problems.' They add that the monitor's firmware is not great, and while most options you want are available, they often require digging through menus to set up. The review ends up recommending the monitor, but notes that, more importantly, its capabilities signify 'the promise of better things coming soon.'"

Comments

Where's The Content?

[CycleFreak]

So I can get a 4k display for less than $700. Where can I get content worth watching on that display? Not only worth watching, but is somehow made better by all those extra pixels.

All that aside, seems like it would make for a really nice PC monitor.

Re:Where's The Content?

[by (1706743)]

If the BBC released their nature documentary series (Life, Planet Earth, Africa, Frozen Planet, etc.) in 4k, that would really be tempting...

I'm sure David Attenborough's voice would sound even better in 4k ;)

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a SEIKI 39" 4K display which hit under USD$500 on Amazon.com last winter. It's one of the most beautiful things I've had for interacting with spreadsheets in my life. The 30Hz frame rate is quadrupled to refresh the pixels at 120Hz on the panel I have.

Running stock firmware required a BIOS mod for my AMD Radeon to drive it at the 4K mode which broke HDMI secure video, so now I get to see overlay green for anything that's "hardware accelerated."

Still worth it for seeing more data at once.

Re: Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, this is about using it as a monitor since that's what it is.

Re:Where's The Content?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

For the moment, PC monitor is pretty much the compelling use case. There are a few pricey white-elephant 4k video sources; but not many. PCs, by contrast, just see a bigger monitor(barring a tediously long list of, sometimes GPU-vendor, even model, specific gotcha interactions with some of the hacks used by certain 4k displays to cope with the fact that none of the common interfaces are quite there yet for 4k, with Displayport, a monitor trying to use MST can get...interesting. With HDMI, I hope you like 30Hz, because them's the breaks, and I assume that EDID is total garbage, as ever). If you do comparatively lightweight stuff, even a modest GPU can probably drive it without incident. Gaming will require some serious punch; but anything remotely modern can run at the resolution it is told to, if you have the power.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get one with support for PiP. Then you can have the miniature picture in 720p.

Perhaps it will be possible to turn off anti-alias-filters if you use the 4k display for gaming.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

A: Steam.

Re:Where's The Content?

[war4peace]

Note: that's not a monitor, technically, but a TV.
Still good for regular desktop applications, though.

Re:Where's The Content?

[houstonbofh]

This is what you use to create it. As a monitor, content generation and video editing station, it rocks. And without a cheap way to create content, how would it be created?

Re:Where's The Content?

[Albanach]

Note: that's not a monitor, technically, but a TV.

Besides the addition of a tuner, is there really a difference in this day and age? Some TVs come with higher and lower refresh rates, resolutions, etc., as do some monitors.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Rei]

I did the calculations and don't care to repeat them again, but depending on your use case, it might help... or it might be totally imperceptible. A medium-large on the other side of a good-sized living room, your eyes shouldn't be able to see the difference. On the other hand, a large computer monitor right in front of you, in many situations you will be able to see the difference. Note that human eyesight isn't a simple matter of resolution comparisons, it gets kind of complicated... there's basic measures of how far apart you can see two black dots or lines separated by white before they merge into one, but the less the contrast, the greater the distance they have to be separated (absolute brightness matters too, as does distance from the center of your field of vision and all sorts of other stuff), and of course your ability to perceive fine detail drops tremendously when viewing moving objects. But in relatively static, high contrast images, on a large screen near the viewer (say, a nice computer monitor), most people shouldn't have trouble seeing the difference in a side-by-side comparison.

The only problem with this gimmick is that we're basically running into a resolution dead-end here, there's only so far you can go before the improved detail becomes meaningless. I hope for their sake that they come up with true (non-stereoscopic) 3d or something of that nature, or they're going to be running out of TV-sales gimmicks.

Hmm, I just thought of something that I heard about a good while back but haven't seen any movement on - "peripheral vision" TVs. I seem to recall reading years ago about a type of TV that used lights around the edges to dimly shine the peripheral colors on the TV image around the room parallel to the TV, giving the illusion to your peripheral vision of an expansive screen. I could envision improving that with a video format that includes a lower-resolution peripheral video stream and side projectors instead of simple side lights. Maybe that could be the next gimmick. ;)

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Play a game on lower graphics settings, disable antialiasing

Re:Where's The Content?

[pla]

Note: that's not a monitor, technically, but a TV.

The distinction has become largely meaningless - The only real difference between the two, it has a TV tuner in it while a "monitor" would not. And as a bonus, it has halfway decent sound capabilities by default, which most (but not all) monitors do not.

Re:Where's The Content?

[ProzacPatient]

Typically monitors have a lower pixel pitch since they're meant to be viewed up much closer than a TV you'd be watching from several feet away on your couch.

Also in my experience monitors tend to have superior firmware in terms of reliability and adjustments whereas hooking up a PC to a TV sometimes has unpredictable results in the way the TV will display the image with little control to correct it even when using VGA or HDMI.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Bodhammer]

http://www.research.philips.co...
Roll your own:
https://learn.adafruit.com/ada...

Re:Where's The Content?

[sexconker]

The 30Hz frame rate is quadrupled to refresh the pixels at 120Hz on the panel I have.

That makes no fucking sense. Pixels don't need to be refreshed any faster than content is available. If you're dealing with fast motion shit can sometimes look better with blanking (typically achieved in LCDs by strobing the backlight). But you're running 30 Hz spreadsheets.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Tx]

"Hmm, I just thought of something that I heard about a good while back but haven't seen any movement on - "peripheral vision" TVs. I seem to recall reading years ago about a type of TV that used lights around the edges to dimly shine the peripheral colors on the TV image around the room parallel to the TV, giving the illusion to your peripheral vision of an expansive screen."

Philips Ambilight.

Re:Where's The Content?

[BlackHawk-666]

I would take the complete lack of sound from a monitor over the fucking awful shite that passes for sound on TV speakers any day. Save me $2 and don't include the speakers thanks.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a Seiki for 275... which has a single "dead" pixel that I didn't even notice for the first few weeks (and matches the scratch I put in it not long after).

I love all the real estate and detail for work.

Updated the firmware and updated my graphics card. No issues what so ever here :)

Re:Where's The Content?

[strikethree]

The only problem with this gimmick is that we're basically running into a resolution dead-end here, there's only so far you can go before the improved detail becomes meaningless.

Why would you even discuss this now. We are NOWHERE near the types of resolutions that my eyes are happy with. Yes, I am an elitist snob who couldn't tell a pixel from a hole in the ground. I do not care. Stop whining about how none of us can tell the difference. I can tell the difference and even if I can not, I believe I can tell the difference.

I do NOT want to see even a hint of blockiness or fuzziness at the edge of a font. I want curves that appear to be perfect curves. As it stands now, I can clearly see blockiness in all fonts. With hinting turned on, some aspects of the blockiness goes away but it is still there... and now the fonts are fuzzy too. Will 4K solve that? Not even close. Will it be much much better than what we have now? Yes!

Stop blocking progress with your negative whining about arcs and distinguishability. I may not be able to argue against your science and maths, but science always loses out to reality. Look at the blocks and fuzziness in this message and dare to tell me that I am wrong.

Re:Where's The Content?

[EvilSS]

All that aside, seems like it would make for a really nice PC monitor.

It probably seems that way because it is a PC monitor.

Re:Where's The Content?

[kcitren]

medium-large on the other side of a good-sized living room, your eyes shouldn't be able to see the difference

That's simply not true. While you won't notice it in level of detail, you will notice it due to the increased dithering and smoothness of color gradients. Things will look better at all normal viewing distances. Although my real hope for the future is in ultra-ultra-ultra high definition displays (think something like the equivalent of a 32K 46" monitor). With that new possibilities actually open up, tie that to a Lenticular lens system an you'll have multiple angle high definition viewing. Imagine a tele-conferencing system where they place the monitor and multiple cameras at the edge of the conference table with a similar setup on the other end. The effect would be more like looking through a piece of glass dividing the table than looking at a flat monitor.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Hadlock]

Netflix? House of Cards and all of their new original series are shot and displayed in 4K if your device and display support it.
 
Also, there's a much higher quality Samsung 4K display for $50 more, that is probably the model you want.

Re:Where's The Content?

[ColdWetDog]

Inch. Away. From. The. Screen.

Slowly.

Re:Where's The Content?

[wonkey_monkey]

All shot on HD video as far as I understand it, so no 4k.

Re:Where's The Content?

[AmiMoJo]

there's basic measures of how far apart you can see two black dots or lines separated by white before they merge into one

This is a really common misunderstanding of how human vision works. While it's true you might not be able to distinguish two dot, you can distinguish varying line widths and the sharpness of high contrast edges like text.

