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Author here, ask me anything! Apart from programming, one of the motivations for getting the 8K display is to look at lidar point clouds. For example the deskt

• srid 2y ago
  To get retina quality display, you need to match the PPI right? For 5K, 27" is the sweet spot. For 8k, what would be the optimal size of TV?
  • dllu 2y ago
    What you really need to match is the angular resolution in microradians from your eye. You can make any screen smaller by sitting farther back. That said, I do wish my TV was only 42". I guess if you really want the ppi to be exactly the same as a 27" 5K screen, then 27 * 7680 / 5120 = 40.5".
    • JoshTriplett 2y ago
      This is exactly the reason I intend to stick with 4k for now: I don't want a display that large. I currently have a 48" 4k display, and I'd prefer to have a 42" or 36" one. (Good choices are hard to find, though, particularly if you actually want 4k rather than ultrawide, want OLED, and don't want to just use a TV.)
      • petepete 2y ago
        I bought the Philips Evnia which fits perfectly into that category at 42". Despite being a gaming monitor it's not garish and I've grown to love the ambilight. https://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/42M2N8900_00/evnia-gaming-monitor-oled-gaming-monitor https://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/42M2N8900_00/evnia-gaming-moni...
• lbrito 2y ago
  Do you have 20/20 eyesight, and how tall are you? I use glasses (myopia) and can kind of tolerate the edges of my 32" 4k monitor, but I can't fathom craning my neck all the way up to the edges of a 55"+ display. Not to mention font sizes.
  • dllu 2y ago
    I have fairly bad eyesight with both myopia and astigmatism (-5 sph, -2 cyl) and I wear glasses. I got glasses with 1.71 index lenses, which I greatly prefer over the more common 1.74 index lenses due to the higher Abbe number, resulting in less chromatic aberration. Anyway, I use browsers at 150% scaling usually, although the text is finer on my terminals. I don't use any scaling for UI elements and terminals. Using the i3 tiling window manager, I put more commonly used terminals on the bottom half of the screen since I find that the top half does require more neck craning. I'm 184 cm tall.
    • girvo 2y ago
      FWIW there are lenses that are high index while still having a higher Abbe number, but they're expensive and pretty specific materials. Interesting that 1.74 are more common where you are, where I am lower index polycarb are the standard (sadly)
  • satvikpendem 2y ago
    You sit back far enough that the TV encompasses your entire field of view, so at that point there is no need to move your neck at all, only your eyes.
  • qingcharles 2y ago
    I had a 55" TV as my main display in 2022. Had it about a foot away from my face. It takes a few days, but your brain and body get used to the size. I just bought a 39" ultrawide and for the first few days I thought "oh dear, I have to keep turning to see the whole thing," but I've not even thought about it for a couple of weeks now, so I guess I'm acclimated. YMMV.
    • 2y ago
• FireBeyond 2y ago
  I know your article is on 8K TVs, but it's worth pointing out that the Dell UP3218K is a 32" 8K monitor (but is also not without its own challenges).
  • satvikpendem 2y ago
    This is already mentioned in the article: > There is also a Dell UP3218K, but it costs the same as an 8K TV and is much smaller and has many problems. So I do not recommend it unless you really don’t have the desk space. Sitting further back from a bigger screen provides the same field of view as sitting close to a smaller display, and may have less eye strain.
    • dllu 2y ago
      I wish Dell would come out with a refreshed version of the UP3218K that's cheaper and fixes its various little glitches.
  • sneak 2y ago
    I have it and love it. The only problems I have with it are related to it needing to be power cycled if I haven’t used it for a couple days.
• satvikpendem 2y ago
  Nice to see other people doing the same thing I do, albeit with a 4k OLED instead. I am waiting for an 8k OLED at an affordable price but it seems I will have to continue waiting. What brand and model of desk do you have? I have a 48" TV but I sit rather close so it probably takes up the same field of view as your 65". As to your last paragraph, if you email hn@ycombinator.com and explain the situation, they'll sort you out and sometimes put you into a second chance pool, as it's called.
