20 ms·
Awesome. I say this is a sign that the incumbent manufacturers are finally adapting to the heat brought on by Korean and Chinese newcomers. "Industry's most a
by bhauer 13y ago
Awesome. I say this is a sign that the incumbent manufacturers are finally adapting to the heat brought on by Korean and Chinese newcomers.
"Industry's most affordable Ultra HD monitor" is semantics. The Seiki 39" is still substantially cheaper, now at less than $500 on Amazon. Technically, that is a television, so I suppose "monitor" is a clever use of words by Dell.
If Seiki drops an HDMI 2 version of their monitor—excuse me, television—for roughly the same price as the current model, things start to get really interesting. Actually, scratch that, the desktop monitor industry is finally interesting again right now. This is the first time it has been interesting since about 2005.
I prefer the higher DPI that Dell is providing, but I prefer the size that Seiki is going after. My ideal is 200+ DPI at about 50" for my desktop. All steps toward that make me happy, so good going Dell!
- seiji 13y ago50" for my desktop. What? Most people I know can't even handle the current 30" monitors. It feels nicer having two 27" monitors from a not-grossly-exceeding-peripheral-vision viewpoint.
- jfb 13y agoDifferent strokes.
- clord 13y agoI like my 30", and wish for more (4 side-by-side windows!). I suspect people who don't like big monitors tend to make their windows fullscreen instead of keeping them content-sized. If you think in windows instead of maximized screens, 50" is superior to 54" split in two. It comes down to the artificial split down the middle which limits where you can stick your windows.
- seiji 13y agoThe artificial split limit is a benefit for me. Helps self organize things. Watch a movie on the left screen, web browse on the right screen. Keynote in the left screen, reference materials in the right screen, etc.
- wmf 13y agoI find that a single big monitor with a tiling window manager gives the same benefit but is more flexible.
- bhauer 13y agoActually, I would not want to fully-maximize much on a 50+" desktop display, except when I lapse into a pure-consumption mental state. More to the point, I want an immersive, uninterrupted display surface. The bezels in a multi-monitor configuration just serve to annoy me by wasting space on my desk and in my field of view.
- HNaTTY 13y agoI own the 50" Seiki and I use it as a desktop monitor. I need to modify my desk so I can move it further back but I'm getting used to the size. The lag due to 30hZ is a big drawback, my mousing accuracy is noticeably lower, but I can live with that. What I cannot live with is the fact that the monitor goes blank and then re-detects the HDMI signal all the time -- perhaps 25 times in the first few minutes and then once every 5-15 minutes afterwards. I'm using the HDMI port on my Intel Haswell board and have updated drivers and the Seiki firmware, and still get this issue. Seiki support is bad, and lots of people have this issue. They specifically released a firmware update that is supposed to resolve this but it doesn't help me. Perhaps another brand of graphics card would help but currently it's broken.
- bhauer 13y agoThe HDMI re-detection flaw happens on my wife's 39" Seiki on HDMI 1 and 3 as well. But using the HDMI 2 input, that does not happen. If you haven't already done so, try using the other two HDMI inputs to see if the problem goes away.
- rschmitty 13y agoIf you need to move it further back you are essentially shrinking your monitor size and you could have instead purchased a smaller monitor and kept the same distance
- nitrogen 13y agoIt doesn't feel the same. Unless one is nearsighted and/or crosseyed, it's easier to focus and converge on a more distant object. It also provides for a lot more desk space in front of the monitor.
- seiji 13y agoI'm holding up 27" monitors with this cheap little thing: http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=109&cp_id=10828&cs_id=1082808&p_id=5401&seq=1&format=2 http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=109&cp_id=10828&cs_id=... Plenty of free desk space! (Also, in the pro-sub-30" argument: it's difficult finding affordable movable arms and mounts for 30"+ monitors)
- bhauer 13y agoLike jfb says, different strokes. I use multiple 30" monitors on my two workstations and I would prefer a single 50" display. My wife's Seiki has more raw pixels than two of my 30" monitors. I admit that an ideal 50" display would be OLED and concave, but I'll keep those off my wish-list for the time being. I don't want the manufacturers to think I'm being unreasonable. High-DPI and large form-factor seem reasonable for 2014. I don't like the bezels between monitors in a multi-monitor configuration. I don't like the low-DPI of my 30" monitors. And I certainly don't like the price of the Dell U3011. When you say you know people who can't handle a 30" monitor, do you mean that? They would refuse to use a 30" even if they were given one? I've only met a few people who are of that particular disposition, and I personally consider them odd. It's a weird self-flagellation or quasi-Luddism. In my experience, most people don't deal with 30" monitors because they have been effectively fixed at over $1,100 for the past 8 years, only recently being disrupted by the Koreans and Chinese. From that perspective, where a small 1080 monitor can be had for a couple hundred bucks, it required a special type of enthusiast to pay the steep premium for 30" displays. But it looks that we're finally getting some changes in desktop displays, and I consider this positive progress toward what I would consider an ideal. To reiterate what I've said elsewhere, I want desktop computing to use nearly-immersive display technology, and I think this is more realistic in the mid-term than VR goggles. But to be absolutely clear, I consider 30" too small for desktop computing today.