That is why text looks sharper on a 4k display, even at some distance. It's why people can distinguish a 4k display from a 2k display at normal viewing distances. It's why people can tell the difference between a Nexus 7 and an iPad Retina (264 ppi vs 323 ppi) even though both are seemingly beyond the ability of the human eye to distinguish individual pixels. It's why printers and publishers use 300 DPI or more.

Re: Where's The Content?

[Coder_R]

As of now there is no content, at least that I am aware of, except for to nature documentaries I saw advertised with the 4k TVs at Sears. And as for the price the ones I saw were still over $3000, but then again I've only seen the ones in the store and haven't really done research on 4k TVs.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're probably just a really stupid idiot trying to be cool

Re:Where's The Content?

[war4peace]

Apart from pitch size, panel quality, color accuracy, setting fine-tuning and viewing angle size? Not really, no :)

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop whining about how none of us can tell the difference. I can tell the difference and even if I can not, I believe I can tell the difference.

Finally, an advocate of 4K displays who admits that he's self-delusional! There's no point arguing with him, because he doesn't care about the facts.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Gothmolly]

Maybe you need glasses, it looks fine to me. Or you're being a douche because this is Slashdot. Do you have aerodynamically square Monster cables too?

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

The blocking and fuzziness have more to do with the compression of the HD stream than the resolution. If you switch to 4K but your HD streams don't go through a corresponding bit rate increase, then you are still going to see blocking and fuzziness.

Re: Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

www.ntek.com

Re: Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

www.nuvola4k.com

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

An experiment may help; you can take an old CRT-style display and set the refresh rate manually at a reasonable resolution (I had an IBM monitor in college which could refresh at 120Hz around 640x480), then set it to refresh the pixels at 30Hz instead. It's an interesting experience.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

My old MBP 15" screen looks like trash compared to my new retina MBP 15".
The resolution on the retina screen is pretty damn good, sufficient for almost anything. I won't go back to low-res monitors.
The resolution on the old HD screen is obviously crap side-by-side to the retina. Anyone who says they can't see the pixels/stair stepping in font curves is probably blind.

Re:Where's The Content?

[strikethree]

lol

Re:Where's The Content?

[strikethree]

Nah. I am not trying to be a douche but I am undoubtedly succeeding. *sigh* Such is life. Here is where I am coming from:

While the Commodore Amiga 500 was not my first computer, it was the one that brought me very deeply into computing. I first hooked it up to an NTSC television set. The fonts were extremely jagged and the images were extremely blurry. I should probably add that the color was absolutely terrible too. But it worked. I fell deeply in love with my Amiga 500. It was the most awesome computer on the planet. It had a flat 32 bit memory space and preemptive multitasking. It was god compared to the standard IBM PC and Microsoft DOS.

I eventually was able to afford to buy a used "real" monitor for it. Essentially the same resolution but much higher quality. The fonts were still jagged though.

Through the years, I have upgraded my monitors continuously, with one of the best monitors being the Apple 30 inch Cinema Display running at something like 3560x1600 or somesuch. A _very_ nice monitor. Currently, I am using a Samsung 48 inch 1920x1080 screen as a display.

One thing that was common across ALL of the displays is that curves never looked like continuous curves and fonts always looked blocky. It is possible that problem may not be resolution, but I doubt it. I look at photographs of handwriting, images that should show continuous curves, and it still does not look "right". Either it is fuzzy or the pixels intrude.

Maybe I put my face too close to the monitor. Maybe I just expect too much. Maybe I notice things that other people do not notice. Regardless, No matter how much anti-aliasing I use in Grand Theft Auto IV, lines that are not perfectly vertical or horizontal have a staircase effect. No matter what type of font hinting I use, fonts seem blocky and or fuzzy. Perhaps 1920x1080 is enough and I just want too much.

4K screens look gorgeous. I look at them at the Sony store in the mall. My eyes are still drawn to the imperfections in the red headed girl's hair (in the demo) despite the fact that it is mathematically and scientifically impossible to see them. *shrug*

Re:Where's The Content?

[hackertourist]

Who cares about content? The good news is that finally display makers are getting off their collective asses and producing computer displays at higher resolutions than 1920x1200.

Re: Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a light pack on my TV from my HTPC. When it works it's actually pretty great. The vast majority of thr time though it just doesn't work ir causes way too much trouble.

Re:Where's The Content?

[cheater512]

Erm isn't pixel pitch a factor of resolution and physical size?

So your 24" 1080p monitor has a smaller pixel pitch than your 50" 1080p TV, but if you got a 50" 1080p 'monitor' it would have the exact same pitch as the TV.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 30Hz frame rate is quadrupled to refresh the pixels at 120Hz on the panel I have.

That makes no fucking sense. Pixels don't need to be refreshed any faster than content is available.

It makes no sense to you because you are confusing frame rate with refresh rate.

Re:Where's The Content?

[flargleblarg]

... with one of the best monitors being the Apple 30 inch Cinema Display running at something like 3560x1600 or somesuch

2560x1600.

Re:Where's The Content?

[strikethree]

Yep. You are exactly correct. Thank you for posting. I made a mistake. :)

Re:Where's The Content?

[pla]

Apart from pitch size, panel quality, color accuracy, setting fine-tuning and viewing angle size? Not really, no :)

On color, I have to agree with you. The Seiki 4k panels have horrible color (though as you also point out, that comes mostly from the lack of fine tuning capabilities). If you want a 4k display for doing graphic design work, yeah, you'll want to blow $3000+ on a it; for programming, not so big of a deal.

For the rest - At 4k, pitch size means almost nothing. Two feet away (my typical distance), you can't really make out individual pixels. The pixels themselves could count as mathematical point sources of light, effectively a pitch size of zero, and it would look identical. For quality, I don't know what to say, I've had zero problems with it, NO dead pixels, no crappy buttons or connectors snapping off... No frills, of course, but a reasonably well-built product. For viewing angle, "as close to 180 as matters". I can get far enough away from center that the foreshortening becomes unbearable before I exceed the viewing angle. :)

Re:Where's The Content?

[cayenne8]

Hell, I just want one for a nice High Resolution computer monitor!!!

Re:Where's The Content?

[PsychoSlashDot]

Where can I get content worth watching on that display?

Start, Programs, Microsoft Office, Excel.

Alternatively, My Pictures, then some random folder that has anything more than 2 megapixel images in it.

Or some random CAD program. Or page-layout package.

My point, simply, is that you can actually make your own content by using this monitor as a monitor. Don't worry about if it makes a very good TV... it has other, more monitor-y uses.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, the Asus and Samsung 28"s use the exact same panel, backlight and scaler.
The main differences are firmware features/defaults and the stand, which *sucks* on the U28D590.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true. In order to notice a difference you have to be sitting close enough to the monitor that you're able to resolve individual pixels.

I personally have much better than normal vision and I can't make out individual pixels on my 22" 1680x1050 monitor nor on my 24" 1920x1200 monitor. The benefit of going up to a 4k monitor isn't the image, it's the amount of stuff you can have on screen without having to throw away pixels for view. You can be at 100% zoom and see a much larger portion of a picture than you would on lower res equipment.

There's also the added benefit that you can get the same dot pitch on a larger screen which means better immersion in things like flight simulators where a large portion of your field of view is taken up without reducing the number of pixels that are in the center of your view.

So you can have a monitor that's approximately 4x as large without needing to put the pixels 4x as large. For some uses, this is helpful, but an awful lot of the screen will be in your peripheral vision if you're not sitting far enough away to give away most of the gains that come from having the pixels be the same size as they were.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's bullshit. Publishers print at 300DPI and more because of the distance that you typically view the material and the way in which offset printing works.

People also claim to be able to tell the difference between high bitrate MP3s and CDs, but that's not true either and folks have never been able to make a convincing go of it when using a double blind study.

It's definitely possible to tell the difference between 4k and 2k displays, it's just that you have to have a monitor that's large enough and located close enough to be looking at the pixels. For the uses that people are likely to be using them, you're just not going to see a noticeable difference other than the amount of things you can get on the display at once. The resolution will still be the same in terms of PPI, it's just that the monitor will be larger.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that.
Display this at 1:1, see how far you have to back off until you can't easily tell which line has a step in what direction.
Divide that distance by your typical viewing distance, multiply by display DPI and you have a ballpark lower limit on useful resolution.
People tend to massively underestimate vernier acuity.

Re:Where's The Content?

[guises]

The review mentions the Samsung:

Asus believes it has one-upped Samsung by setting a $50-lower list price and providing a more upscale physical configuration. I'm inclined to agree. The Samsung monitor offers only a tilt adjustment, while the PB287Q can swivel, tilt, change height, and ... [pivot] into portrait mode

Re:Where's The Content?

[Twinbee]

Did you factor in moire effects, thin diagonal non-anti-aliased lines, 20-10 vision, and entire wall-size TVs into your calcs?