  • dllu 2y ago
    I have the Uplift 4 leg standing desk [1]. I got the black laminate desktop in a custom 75" x 42" dimension so the whole thing cost me almost $2000. [1] https://www.upliftdesk.com/uplift-4-leg-standing-desk-v2-v2-commercial/ https://www.upliftdesk.com/uplift-4-leg-standing-desk-v2-v2-...
    • cheschire 2y ago
      I wish deep desks were more common! Modern ultrawide curved monitors sit way too close for comfort for me due to the way their legs have to be angled further back for center of gravity. custom desks end up being so expensive.
      • satvikpendem 2y ago
        Any good deep desks that you've found so far?
        • phonon 2y ago
          This is a cheap large desk I like. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXH2MZRM https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXH2MZRM
        • throwaway2037 2y ago
          How about the (in)famous Amazon Door Desk? They used to build desks for their offices from a door.
• marai2 2y ago
  What do you use the lidar point clouds for?
  • dllu 2y ago
    I was previously working at a lidar company and now I am working at a robotics company providing calibration and localization software to customers using a combination of lidars, cameras, and other sensors.
• itronitron 2y ago
  I'm curious how much heat this thing puts off, and whether there are particular display types that generate more heat than others.
  • dllu 2y ago
    Yeah it does emit a bit of heat. I think around one or two hundred watts? I haven't measured it directly. I have a mini split air conditioner in my home office.
    • seb1204 2y ago
      Makes sense, also See comment about energy consumption of 8k TV above.
      • stephen_g 2y ago
        The comment above has very wrong numbers, by the way, typical consumption for the whole device should around or less than what that poster claims is drawn just by the CPU!
    • biddendidden 2y ago
      [flagged]
  • jhartwig 2y ago
    Nothing compares to the old school large dell lcds. I had one years ago that was a furnace.
• williamDafoe 2y ago
  You COMPLETELY missed the elephant in the room : 8K TVs have really, really massive CPUs that waste a TON of power (150-200w for the CPU, 300-400w for the TV, often!) Think 8 cores of the fastest arm 64-bit processors available plus extra hardware accelerators! They need this extra processing power to handle the 8K television load, such as upscaling and color transforms - which never happen when you are using them as a monitor! So, 8K TVs are a big energy-suck! There's a reason why European regulations banned 100% of 8K TVs until the manufacturers undoubtedly paid for a loophole, and now 8K TVs in Europe are shipped in a super-power-saver mode where they consume just barely below the maximum standard amount of power (90w) ... but nobody leaves them in this mode because they look horrible and dim! If everybody were to upgrade to an 8K TV tomorrow, then I think it would throw away all the progress we've made on Global Warming for the past 20 years ...
  • mewpmewp2 2y ago
    How does it compare to working from home as opposed to driving to the office? E.g. let's say I drive 10 miles a day to get to the office vs use an 8k TV at home? If I go out of my way to work from home, would I be ethically ok to use 8k monitor? Back of the napkin it seems like 8k monitor would be 10x better than driving to the office?
    • maccard 2y ago
      I don't think this is an honest question. There's no "fixed budget" of energy that is ethically ok to use. The parents point was that these devices are woefully inefficent no matter which way you look at them. The "best" thing to do would be neither, and is usually to just use the device you have - particularly for low power electronics as the impact of buying a new one is more than the impact of actually running the thing unless you run it 24/7/365
      • mewpmewp2 2y ago
        > There's no "fixed budget" of energy that is ethically ok to use. Not even 0.00001 W? How is it ethical to live in the first place in such case? > The parents point was that these devices are woefully inefficent no matter which way you look at them. It's always a trade off, of productivity, enjoyment vs energy efficiency, isn't it? If I find a setup that allows me to be more productive and enjoy my work more, certainly I would need to balance it with how much potential waste there is in terms of efficiency. > The "best" thing to do would be neither, and is usually to just use the device you have That's quite a generic statement. If my device is a budget android phone, do you expect me to keep coding on it, not buying better tools?