If you worried about running out of TV features, try true 240fps for size (not interpolated). 120fps with fast panning shots looks much better than 60fps, and 240fps is getting closer still to life-like movement.

Re:Where's The Content?

[strikethree]

I try to avoid responding to Mr. Anonymous Coward but...

There's no point arguing with him, because he doesn't care about the facts.

Facts are such a pain in the ass. I know what I see. I am told it is not a fact. All I can do is agree and say that what I see is not a fact.

Nevertheless, I see what I see. Perhaps I am doing it wrong? I do not know. I see imperfections and I do not like it. I really really want 4K but some people seem dead set on thinking 4K is just a gimmick. I actually want even more than 4K but still, 4K is better than what we have now.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

My 36-megapixel camera creates content to be seen in the 8-megapixel 4K display. Anthony David

Re:Where's The Content?

[Dahamma]

Yep. Because it's trivial to make 4k displays these days (a friend working with the CE manufacturers said it's now down to about $50 extra for a 50" 4k vs 1080p display). But creating and distributing 4k content is a completely different story (will require H.265 encoder that no one supports yet, and even with that take 2x the bitrate).

In any case, from what I have heard HDR (increased bit depth for higher dynamic range) content will have a MUCH bigger impact on perceived video quality than 4k. 1080p HDR takes fewer bits than 4k, and for 90% of the home market the size and distance setup for TVs means no one can even make out the extra resolution anyway. Problem is HDR is a much bigger hardware change for displays than 4k LCD panels...

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or buy one for $99: http://lightpack.tv/

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

> While you won't notice it in level of detail, you will notice it due to the increased dithering and smoothness of color gradients

Your premise is that at a distance where a normal person can't distinguish between adjacent black and white pixels they will be able to distinguish between adjacent pixels which are of extremely similar color values?

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why text looks sharper on a 4k display, even at some distance. It's why people can distinguish a 4k display from a 2k display at normal viewing distances. It's why people can tell the difference between a Nexus 7 and an iPad Retina (264 ppi vs 323 ppi) even though both are seemingly beyond the ability of the human eye to distinguish individual pixels. It's why printers and publishers use 300 DPI or more.

I don't believe you. I know from personal experience with laser printers that 200dpi, 300dpi and 600dpi text all look the same at arm's length, and that was when I was kid with better than 20/20 vision.

So, how about some evidence for these claims? I'm particularly interested actual double-blind testing of 4K versus 2K displays at "normal viewing distances" which is pretty ambiguous on its own.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct. What prozac probably meant was fill-factor, as in how much each pixel is made up of light versus the "grid" between pixels. That's important for digital projectors on really big screens, like 120" screens and different projector imaging technologies have significantly different fill factors. But... I've never heard of it being an issue for tv's or monitors and there wasn't really much in the first two pages of hits in google for "pixel fill factor television"

Re:Where's The Content?

[Dahamma]

No, THAT'S really not true. We have done A/B testing in the office and not only does it not make much of a difference from distances beyond where your eyes can resolve it, 1080p content sometimes looks WORSE on 4k displays due to scaling (similarly to how SD content looks worse on HD TVs than on SD TVs).

What really DOES make a difference at average home sizes and distances is HDR displays (higher bit depth). The high dynamic range is striking compared to the fairly crappy dynamic range of standard YUV 4:2:0 content.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

And streamed at a bitrate where it barely makes a difference...

Re:Where's The Content?

[Hadlock]

Unless you're watching a Michael Bay film, most dramas etc with indoor, static sets and camea shots will stream 4K just fine. Obviously panning and car chases etc will impact your video quality on a standard American broadband connection.

Re:Where's The Content?

[drsmithy]

So, how about some evidence for these claims? I'm particularly interested actual double-blind testing of 4K versus 2K displays at "normal viewing distances" which is pretty ambiguous on its own.

The difference between an old 15" MBP and new Retina MBP is easily noticable.

I wouldn't have actually believed it until I borrowed a work Retina MBP for a couple of weeks. Now I'm eagerly looking for an affordable ~27" IPS 4k display to replace my existing monitors.

Re:Where's The Content?

[war4peace]

How about G-2-G refresh rate? Especially important for gaming, not at all for video.

Re:Where's The Content?

[pla]

Although they only do 30hz at 4k, the Seiki panels can handle true 120hz at 1080p; accordingly, they have a G2G of 6.5ms (~150 hz).

For gaming, they Seikis actually look pretty good as long as you drop the resolution to 1080p.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Theolojin]

4k absolutely will solve the problem with blockiness in fonts—depending on the screen size. My phone (HTC One) has a 1920x1080 display that is absolutely stunning in its clarity. Can't tell with my eyes that the images are just dots; it's truly a beautiful display. I see no blockiness in any image or in text. Zero. Then again it's only a 4.7" display with that many pixels. I saw an 80" TV in the store the other day (also 1920x1080) and was stunned by the distance I had to be from it before I could no longer make out the individual pixels—several feet. Right next to it was a 65" 4k display; I had to get within a foot or so to make out the individual pixels. Granted, I wear corrective lenses, but the difference was remarkable. I would love to have a 4k display as my primary monitor.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Namarrgon]

It's certainly not hard to see imperfections in a 4K picture, let alone "mathematically and scientifically impossible". Most obviously, you can simply lean closer, and you will see pixels. All claims to "invisible pixels" assume you're at least a given distance away, with average sight.

High contrast makes pixels more visible; anti-aliasing can smooth that, though if not done carefully (with good hinting) it can make font edges look softer. ClearType can also help, though also at a cost of a slight coloured fringing. More resolution definitely helps, as does just leaning back a little.

Then there's all the other ways pictures can look bad. Video compression can introduce blockiness, ringing, and other artefacts that are clearly visible even at 4K. Grain, noise, poor filters etc add their own problems, or exacerbate others. Colour and frame rates differences can cause obvious effects, or a much more subtle sense that something is not right; all of which can make a display look less than gorgeous, despite their resolution - and it can often take practice and experience to spot exactly what the problem is.

Re:Where's The Content?

[Shirley Marquez]

Many monitors also have sound capability. It's usually even worse than the sound on TVs. But it typically only gets used in office situations where you just want sound so you can hear the warning beeps and the like from your OS; anybody who cares even the least little bit about sound quality will use separate speakers.

Re:Where's The Content?

[cthulhu11]

Curiously Amazon's page for this model seems to describe it as *not* 4K and only costing $466. http://www.amazon.com/PB278Q-2...

Re:Where's The Content?

[balbus000]

I slowly moved to an inch away from the screen, and now it's worse!

Re:Where's The Content?

[metrix007]

You don't see what you see. You see what you believe you see.

Now go buy some gold audio cables because they "sound better".

Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[wbr1]

The burst of HD purchases, and the resultant gimmicks were largely for home TV use. The display reviewed is spoken of being used as a display device for a computer. More specifically for PC gaming. The two are NOT the same. Please quit comparing them.

I may have use of a 4k monitor. I doubt I will ever need a 4K tv, even if source material were readily available. My rarely watched 1080p does just fine. Most consumers would likely agree. For TV/Movie viewing 4k IS a gimmick.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Hey, tell that to the manufacturers... For whatever insane reason, they've recently been on a kick of adding features that would actually be useful for monitors (like curvature, which might actually make a difference when you are 18 inches from a rather large screen; but barely matters from across the room, except making the thing harder to wall-mount, and 4k, for which there is essentially zero movie, TV, or cable content; but PCs can spit out on demand) to TVs and then being vaguely confused when the public goes out and buys whatever reasonably big TV is cheapest.

Thankfully, "TV" now mostly just means "LCD monitor with ATSC tuner and probably more HDMI ports", so using TVs as monitors isn't a big deal (sorry brits, pay your BBC fee!); but it's still weird.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[timeOday]

I disagree that 4k TVs are a gimmick, particularly as they get bigger. Football and soccer would look GREAT on an 80 inch 4k TV. It will change how the games are shot, so you can really get a sense of what everybody is doing instead of following the ball so closely.

Granted, for now the bitrate rather than resolution is the limiting factor, since cable/satellite/broadcast signals aren't even 1080p, they're 1080i or 720p with inadequate bitrates. But the quality of video through Netflix / Amazon Prime right now was almost unimaginable when youtube launched, less than 10 years ago(!) with 320x240 video only, and it seemed doomed to crash the Internet.

I also play split-screen games on my TV with my son and it would be great for that, although not with the current generation of consoles.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[houstonbofh]

You lost that battle years ago. Once widescreen laptops took over, it was decided by the LCD manufactures that no one needed more than 1080p anymore. That is why I am on an "antique" 24in Dell Ultrasharp.

Re: Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[richy freeway]

You don't have to pay the TV licence if you own a TV, only if you watch broadcast TV. You can have an antenna connected and listen to the radio with your TV and still not need a licence.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Xest]

I've seen Costco's demos too and it's a great picture but I don't get the feeling it's any better than 1080p on the 55" demo. I guess coming from 720p you probably see a bigger difference, but I can't see the value in jumping from 1080p.

I can see it being worthwhile if you buy one of those badass 90" motherfuckers they have for sale there, but not at anything in the 60" or lower range.

Certainly I can't see the value on a 28" screen.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Ost99]

It's not a 28" TV, it's a monitor.
I have a 4k monitor at work now, and would really like that at home as well - but until know it's been way to expensive.
At $650 it's below what a decent 1440p monitor costs, and will be within budget for most home-office users.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Ost99]

There's a whole bunch of 27" 1440p monitors out there, and they sell a lot.
At the office we've not bought one single 1080p since starting up in 2010. We started off with 1200p when that was still possible to get, and moved on to 1440p and now 4k for those who want it.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[zlives]

i had been waiting for this as well, now that Star Citizen DFM is delayed a few days ( yes i expect every one to be addicted to all things RSI and know what I am talking about) maybe I can get one on my desk pronto.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[zlives]

alas... not a gaming monitor, must wait

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[ZahrGnosis]

I don't see how 3D gets permanent "gimmick" status while 4k doesn't... there are times when seeing things in 3D give you a completely different perspective, feel, immersion, and experience than something not in 3D. There are times when higher resolution does the same. And there are times when both actually seem to make things worse. Curved TVs as well... I run three monitors on my desktop and I'd be ecstatic if I could get the same resolution in a single curved display. If it weren't curved, though, then I'd have to sit farther away to see the edges properly and that distance is beyond the "retina" distance for my monitor's resolution, so I'm kind of wasting pixels.

Much of the math is different between TVs and monitors and, yes, much of what is gimmicky in one situation is definitely not in another.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Hadlock]

Football and soccer would look GREAT on an 80 inch 4k TV. It will change how the games are shot, so you can really get a sense of what everybody is doing instead of following the ball so closely.

Football is shot at close angles specifically to tell a narrative; they will not and are required not to show the full field during a play. This is the view that coaches get on a closed loop. It is available to the public, but only 4 hours after the game ends and you have to pay a special subscription to get it.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[KingOfBLASH]

There IS a lot of difference in quality but the key is you need to get up close enough to see the difference. If you watch a smallish TV from 3 meters back maybe you don't see a difference. The other thing is you actually need 4k content which is lacking now.

Give it 5 years and when all movies are released in 4k mode and iTunes / Netflix / Amazon Firetv all have a 4k download option you may change your mind a bit....

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Xest]

Well I was stood about 2 feet from the Costco 55" one on display the other day.

I wonder perhaps if the problem is that the benefit of 4k HD really needs a reference 1080p alongside it to make the difference clear. It's just not like 480p SD to 1080p HD - that was obvious even without an SD TV alongside the 1080p HD (though 720p to 1080p is less obvious I suppose). In this respect I think it's not necessarily that it's better, but that to a casual observer it's not obviously and immediately recognisable as better.

As you say content probably has a lot to do with it too I guess, Attenborough's Planet Earth and similar really stood out on 1080p whereas not all content did.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Xest]

What benefits does it offer you at work? What type of work do you do on it?

Honestly, I'll probably end up getting one myself at some point too, largely because I find 1920x1080 a step backwards from my 1920x1200 monitors so the only way I can prevent my resolution taking a regressive backwards step is to go that way, but I'm not sure what benefit I'll see from it when mostly all I do is play games, browse the web, and write code. I don't do any graphics design or watch movies for example on my PC but I'm interested to hear other people's experience and where they've found real benefit.

Re: Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Asus is probably the closest thing we'll get in a long while. 120-144Hz 4K is a long long time away.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[jratcliffe]

Honestly, it's not a gimmick. 4K does look MUCH better than 1080p. It's really pretty spectacular. Of course, it's hugely dependent on screen size and viewing distance. If you're sitting 20 feet away from a 32" screen, 4K/1080/720/480 are going to look exactly the same.

What 4K gives you is some combination of better picture and/or larger screen size, with a comparable picture quality.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Ost99]

It's great for coding, webdesign or anything where you are interacting with two or more windows at the same time.

My coding days are more or less over, but I still find it very useful in almost all tasks. Keeping everything you're working on visible is a great productivity booster. I've had my monitor for roughly 3 months, and it has already paid for itself.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Football and soccer would look GREAT on an 80 inch 4k TV.

Only if you sit uncomfortably close. I don't want to have to turn my head while watching TV. To see the difference between 4K and 1080p, I have to sit too close for the size of the TV. The bigger the TV the more back I want to sit.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Blaskowicz]

There's still 1200p sold, the res made a little "come back" semi-recently.
1920x1080 has effectively become the successor of 1280x1024. So, the monitor situation sucks in some ways but it is not that bad (the worst is that the suckage of a lowest end 21.5" 1080p monitor makes your eyes bleed more than that of a 1280x1024 17", because there's so much more surface of light bleeding, terrible color and bad blacks/grays)

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Football and soccer would look GREAT on an 80 inch 4k TV.

Only if you sit uncomfortably close. I don't want to have to turn my head while watching TV. To see the difference between 4K and 1080p, I have to sit too close for the size of the TV. The bigger the TV the more back I want to sit.

I'm sorry that you have such shitty eyesight. The rest of us appreciate 4k.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[DocSavage64109]

You probably already know this, but you will need a significantly powerful video card or cards to drive Star Citizen on a 4k display. I'll probably have to spend $700 on a video card just to get acceptable results on my 2560x1600 display.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[zlives]

yes i think the geforce 980 gtx black edition Ti in quad sli or something like that... unless they optimize their code :)

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Jeremy Erwin]

My TV has far more extensive calibration controls than my monitor-- perhaps the latter is simply too inexpensive.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because higher res doesn't cause any problems whereas "3D" is a stereoscopic hack that physically can never work correctly and which gives ~10% of viewers blinding headaches.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Jeremy Erwin]

One common method of setting up stereo speakers is to set them up so the the left speaker, the right speaker, and your ears form an equilateral triangle. This often makes for a spectacular stereo image.

Now Imagine that the space in between the left and right speakers is now completely filled by a screen, (and that it somehow did not cause acoustical problems)

That's what the optimal screen size for 4k looks like.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[KingOfBLASH]

I saw a 4k monitor at an electronics show. The demo were super high res scenes of Avatar. Believe me the difference POPPED.

It could be the set up just wasn't good. There just really is not a lot of 4k content out there.

Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[Anonymous Coward]

2 feet is way closer than most people watch tv.

This well-known chart spells out what resolutions are discernible at what distances for different tv sizes for a person of average eye-sight.

http://www.rtings.com/info/television-size-to-distance-relationship

3D capable models

[kimvette]

But when are the 140Hz or 120Hz 3D capable models going to be available? Even if 3D is limited to 1140p or 1080p I want the capability for 3D gaming and watching 3D movies on my PC. Right now the best I can get is a 1080p, or very soon, a 1440p monitor, and will have to buy separate 4K 2D monitors for 4K. :-(

Re:3D capable models

[houstonbofh]

The problem is bandwidth. How do you get all that data down the wire? The original Korean high def 2550s used Dual DVI, essentially 2 cables. This worked, but was poorly supported. The Seiki 4k is HDMI 1.4, so it is stuck at 30hz. To get 60hz, you need HDMI 2.0, and that is far from common right now. Then you start looking at bus speeds... 4k 120hz is a LOT of data.

Re:3D capable models

[afidel]

Then you start looking at bus speeds... 4k 120hz is a LOT of data.

Not really, 4k 4:4:2 @ 120Hz is only ~16Gbps which requires only 2 PCIe 3.0 lanes (8GT/s per lane).

Re:3D capable models

[level_headed_midwest]

They will probably be available in a year or two. We moved from hackish 30 Hz split-input panels to native 60 Hz single-input panels in about a year. However anything beyond 60 Hz is pretty much useless except for bragging rights as you can't see it anyway. Broadcast TV and movies are shot at 29.997 and 24 Hz, respectively. The lack of benefit of higher refresh rates is especially true on a display that is capable of displaying static images like an LCD.

Re:3D capable models

[sexconker]

He's talking about the wire to the display.

3840*2160*24*120 = 22.25 Gbps. DisplayPort 1.3 is 32.4 Gbps, so we're covered for 4K @ 120 Hz or 8K @ 60 Hz. Cut in half for 3D.

HDMI 2.0 is limited to 14.4 Gbps, so you end up with half as many frames when compared to DP. You can subsample your chroma to 4:2:0, but that shit is optional so all your devices in the chain have to support it. A dedicated player may be smart enough to know the BluRay it's playing is 4:2:0 and see that behind the receiver is a TV that supports 4:2:0, and then output 4:2:0 4K @ 120 Hz. But I sure as fuck am not going to switch my PC over to shitty color mode to watch a movie then switch it back, nor am I going to make my games look like shit by throwing away 75% of the fucking chroma.