• kev009 2y ago
  I had the Dell 8k monitor you mentioned, the picture quality was great but it died after a few years not long after the warranty expired (a gut punch at the purchase price) and they said too bad so sad... ok that's fine but I will never buy another Dell product again. It was released too early to have proper displayport support and I had to use a custom nvidia-driver X11 config to make it mostly work as two monitors. And there is basically no way to use that kind of DPI without scaling. I replaced it with an LG 43UN700 which is a 43" 4K display that I use unscaled and although the LCD panel is vastly inferior I love the thing especially at the price point (under $700). I hope manufacturers continue to support this niche of large singular flat displays because they are fantastic for coding, data viewing/visualization and pitch hit at content consumption as your article states although this one would be no good for gaming. And getting a "monitor" or "professional display" firmware load means a lot less problems than a Smart TV load.
  • jszymborski 2y ago
    I had a similar experience with Dell after they wanted the price of a new laptop for a replacement laptop battery. This was for the Dell Studio back when battery packs were made to be swappable by simply sliding a latch. After that phone call to customer support, I made a similar vow to never buy another Dell product. These days, I use a Framework laptop.
    • throwaway2037 2y ago
      You couldn't buy something from eBay or TaoBao/Alibaba?
      • jszymborski 2y ago
        I did in fact buy a knock-off from ebay battery, but it kept it kept it's charge for hilariously little time. Had to run it of mains power permanently (ran it as a little server for a while).
        • jajko 2y ago
• JackMorgan 2y ago
  Do you have access to other lidar areas, like in Pennsylvania/Philly?
• ergreger 2y ago
  I don't know many Linux users doing 4k+ at 144hz. I am wondering if you do any screen capture or desktop recording, and if so what software you use and what your experience is like? I cannot reliably capture 4k/144hz with my setup but my desktop environment is still on X11. I tried KDE/Wayland and had a better experience, but run into other bugs based on their integration. Just curious how your experience with sway has been. I installed it but wasn't expecting to come with no config at all and didn't really want to be bothered setting it up just to test screen recording. The issue with X11 is that even if you record (using any software) it causes the display refresh rate to artificially drop and its a very bad experience overall when you run at 4k144hz. Ultimately, the future is wayland but I am a little surprised how slow it has been for everyone to integrate it into their software.
  • throwaway2037 2y ago
    Except for gaming, is there any practical use for refresh above 60Hz?
    • SoftTalker 2y ago
      No
    • Eisenstein 2y ago
      They are useful for the same reason response rate is important -- motion blur and judder. Things look more crisp and move more fluidly across the screen.
    • callc 2y ago
      Yes. It makes the experience much better when anything is moving. Hard to convince by words, it’s a try it and then go back to 60 to see what you’re missing. Similar to hard drive vs SSD. Before I used a machine with a SSD for the first time hard drives were fine, then my normal was conditioned to that of SSD speeds. Going back to hard drive speeds is painful, just like 60hz even for things like moving windows around the desktop.