UHD TVs need to adopt DisplayPort.

Re:3D capable models

[Anonymous Coward]

As a (former) 120Hz Quake 3 player I'd beg to differ slightly about whether 120Hz is better than 60Hz, at least for my FPS of choice.

Re:3D capable models

[CrashNBrn]

Monitors are a dead end. Real 3D or "natural resolutions" will come from hologram-like tech. Of course unlikely most of us will live to see that advance.

Re:3D capable models

[kimvette]

I don't care about 120Hz for 4K resolution, but 140Hz and 120Hz for 1440p and 1080p for 3D (did you not read what I posted?) Either Displayport or dual link DVI, or HDMI 2.0, all of which allow 4K at 60Hz.

Re:3D capable models

[kimvette]

120Hz is great for 3D because then you get 60Hz for both the right and left eye. Remember for a real desired refresh rate in 3D, you need to double the framerate because most screens use shuttered glasses rather than prismatic displays.

Re:3D capable models

[kimvette]

By your logic, so are PCs, and even smartphones, cars, aircraft - so let's not ask for anything better today because someday generations away something will come along to make all of it totally obsolete. Let's not bother with space exploration with current tech either because someday teleportation or wormholes will be practical.

Or, we can demand better products today and enjoy them in the meantime.

Re:3D capable models

[level_headed_midwest]

There are multiple medical studies that prove that the ability of the human eye to discriminate between images over approximately 30 Hz is limited and discrimination over 60 Hz just doesn't happen. There is a lot of evidence in the environment to back that up. Movies recorded on film are shot at 24 Hz (fps). Most digital video is 29.997 Hz. The frequency of AC electricity was set at 50-60 Hz due to that being more than enough to cause a tungsten filament to appear to be constantly glowing to the human eye instead of flickering. Same with the 60 Hz (in effect, 30 Hz) refresh with the interlaced scan of the glowing phosphors of an old CRT computer monitor. I'd strongly bet that you could not reliably tell the difference between an otherwise similar 60 Hz setup and your 120 Hz setup if you were in fact blinded to which one you were using.

That being said, having a GPU capable of framerates over 60 Hz (60 fps) isn't a bad idea at all, because the minimum framerate there is really what matters more than the maximum. A GPU only able to muster 60 fps max might very well dip into the 20s during difficult parts and you can certainly see that. That's a different issue than having a monitor capable of >60 Hz refresh.

Re:3D capable models

[Anonymous Coward]

There are multiple medical studies that prove that the ability of the human eye to discriminate between images over approximately 30 Hz is limited and discrimination over 60 Hz just doesn't happen.

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

I don't know if you're trolling or if you're just stupid. In any case, please stop spreading lies.

Not only is it extremely easy to tell the difference between 30 Hz and 60 Hz, it's also not very difficult at all for most people to tell the difference between 60 Hz and 120 Hz.

Re:3D capable models

[level_headed_midwest]

How about this: this? The human eye is generally limited to frequency response below 32 Hz.

Re:3D capable models

[Anonymous Coward]

With my old CRT TV, the near-60-hz image (30hz interlaced) appeared flicker free. On my old Viewsonic CRT monitor, anything less than 85hz would flicker very noticeably to me. I usually preferred to run at 120hz interlaced. I noticed very little 'smearing', as the phosphors in that monitor were very fast (they didn't retain an image for very long). I was also able to run moderately high frame rates on my TV (it would accept 60 hz progressive), but the smearing due to phosphor persistence made FPS games unplayable.

With my new flat panel monitor, I don't notice flickering at any refresh rate, as the backlight is constant.

I can play some games as low as 15 fps (non-combat flight sims and anything without fast action on the screen). 30 is better, 60 looks perfectly ok for slow moving objects. But as things on screen get faster, such as when spinning around quickly in a first-person shooter, the higher frame rate makes the objects appear more continuous. One of the reasons I preffered 120 interlaced is that my ViewSonic didn't like rates over 100 fps progressive, and I could still 'feel' the improvement up to 120hz.

Re:3D capable models

[Anonymous Coward]

3840*2160*24*120 = 22.25 Gbps. DisplayPort 1.3 is 32.4 Gbps, so we're covered for 4K @ 120 Hz or 8K @ 60 Hz. Cut in half for 3D.

Nope. 8k is *quadruple* the pixels of 4k. DP1.3 will only be able to do 8k @ 30Hz.

Re:3D capable models

[Anonymous Coward]

GGenerating uncompressed framebuffer images is anyway done on GPU these days. Also videos can be decoded on GPU, not a new tech in any sense.

Re:3D capable models

[stoploss]

With my old CRT TV, the near-60-hz image (30hz interlaced) appeared flicker free. On my old Viewsonic CRT monitor, anything less than 85hz would flicker very noticeably to me. I usually preferred to run at 120hz interlaced.

You speak truth. I could pass a double-blinded test about CRT refresh rates below 80 Hz. It was overtly obvious, even without waiting for the dreaded "low refresh rate flicker" headache to kick in.

With LCDs flicker isn't really an issue, but smearing/tearing certainly is.

Samsung UD590 is nice...

[RyanFenton]

I got it recently, and it's got 4k at 60FPS, in a 28" size - great for programming.

Review link

Just to try it, I was able to get all the single-player PC Ultima games running in about half the screen real estate:

ALL THE ULTIMAS

It's around $600 when its on sale, so I think it just about matches the model slashvertised here.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you even threw Windows XP into the nostalgia mix!

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[jerpyro]

I bought one of these for my office:
http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-SE...

The pixel density is perfect for the opposite side of my desk, and since it's the office, being restricted to 30Hz doesn't hurt anything. At $400 it's a great place to get started with 4k computing. I agree that programming in 4k changes your entire way of working.

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the ones on other platforms, like Runes of Virtue on the gameboy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0jnjiispk4

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[Stem_Cell_Brad]

I got the Seiki 39in too. It replaced a set of dual displays. The single huge monitor changed the way I work and has allowed me to better utilize screen space. Plus, I enjoy all of the "Oohh that's a big monitor." comments from people as they enter my office.

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been thinking about getting one of those 39" seiki 4K monitor/tvs for ~$450. They only do 30FPS, but for programming that's fine. I see it as a reverse of a multi-monitor set-up - consolidating my 3 monitors onto one screen.

But what I am wondering about is if there are window managers that know how to handle that kind of real-estate. Right now I can dedicate an app to a specific monitor and unless I deliberately drag a window over to a different monitor they don't interfere with each other. If I maximize a window, it only expands to fit the monitor. Etc.

I want a window manager that lets me define regions of a display as "virtual monitors." For example, split the display into 3 regions and if I maximize a window it only fills up that one region.

Can anyone recommend a window manager that provides that sort of functionality? And not in a kludgey tacked on after the fact way, I want something that is "native" to the design of the window manager.

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot to mention that tiling window managers aren't quite what I'm looking for. At least the ones I've seen don't make it easy to drag windows around too. I want to be able to drag a normal window so that it straddles "virtual monitors" too.

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[armanox]

Say what? He's either running Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[zlives]

ALL the ULTIMAS.... love it

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

And it looks like they have all been upscaled by a factor of 2 by DoxBox, and they still fit.

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[fnj]

I want a window manager that lets me define regions of a display as "virtual monitors."

For god's sake why? My question is on the level. Why would you want to emulate some mickey mouse multi-monitor setup when you have a superb single monitor with one homogeneous pixel address space? Nothing out of the ordinary is required of the window manager. You simply size and place your windows completely as desired. As many windows as you want, each of the size you want.

I have seen your wording expressed several times by people as a desire. I don't get it. I just don't get it at all.

I'm coming from the perspective of a real operating system - *nix. If Windows and OSX have crippled their window managers in some way I am not aware of, dumbing down the sizing, that could be an explanation. I have zero interest in Windows, but if I came into a lottery or something and didn't have any monetary concerns whatsoever, I might be interested in OSX.

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

> My question is on the level

No it isn't. It is dripping with condescension and autistic geek asshole syrup.

> I'm coming from the perspective of a real operating system - *nix. ... if I came into a lottery or something

Oh please, spare me the superiority complex, I started off with X10R3 moto-based suns and hps, some of my code was in early builds of XFree86 back when linux wasn't yet capable of running an X server. Nobody gives a flying fuck what you would do if you won the lottery.

I didn't post looking for some kuttar chod to come along and beat his chest about how little he understands the way other people use computers, if you can't demonstrate empathy at least use some manners.

> You simply size and place your windows completely as desired. As many windows as you want, each of the size you want.