      • 2y ago
• replete 2y ago
  I recently acquired a 43" 4K monitor for programming - a very boring Philips monitor, used at 100% scale. I hated it at first, but after a month I loved it. 2160p actual 'workspace' resolution at this distance (2 feet?) and size (43") seems close to a practical limit for typical use I thought, requiring with this measly 43" still a little bit of occasional head movement to see the top right corner. I noticed a tendency to sit slightly to the left of centre on this monitor, to avoid distortion and maintain clarity with what I'm focusing on (e.g. code/windows, not reference materials). Because of this I suspect at this distance a 43" with a slight curve would be optimal, at least for me. What I wanted to ask you: - What is your 'workspace' resolution? Is it something like 6K? I'm guessing your scaling is either 125% or 150%? Your PPI should be around 135, mine 102. - Are you actually sat perfectly centre? I was wondering this because I keep noticing I tend to gradually shift my keyboard to the left over a day. Maybe this is years of 1440p + side portrait monitor use, I'm not sure, but eventually I accepted that I prefer slightly to the left (odd because my side portrait was on the left...) - Do you think a curved monitor at this size/distance would improve the ergonomics? I imagine you must get a bit of a neck workout. After getting this monitor, I'm pretty much sold on single screens again - but I had to switch my window management from keyboard-based tiling shortcuts to 'hold CTRL and move mouse' window management (BetterTouchTool on MacOS), with a tendency to stack up windows messily. I tried custom resize snap zones with BetterSnapTool - but I don't use them. I think that was the biggest challenge to switch from multi monitor to large format. It's a huge benefit to have everything in your context on one screen, but had to rethink how windows get moved around. Now I'm used to it, I want CTRL/SHIFT + mousemove modifiers on every system to deal with windows. Also related, I bought a 4K tv last weekend for another system to use as a monitor, but found that the gaps between the pixels were unexpectedly large, creating a strange optical effect at close distance, making it unusable (but so close). There might be something different about the screen outer layer (on most TVs?) that polarizes light in a way better suited for distance viewing, but clearly not all TVs have this issue.
• hackerbeat 2y ago
  Nice website.
• danny8000 2y ago
  What zoom (if any) do you typically run at? For instance, a 200% zoom would give you an effective resolution of 4K, but with much sharper and smoother text and rendered graphics.
• Tepix 2y ago
  I can't believe you're not mentioning the super high power draw of 8k monitors. It's so bad that i'm not even considering getting one.
  • pama 2y ago
    The power is not so bad, especially compared to the graphics cards you would want to use (and I use my GPU as a tow warmer). Samsung 8k specifically comes with low power presets which are probably usable in this scenario. Of course with so many more pixels in 8k than in 4k there is need for more power but the EU regulation allows selling them if they also support an eco mode. I am old enough to recall 100W as the typical single light bulb and I still use an electric tea kettle that touches the multi kW range daily. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/eu-8k-tv-ban-goes-into-effect-heres-how-samsung-got-around-it https://www.tomsguide.com/news/eu-8k-tv-ban-goes-into-effect...
    • Tepix 2y ago
      The eco mode is not usable, it's the manufacturer's way around a ban of 8k monitors. These monitors use at least twice what other monitors of the same size use, sometimes it's four times as much. And these measurements are probably in eco mode, so it could be worse. > I am old enough to recall 100W as the typical single light bulb and I still use an electric tea kettle that touches the multi kW range daily. Not sure why you mention this here? Just because we had horribly inefficient light bulbs our monitors can use twice as much?
      • bool3max 2y ago
        I mean considering the value you'd get out of a single monitor compared to a single light bulb, I'd say yes.
      • JohnBooty 2y ago
        I’m guilty of this as well. Folks of a certain age will always tend to measure energy consumption in “light bulbs.” Sort of like how Americans always measure size in “football (gridiron) fields.” The energy consumption of a traditional incandescent bulb, while obviously inexact, in nonetheless somewhat of a useful rough relative measurement. It is a power draw that is insignificant enough that we don’t mind running a few of them simultaneously when needed, yet significant enough that we recognize they ought to be turned off when not needed.
• kayg04 2y ago
  hey, i asked you on the other thread as well (the imac one) but this was my question —- Hey, I have a similar setup (https://kayg.org/uses https://kayg.org/uses) where I use a LG C148 as my primary TV and monitor. I do all work on it, however I am unable to use tiling window managers as you recommend because I always struggle to see windows / text that is placed above my eye-level. For that reason, I prefer to use manual window management solutions instead. I am curious how do you deal with that problem, one big TV user to another? or do you not have that problem at all? thanks!
• ngcc_hk 2y ago
  Interesting. Time to buy a new tv or monitor for programming. Wonder which resolution and size to go. Use 4K 27 for programming and a super wide for my fs2020. Btw I would use two different glass when I use it as tv or playing fs2020/4 vs when I sit close to use it as programming station.
• cm2187 2y ago
  I am using a 43 inch 4k monitor so I am allin on big screen real estate. But I find that even with a quarter of your screen area, I struggle to read the corners of the screen, the bottom is often obstructed by whatever is lying on my desk, and I had to make the mouse cursor bigger as I kept losing it. I doubt that an even bigger screen would be practical. I do have two 43in monitors side by side but the other one is more like a secondary screen for playing movies or "storing windows", it's too far from the eye to be useful as a primary monitor for reading and writing.
  • rob74 2y ago
    32" being (IMHO) too small and 43" too large, I have invested in a rare (and relatively expensive) 38" 4K monitor (Asus/ROG Swift PG38UQ, ~1000€ when I bought it, hasn't gone down much since), and until now I can only say good things about it. It's big enough to use without scaling (except for a few websites with tiny font size), but small enough so you can have a reasonable distance between the bottom and the desk and still see all four corners without craning your head around too much. It has a fixed foot (only the vertical angle is adjustable), and I originally thought I would have to buy an extra fully adjustable monitor stand, but so far I'm happy with the "default" settings. I'm not getting another one because of space limitations (and spouse tolerance issues), but compared to the two WUXGA monitors I had before, it's already almost four times as much screen space, so that should be enough for the foreseeable future.
    • alluro2 2y ago
      Spouse tolerance issues are a significant factor - I have 2 x 32" and my spouse got used to it only after grudging about it for about a year :) If I brought a 43" one, I'm afraid a new apartment with a separate work room would have to come too.
  • jon-wood 2y ago
    I had a similar experience using a 43" 4K TV as my monitor, it was an OLED so the picture was absolutely beautiful but I'd end up only using the 32" in the middle of the display. I'm now using a 32" 4K display on my desk which is about the sweet spot for me, lots of real estate, and I can see all of it.
• hhejrkrn 2y ago
  I did this same thing with a 50" 4k TV ... I get and it does work .... My biggest issue is the tv brightness levels even at low were waaaaaaay too bright... I was using LCD ... Is oled better for this????
  • Refusing23 2y ago
    OLEDs generally get less bright than LEDs but you should be able to adjust brightness on either the TV or your OS (or both)
• splitbrain 2y ago
  pet peeve: your blog has no RSS feed
• blagie 2y ago
  Here's my central question: In the early 4k era, whenever I saw a TV used as a monitor, the eye strain was high. It was too bright, too contrasty, and generally, the picture was not great for using for things like programming. In addition, many TVs would do not-so-great things to the picture, the worst being digitally sharpening the image (which resulted in e.g. a halo effect around small text). This might not bother some people, but it bothers me a lot. How are you finding the display compares to a real monitor? How do I buy TVs which I know won't do this sort of thing?
  • sokka_h2otribe 2y ago
    Look at the pixel density And avoid 'upscaling' type things. Pixel density impacts the distance you need to be from the monitor to avoid eyestrain
  • clan 2y ago
    Many (most?) current TVs has either a game or PC mode which can be set on your HDMI to disable these "improvements". I think this is primarily driven by console gamers to the benefits of PC users. Our needs align here. If you check rtings.com they usually evaluate how good the TVs are as a monitor. You might still have issues with local dimming etc. But that is the price of cheap. Better models works really good today. I am using a really cheapo LG 43" 4K as a monitor. Properly adjusted it is usable. Would I like better? Yes. But it is worth the trade off. And there are only a few options for a "proper" 4K monitor at 43". I find that a little strange as it hits the sweet spot around 110ppi. I used to used dual monitors but I much prefer a (I know: comically) large screen. Only real annoyance I have is that it does not turn off automatically like a real monitor using DPMS. This means that I have to turn it on using a button. It will turn off after 15 min if there is no signal. Like in the olden days.