No, you simply do that. I get fucking tired of it. I have a lot of windows that come and go and interact with other windows in a dynamic way. Multi-monitor X has let me constrain a lot, but not all, of that dynamism to select parts of my workspace. A giant single monitor means I'll have to go back to constantly managing window placement. Having owned an IBM T221 a decade ago I am speaking from personal experience.

Re:Samsung UD590 is nice...

[gbjbaanb]

I agree that programming in 4k changes your entire way of working.

you mean you get to see more than 40 columns of text in Visual Studio once you've got all the sidebars, designers and panes enabled!?

Hi Res

[Anonymous Coward]

4k is fantastic and all that.

But you know what worries me more than resolution? Deep blacks.

My Atari ST monito has better color accuracy than anything samsung ever put out. And that's just sad.

Re:Hi Res

[Overzeetop]

My monitor is so black that I can't see any light at all (Dell IPS). Don't get me wrong, it's not black - at night, with all the lights off, it's clearly not completely black. However, since about 99.999% of my time in front of the computer is with some other form of illumination, or with some portion of the screen being light (and fouling my night vision). I find it hard to get really worked up over "good" blacks that aren't "perfect."

Re:Hi Res

[Anonymous Coward]

My monitor is so black that I can't see any light at all (Dell IPS). Don't get me wrong, it's not black - at night, with all the lights off, it's clearly not completely black. However, since about 99.999% of my time in front of the computer is with some other form of illumination, or with some portion of the screen being light (and fouling my night vision). I find it hard to get really worked up over "good" blacks that aren't "perfect."

Never played Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines in a true dark room with surround sound? Even a little grey would ruin the atmosphere, but might prevent heart attacks when you go into the haunted house for the first time.

Re:Hi Res

[karnal]

Even Plasma "blacks" aren't truly "TV Off" blacks, but they're a good bit less luminous than any LCD technology I've seen thus far - and when watching tv in a darker room, really does make it look nicer.

Please quit conflating TV's and monitors.

[DocSavage64109]

I was at Costco the other day and they had a 4K tv on display running a demo with scenes of flowers and mountains. The detail was amazing and I can certainly see myself buying one once they are reasonably priced. For the time being, I'm fine with my 6 or 7 year old 50" 720p plasma tv.

Sweet, now we just need to wait for OS Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Which if it follows the support for multiple monitors means that windows 14 and Ubuntu 24 should have good support for it. ETA for Mac is unknown.

Re:Sweet, now we just need to wait for OS Support

[Austerity Empowers]

I believe Apple just pushed a patch to mavericks with better 4k support. http://au.ibtimes.com/articles...

Re:Sweet, now we just need to wait for OS Support

[houstonbofh]

Ran both Windows 7 and Ubuntu on a Seiki 4k with no problem. (Well, other than finding a video card that supported it at a reasonable price...)

Re:Sweet, now we just need to wait for OS Support

[Ost99]

Both Linux and Windows 8.1 deals just fine with 4k.
Requires a decent graphics card with drivers that actually work, but other than that there's no problem.

Re:Sweet, now we just need to wait for OS Support

[EvilSS]

Which if it follows the support for multiple monitors means that windows 14 and Ubuntu 24 should have good support for it. ETA for Mac is unknown.

I have a 4K monitor and Windows 8.1 handles it just fine. The only problem I have is that I have on 4K and one 1080p and Windows seems to have issues getting the dpi correct. 8.1 supports per-monitor DPI but it won't let you set the DPI manually for each monitor, it tries to figure it out and fails. It will either get the 1080p right, and the 4K will make me feel like I need to get my eyes examined, or the 4K looks perfect and the 1080p looks like I already had my eyes examined and was found legally blind.

Re:Sweet, now we just need to wait for OS Support

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009L946II/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Got a used one for $150 (2 avail for $250 currently) and haven't had any issues with running dual HDMI (I have a second 1080 monitor, in addition to Sieki 39").

Best dual monitor support I could find that wasn't rapish on price.

Re:Sweet, now we just need to wait for OS Support

[fnj]

Ran both Windows 7 and Ubuntu on a Seiki 4k with no problem. (Well, other than finding a video card that supported it at a reasonable price...)

What the heck is wrong with a normal Intel HD3000 or higher? Plenty of motherboards with boith DP and HDMI are available.

Re:Sweet, now we just need to wait for OS Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Seiki doesn't have display-port.
I assume that's what you mean by DP. But maybe you just like to getkinky with your motherboard.

120 hz

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice, but we're still waiting for the 120 Hz 27" and 30" IPS's that do it out of the box at 2560 that aren't Korean and overclocked.

Re:120 hz

[houstonbofh]

Keep waiting. That panel resolution is not popular enough to be continued. 4k will take it over.

Re:120 hz

[omnichad]

Not sure about that. If you create a 70" 4k panel substrate, and part of it is defective, you can cut that down into a 2560 panel at a smaller screen size. The bigger the screen, the easier it is to hit 4k, thanks to lower pixel densities. There are only a few pixel densities being manufactured at any given time and they are cut to size for production.

Runs

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please just say 'costs' or 'is priced at'?

A boon for CAD, hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

I often work on fancy PCB designs and can always use more resolution and a bigger screen, within limits. There's no point in having a screen so wide that my head is always moving like at a tennis match.

But more resolution makes editing quicker and easier.

Now if only there were a way to get stereoscopic depth display of PCB layers while editing...

Re:A boon for CAD, hopefully

[Austerity Empowers]

pcb layers in Allegro are basically 2 dimensional, you'd need more than just monitor support. Also given a typical stackup for a PCB I'm not sure the "depth", unless exaggerated, would be so helpful. A motherboard is so many inches wide, but a pcb layer is somewhere around what, 8 thousands of an inch thick? Then if the fiber or prepreg is modelled it would appear to be "floating".

A tool from Ansys called SiWave does this (including allowing layers to be exaggerated), I didn't find it to be useful for much more than helping me place probe points. Boards are just too damned flat.

Re:A boon for CAD, hopefully

[harrkev]

I often work on fancy PCB designs and can always use more resolution and a bigger screen, within limits. There's no point in having a screen so wide that my head is always moving like at a tennis match.

But more resolution makes editing quicker and easier.

Bah. You PC board wusses. Try doing physical design on a custom ASIC (note my sig).

More pixels definitely helps. I have been using a 30" 2560x1600 (Dell for about $1200), but more pixels for half the money seems like a great deal! The down side is less glass itself, so the pixels are smaller. My old eyes would probably have a hard time staring at text at that resolution. Yes, I know that I can change fonts, but I am a strong believer in more monitors in general. You can have the layout on the big glass, and terminal and/or EMACS windows on the side monitors. Now THAT is a productivity boost. The problem is that with your side monitors having a significantly different pixel density from the main monitor make having an ideal font size impossible. Either too big on the side monitors or too small on the big, central monitor.

Re:A boon for CAD, hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever work on a 24+ layer board with blind and buried vias and different materials? Sometimes I wish that when multiple layers are visible I could see exactly where that via is.

Also, mechanical parts and large components factor in here. Ever place large caps only to realize after that the test point you placed is inaccessible?

Or that the SD card slot doesn't quite reach the edge? Etc... Sure, you can do all this in 2D views, but this is 2014. cf: Altium

Re:Slashdot Beta not ready for Prime Time

[The Grim Reefer]

Seriously guys. If you want me to stop trolling about this then stop forcing me into Beta. It's garbage.

Nobody's forcing you. http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1

Re:Slashdot Beta not ready for Prime Time

[cdrudge]

Click here. Don't delete the cookie. Was that really THAT hard to do?

OSX is not ready

[timeOday]

I jumped the gun a while ago and got the Dell P2815Q, which is one of those that only do 4K at 30 hz. I can confirm this is not adequate for a large number of uses :)

What surprised me is the poor OSX support for 4K. Windows can scale everything (although I had to manually add a display mode to the NVidia advanced settings to even get 1080p!?), but OSX cannot. I am running it on a recent MacBook Pro 15" with discrete graphics.

The problem is that you cannot chose to run at a lower resolution. Display preferences lists ONLY the native resolution. Using QuickRes (a 3rd party add-on for more resolution choices), none of the lower resolutions work, at least until you go all they way down to 1080p

In particular, you cannot use HiDPI on an external display (where the application sees a lower resolution, but the OS renders fonts at full resolution). (No, it does not help to enable HiDPI with Quartz Debug, nor with the QuickRes "Enable HiDPI" button). So the menus and all applications are absolutely tiny.

You could adjust the size of everything on a per-application basis, but then they won't look right when you're working on the laptop display, unless you use something like QuickRes to run the laptop display at its native resolution. I guess I will try that for a few days. So I mainly use my older, power-hungry 2550x1600 30" displays.