  • dllu 2y ago
    Fortunately, modern TVs can disable the sharpening and contrast/saturation enhancements. Since I do a lot of photography and image processing, I am also extremely sensitive to oversharpened halos, so I was a bit worried about that at first --- but fortunately, that is 100% nonexistent once I applied the appropriate settings on my Samsung QN800A. See pics: [1] [2] I also detest the miniled HDR that they have going on, which can cause bright things to glow, so I disabled that. Unfortunately my QN800A still have a bit of "full screen HDR", namely, that the whole screen may uniformly dim if it detects that the scene is dark. This means that sometimes when you have a black screen with a single cursor on it, it gets dark, and it becomes hard to see the cursor. This doesn't affect normal usage though, when the screen is at a constant brightness. [1] https://i.dllu.net/2024-10-30-09-36-11_DSCF2616_11f836ca210058fea790aeda3d5887fb30a8a796_202c516052c6e7f3.jpg https://i.dllu.net/2024-10-30-09-36-11_DSCF2616_11f836ca2100... [2] https://i.dllu.net/2024-10-30-09-37-18_DSCF2617_eeab771f780f676b8df63a6c25919c8a1d4f8a44_4d7e691bda4a8178.jpg https://i.dllu.net/2024-10-30-09-37-18_DSCF2617_eeab771f780f...
• speleding 2y ago
  In case you're wondering whether this works on a Mac, like I did, I found this source[0]. In short, you need an M2 Pro or better, and may need to edit a plist file to get it to work. [0] https://scottstuff.net/posts/2023/10/10/samsung-8k/ https://scottstuff.net/posts/2023/10/10/samsung-8k/
  • seemaze 2y ago
    See the Apple page on 8k displays, https://support.apple.com/en-us/102236 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102236
• PMunch 2y ago
  I've recently swapped out my dumb TV with a smart TV. The choice to go smart after clinging on to my dumb TV + old-school Chromecast was only motivated by advances in display tech. In retrospect the smart TV is a considerably worse experience UX-wise than the dumb TV + Chromecast. The built-in Chromecast in the new TV requires the TV to be logged into accounts for all the "apps" that the TV has. I can no longer just cast something from any device connected to my network and have it "just work" like it did before. I know in this case you're working with HDMI and hopefully have managed to set the TV up to just display an HDMI output on bootup, but did you run into any of these infuriating "smart" TV things?
  • zie 2y ago
    As far as I know the lesson here is, never, ever, connect your TV to the Internet.
• illiac786 2y ago
  Do you use macOS with this and if yes, do you often share your screen? I find large monitor unusable for screen sharing on macOS in general as it will share a lot of blank space and the window you want to share, making the window minuscule for anyone that does not have an 8k monitor like you. Admittedly it’s a macOS issue.
• stolsvik 2y ago
  A tad surprised that curvature isn't discussed? With such a massive screen, the distance from your eye to the middle of the screen, and eye to the corners, are very different - unless you sit far away. Your eyes thus need to change focus all the time. That's AFAIK why those ultra wide screens are curved - and I find that the more curve they have (smaller radius), the better it is. With such a massive screen, I guess it would be best if it was part of a sphere! (Curved both ways)
• runeks 2y ago
  I tried this a couple of years ago and had to ditch the TV because of too much input lag. You mention input lag only once where you say: > Although this post is mostly focused on productivity, most if not all 8K TVs can be run in 4K at 120 Hz. Modern TVs have decent input lag in the ballpark of 10 ms and may support FreeSync. Have you measure this, or where do you get this number from? The TV I bought was also advertised as low-latency, but I found it too high in practice (when typing in code, or scrolling, and waiting for the screen to update).