If I could just select the highest of the HiDPI resolutions available for the laptop display in the System Preferences, and mirror *exactly* that to this display, I would be a happy camper. You can't do that.

I understand an upcoming release will improve support with HiDPI on external displays. But as it stands, I could not recommend a 4K display for a Mac - or a Mac for a 4K display.

Re:OSX is not ready

[omnichad]

I thought that 10.9.3 addressed this (Not quite two weeks old). Might be time for you to try again.

Re:OSX is not ready

[timeOday]

Before posting that I googled the status and found this page, which specifies "OS X Mavericks v10.9.3 or later" and DOES show the "Larger Text / More Space" (HiDPI) slider being associated with an external display. So I consulted "About This Mac", which says I have OSX 10.9.3. So I re-connected the 4K monitor and tried again before posting, and it still does NOT show me that slider. (I also still don't see it on the 2560x1600 30" display I am using right now). So, I can't explain it. I am skeptical my OSX release has been updated in the last couple weeks, but it says 10.9.3, and the Available Updates only lists updates for iTunes, Safari, iMovie and iPhoto.

Re:OSX is not ready

[omnichad]

Not sure if it depends on the model (artificially) - but someone here is showing it as working:
https://discussions.apple.com/...

Re:OSX is not ready

[Anonymous Coward]

I use the DisplayMode app with my Dell 4K 28" . It sits in the menu bar and lets me pick a wide range of resolutions including several retina options. Works like a charm on my Macbook pro 15"

Smart TV

[Anonymous Coward]

my dad has a 30 inch Smart Samsung wide screen TV. (I forgot the exact size) He hardly uses all the fancy features though. I haven't seen him use the smart interface screen much. He hardly uses picture in picture either. Just making an observation.

A sad truth . . .

[mmell]

Early adopters can go ahead and buy this. They can make it economically feasible for other companies to compete in this area, driving down the price and driving up the usability.

I'll wait a few years for that to happen and buy when it's cheap and widely available - and fully consumerized. I personally can't afford to invest in leading/bleeding edge technology only to see something else become the standard. My example? Wax transfer printing. I used to own an Okimate-10 (and later and Okimate-20) printer. Great stuff. Unlike impact printing, I could have color. Well, it still exists, but only as a niche technology. Most end users nowadays (including myself) are using either color inkjet or color laser technology for printing (I own one of each). I ended up throwing both my Okimate printers away long ago, when it became impossible to find supplies for them. I'll admit it's a lot less likely for a monitor to become unsupported the way printer is; all the same, I'll wait a couple years and see where this goes before I plunk down my money for one.

Re:A sad truth . . .

[DocSavage64109]

+1 on waiting for consumerization. I'm one of those who bought a scanner when they were about $500, one of the first color inkjets that was also about $500 (Epson stylus color), etc. and that's when $500 was worth something. I'm a little more conservative with this stuff now days.

Re:A sad truth . . .

[mmell]

I see that Alex has a sock-puppet with mod points. Good to know I'm still loved! X^D

Re:Slashdot Beta not ready for Prime Time

[jones_supa]

Additional question: why am I seeing advertisements even though the "Ads Disabled" checkbox is ticked?

Content?

[Anonymous Coward]

4k compter displays would be great, the double resolution Apple Laptops look great and I would like to see that on the desktop. As for 4k TV, firstly your TV is going to have to be pretty large to notice 4K, or you sit at it pretty close, but more importantly what are you going to what on it, where is the 4K content, the film industry is just starting to get ready for 4k in the theatre. Getting higher frame rates for film and TV would be a much bigger pay off, 48fps would be great, 60fps is a little better but not significantly from the one demo I saw, close up on a computer screen 60fps may matter more.

I have the 39" seiki and love it.

[kenj123]

It does have some issue with contrast and refresh, but its still very impressive. the 28" Samsung could be a better deal now.
Some observations.
1. Youtube has quite a bit of 4k content. however you need a 15-50Mbps connection, mine is a 6Mbps Verizon dsl line so I get quite a bit of buffering. I can download the videos and they are impressive, however, I think you need at least a 60in monitor to appreciate the difference. I've switched my video mode to 1080p and I can see some difference in fine, curved lines, but that's about it. The photos I take with my digital camera look really good on the monitor, but mostly because its so big. If there is text in the picture its easier to read at 4k, but the picture looks almost the same if I set it down to 1080p. The monitor has made me realize I need to upgrade to a DSLR camera.
2. At 2k it is really awesome at displaying text. the 39" is a bit too big, I have to move my head around to see where I'm clicking, but I do program on it and I have ways around that problem.
3. I do watch a lot of nature show on my HD tv. I've been underwhelmed with the video quality of things like tree leaves, fire, flocks of birds flying, ocean waves and water splashing, groups of people or animals running. I'm hoping to see some 4k content of those things and compare to 2k
4. I am watching the pricing on 4k projectors. they are about 5grand right now which is pretty good. not long ago 2k projectors where 3grand. a 4K projector displaying a 120" picture should look incredible. I have a place already picked out to put it in my house.

Re:I have the 39" seiki and love it.

[kenj123]

2 more things that are pretty impressive on 39" seiki at 4k are PDF magazines, especially ones in HQ and Google Earth/Streetview/Maps. All of them have a mix of pictures/graphics and text that look really good at 4k. 3D buildings on Google Earth take a long time to build, partly because my video card is a bit slow. I just read Slashdot while they are loading...

Old Bugger

[BlackHawk-666]

Maybe I'm getting old, but a 24" monitor running 1080p about 40cm frrom my face seems pretty damn good. About as good as I will ever need. My eyesight is not likely to improve, and despite the fact it is pretty good for me age, I don't really see any gains to be had from doubling the resolution of my monitors (x3).

I'm the sort of guy who buys the 42" TV because...he knows he can just fucking sit a few feet closer to it if he wants the pixels and screen to appear larger!

The day I need a 4k monitor for programming is the day I need neckstrain from looking up, down and all around.

Lest we forget...

[thegreatbob]

... that IBM had a '4K' (I abhor this term as much as 'HD') monitor in production from 2001-2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ... 3840x2400 in a ~22 inch panel. Good luck finding a "4K" monitor of that resolution (~204 ppi) any time soon.

Re:Lest we forget...

[almitydave]

I'm with you on the term "4K". I can't believe Slashdotters are complicit in this marketing nonsense. There's nothing "4,000" about it. We've been using lines as shorthand for display resolution for quite some time now, and it makes zero sense to switch to columns now, and it isn't even 4K columns.

Resolution: 3840x2160
Pixels: 8.3M

1280x720 is 720p/HD
1920x1080 is 1080p/FHD (Full HD)
2160x1440 is QHD (Quad HD)

Therefore 3840x2160 should be 2160p, QFHD, UHD, or 2K. 4K is utter nonsense. Calling it "Mega 8.3" would even be better.

It's like if Chevrolet said the new Corvette Z06 made over 1200 HP, because they started measuring torque in half-foot-pounds.

Re:Lest we forget...

[almitydave]

Correction, QHD is 2560x1440.

Re:Lest we forget...

[thegreatbob]

I make that mistake from time to time, probably due to 3840x2160

Re:Lest we forget...

[JDG1980]

... that IBM had a '4K' (I abhor this term as much as 'HD') monitor in production from 2001-2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ... 3840x2400 in a ~22 inch panel. Good luck finding a "4K" monitor of that resolution (~204 ppi) any time soon.

The Dell UP2414Q comes close – it's a 24" 4K monitor, and therefore has a DPI of over 180.

I have an application for one...

[the eric conspiracy]

I want a 4K 40" OLED display for photo work. This would be something that would come a lot closer to the capability of the sensor in my camera than anything than I can buy now.

In addition the high resolution would be great for displaying large amounts of text, that is for programming.

28" with crappy color gamat and a ridiculous dot pitch isn't close to what I want.

This shit, it never ends...

[OakDragon]

Here is my feeling about it (and Stewie's)...

Re:Slashdot Beta not ready for Prime Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it doesn't work like you think it does. That's fine for the front page but there are times it still forces Beta when going to a story.

Resolution or Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

There are studies out there that claim an average user with 20/20 vision sitting 9 feet away from a 72 inch screen can't tell the difference between 720 dpi and 1080 dpi. Also the speed at which we are able to discern frames per second limits us and the motion will seem unreal at highest speeds say 48-60 frames per second. The need of the higher and higher resolutions and definitions are quickly maxing out along with the need and the average user's ability to make use of the technology. So walk candidly and read what studies you can find before you shell out the bucks for technology that you won't be able to discern usefully.

Re:Resolution or Definition

[rhodium_mir]

I am quite certain I can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080 dots per inch from nine feet away.

Re:Resolution or Definition

[JDG1980]

There are studies out there that claim an average user with 20/20 vision sitting 9 feet away from a 72 inch screen can't tell the difference between 720 dpi and 1080 dpi.

Do you regularly sit 9 feet away from your computer monitor?

I agree that for TV viewing, 4K is overkill, but it makes a big difference on PCs. Until text is sharp and clear without the renderer having to use hacks like hinting and subpixel AA, we still need higher DPI.

joke is on the consumer

[think_nix]

While 4k is technologically cool the joke again is on the consumer. As in Blu Ray "Mastered in 4k" which isn't realy 4k but "Re-mastered" and downscaled to 2k. IIRÄ they are having difficulties getting true 4k onto disc still? Then apart from the few US streaming services (available in US only TM). Sounds like another hype from the content providers to make even more money, unfortunately.

Re:joke is on the consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Blu-ray (all current players) have a spec to natively play 4k? nope. Didn't think so. This format wasn't out when Blu-ray and HD-DVD started up.

"reasonable" cost for a 28" screen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Our definitions of reasonable are greatly divided. When a 4k resolution tv costs more than a used car, I wouldn't call that reasonable. The fact that my $600 gpu can't push 4k resolution smoothly, and also I don't have any content to display at 4k resolution, and game devs release 4k texture packs that are larger than the core game, I would definitely say this is a wait and see situation. Such a small screen would hardly benefit from 4k resolution anyway. These are more things for the people who have more money than intelligence.

good grief, why not wooden pixels?!

[Thud457]

50" 720p plasma tv

Fred Flinstone, is that you? How's things down at the quarry?

HD Movie editing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see this used for HD movie editing and editing photo that are going to be enlarged many many times - like to put on the side of a building in Times Square.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 4k monitor at work now, and would really like that at home as well - but until know it's been way to expensive.
At $650 it's below what a decent 1440p monitor costs, and will be within budget for most home-office users.

Why would a home-office user need such a monitor? Maybe if they are a professional movie editor or retouch/photoshop photos that are going to be enlarged to the size of a side of a building - maybe.

You don't need such resolution for gaming and definitely not for bookkeeping work.

I think a lot of people over buy equipment. Yeah, 20 years ago, it sort of made sense because of how software kept getting bloated and how quickly hardware became obsolete.

But these days? Nah. I just got rid of an 11 year old computer the other day. After uninstalling all the software, that CoreDuo (1.6Ghz from 2003) ran quite well with XP.

What was bogging it down?

Crapware? Nope.

Viruses? Nah.

Services - updaters mostly. Why can't software check for updates when it is run instead of continuously? Apple had a service. Google had a service. Garmin had a service. Adobe - Oh God! Adobe are the KINGS of eating CPU cycles!

Oh! And let's not forget Microsoft Office's service for its shit.

I mean, GOD! you'd think we're back in the old IBM days!

Re:Why?

[Blaskowicz]

It's probably a good display to look at boring numbers and documents.
Text fonts are vector graphics, afterall. So they'll scale and be a bit easier to read.

At $650 that means you can spend $1000 on the whole system (tower or mini-PC plus display). One option is to use an Intel NUC, it comes to mind because it's a cheap and tiny PC with a Displayport ; another is to use an AMD AM1 system in mini-ITX or micro-ATX (same reason, as long as you choose the right motherboard)

Don't care about the updaters. A low end PC like above has a dual or quad thread CPU and 4GB RAM, so you can waste resources on updaters and antivirus (Windows), bad drivers (Linux) and the web browser (both).

Bit too small still.

[Jartan]

At that res I really want at least a 32~37 inch screen.

high end TVs have all those things

[Chirs]

It's just the ubiquitous crappy ones that don't.

Stop Complaining

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're complaining about 4K being useless because:
A. There's few to no movies you can watch in 4K
B. There's few to no TV shows you can watch in 4K
C. There's few to no GPUs that can run games at 4K
D. You can't tell the difference anyway from across the living room

Stop. Just stop.

4K was not designed for you. It may be marketed for you, but it's not designed for you. It's designed for people like me: programmers, developers, media editors, and people dealing with masses of data. I DO need to be able to see my code editor, a command line, and 5 running browser windows at the same time. Even with 3 monitors, this is tricky at best. 4K will allow it with a single monitor that's only a foot or two from my face, and at gloriously high DPIs.

And when 8K monitors hit the shelves, I will buy one of those too. Content creators can ALWAYS use more pixels for more lines of code, windows, larger video editors, bigger option panels on 3D graphics applications, and of course, more cells of a massive spreadsheet or database viewer.

I imagine you'll still be complaining about 8K's impracticality too, as you type in comments using your 4.5K tablet.

Heavily compressed 4K

[Toshito]

will look awful on cable...

They're already compressing the hell out of regular 1080P...

I would much prefer to have uncompressed 1080P than compressed 4K.

Re:Heavily compressed 4K

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's relevant for a COMPUTER MONITOR... how?

I Can't Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for the 8K resolution displays to get this cheap if it is at all possible... My dream laptop would run 128GB ram, 8K 17.3" monitor, 1PB of ssd, and well let's just say it's a dream.

Good grief it's a TN panel...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's just hope the next batch of these semi HiDPI displays will use something else than aged TN technology. Even though the technology has gotten a bit better it still seems to be plagued by poor color reproduction and artifacts from even slightly tilted viewing angles.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Is 4K really needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before HD was mainstream people said you could't tell the difference, unless you were standing next to the TV. Sitting in a sofa 10 feet away would make no difference. Are we now to believe 4K is needed?

fullscreen?

[Chirs]

The only advantage I can see would be that you could "fullscreen" the app within the virtual monitor area.

Some apps (media players, for example) behave differently when run fullscreen vs within a window. The "virtual monitor" window manager would let you trick the app into thinking it was running fullscreen.

But is the end near for 1366x768 laptop garbage

[guacamole]

I really don't understand how retailers and manufacturers are still getting away with selling $700-800 laptops with those awful 1366x768 or 720p displays. A few times I was looking for a basic laptop with entry level CPU and memory, and a 14-15 inch screen with nice resolution at an affordable price at Fry's or BestBuy. But the sales people always direct me at loaded models that cost +1000 to get that screen.

Re:But is the end near for 1366x768 laptop garbage

[thegarbz]

This! In in the market for a new laptop at the moment. I don't have many requirements but 1080p or better is one of them. I your a reallyhigh res external display using an iPad screen for under $100. Why can't I get that option on a laptop? I can get that option on a laptop?

It's a PC monitor, so..

[Blaskowicz]

There's tons of trivial sources of content either dynamically generated, made by others or made by yourself.
Of course, text and PDF, and unix-like terminals. Pictures and photographs ; there's nothing special to do, open a picture that comes out of the camera and look at it.
For games, you can probably play old RTS and such even on low/mid end graphics card. Else this monitor should allow you playing at non native resolutions.

There's even new kinds of content that such a high res display would make possible. Scans of old books, 16th to 19th century with their funny letters, fonts and illustrations, or large format 20th century magazines. You can read them already but most often it looks like garbage and too low res, like fax quality. (OCR fails or require special packages btw when you have funny stuff like the way s and t are linked in "forest", or the s letter that looks like the integration symbol, and then old orthographies and stuff)
High quality scan requires lots of storage, bandwith and display pixels. Now we can have all three on a desktop PC. Reading a 1680s edition of a book written by Newton would be fun, or whatever you can be interested in.

only if we get better OS support for hi res

[Chirs]

Assuming current OS behaviour, I'd be happier with a ~42-46" 4K screen. Just a bit higher pixel density than my current 24" 1920x1200 monitor, but almost 4x the number of pixels.

With current OS behaviour, a 32" 4K screen would have teeny-tiny text in some places.

TN Panels

[bill_mcgonigle]

Just a note to others, this one and the Slashvertized one are TN panels. TFA talks about how it's not too bad of a TN panel, but it's not IPS (which some of us buyers are waiting for).

um no

[slashmydots]

My games look good enough and I'm not dropping $600 on a graphics card that can display that many pixels at 60fps so no thanks.
- sincerely, every gamer with a brain and a 1080p monitor.

scaling issues...

[Anonymous Coward]

if youre running a PC, stop trying to scale on the monitor... use the GPU to scale... its right there in the control panel... any resolution you want practically...

Really.

[strack]

4k displays have been ready for prime time since the middle of last year, when Seiki released their 39 inch 4k tv for around $600. Its just the monitor driving circuitry has been slacking, and HDMI sucks, and they really should have had displayport and 60hz 4k on these panels since the middle of last year.

Quite so

[justthinkit]

More on this.

TN TN TN TN

[Anonymous Coward]

I can get a 2560x1440 PLS panel at 27" for $300 and 120hz out of box, but not a 21.5" version or a 4k version? A sucker is born every minute that thinks TN is worth havnig.

HDRevolution

[Draugo]

... a.k.a 'The day we lost 200 pixels of vertical resolution'.