- seiji 13y agothey have been effectively fixed That's a big part of the preference dynamic too. The price per resolution got stuck and didn't budge above 27" for years. Hopefully one day I'll be happy with four 50" 8K screens.
- rschmitty 13y agoI hear you on the bezels, however I like the wrap around effect multiple portrait monitors give over 1 big flat monitor Curved high dpi 50" please!
- bhauer 13y ago> Curved high dpi 50" please! Exactly! If I could have all my wish-list items in desktop computing, it would include a large, concave, high-DPI, OLED display with mouse and gesture input.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- btian 13y agoBut the Seiki 39" TV has its framerate capped at 30Hz while on 4k resolution, which makes it inadequate as a monitor.
- jfb 13y agoIt's likely easier for Seiki to move up than it is for Dell/Apple/&c. to move down.
- gknoy 13y agoI've had to use a 30hz framerate on my 27" Dell in order to be able to drive it over HDMI. Since I am mainly editing and reading text, which is mostly static, the low frame rate is not so bad. I wouldn't want it for gaming, but that 39" TV sounds extremely nice for coding.
- bhauer 13y agoYes, I know. My wife is using the 39" and it's fine for her computer usage. She doesn't play video games on her computer. "Inadequate" for gaming, yes. Inadequate for computing? Hardly. But this is why I said that if Seiki dropped an HDMI 2 version of the same display, things get interesting.
- selmnoo 13y ago> "Inadequate" for gaming, yes. Inadequate for computing? Hardly. How about for watching movies? High framerates would obviously seem very important for gaming, but it's not clear how important they are to movies/shows. Your thoughts?
- majormajor 13y agoDisplaying 24fps content on a 60fps screen repeats frames. If you repeat half the frames of the 25fps stream twice, and alternating half of the frames three times, then you get 60 frames per second, with a stream looking like: AABBBCCDDDEEFFF... This isn't perfect, since really each frame should be on the screen for exactly the same amount of time, which is why 120hz TVs came about -- 120 is evenly divisible by each of 60, 30, and 24. But it's also pretty much good enough, or else there'd be a lot more complaining about watching movies on computers or other 60hz devices. A 30hz screen makes that harder, since you're going to have to repeat every fourth frame once, so the unevenness could be more noticeable since those frames are now twice as long instead of 50% longer. But I haven't tried one to tell you just how noticeable it would be. Native 60fps content (sports is the most common one I know of) would require throwing away half the frames, but at least the remaining frames would all be shown for the same amount of time. NTSC "video" content (stuff shot at 30 interlaced frames per second, so 60 fields per second, stuff like old TV shows) would work alright. You wouldn't be able to take advantage of deinterlacing methods that try to reconstruct 60 full frames, but it wouldn't be a huge loss.
- saym 13y agoWhen I saw this title, I knew you'd be at the top of the comments. Glad the industry is heeding your call to action! :)
- bhauer 13y agoHa! :) I wish I had that kind of influence.
- aheilbut 13y agoSo a quad 24 Ultra HD setup would be just right..
- bhauer 13y agoThat would be quite agreeable, yes! The bezels would then be the target for elimination by the next generation.
- Already__Taken 13y agoIt probably has more to do with being fined for price fixing LCD panels and the knock on effects from that.
- robomartin 13y agoYou do realize that the guts in all of these monitors are either Korean or Chinese, right? All display manufacturers feed off of just a handful --quite literally a handful-- of OEM panel manufacturers. There is no real special sauce except in cases where an OEM, like Apple, pays for a run on a certain spec panel in exchange for exclusivity for a period of time and a guaranteed purchase of an agreed-upon volume of panels. After that the panels become available to anyone who wants to use them. My point is: Don't fall into the false idea that a company like Dell is doing something unique coming out of their R&D labs. Consumer displays are commoditized to hell and back. Just look at this weekend's flyers from companies like Walmart: 70 inch full HD TV's for less than $1,000.
- bhauer 13y agoFine, replace "manufacturer" in my original message with "brand." 1080 displays are commoditized, and have been for some time now. 2560x1600 displays were not commoditized for 8 years. The process has very recently started. The incumbent brands did not want Ultra HD commoditized so quickly, as evidenced by the $4,000+ prices. Seiki dropped a small bomb on them with the $700 (now $500) 4K televisions. With luck, Ultra HD will be commoditized soon enough. Thank you, Seiki!
- nsxwolf 13y agoI really dislike how scrolling and other motions like window movement look at 30Hz. I can't be the only one.
- retube 13y agoyou want a 50 inch screen as your desktop monitor? Good god.
- bhauer 13y agoIndeed! I also want deep color to finally come back from the 1990s. I want 300+ DPI in all my displays, everywhere. I want lossy compression to be a thing of the past. I want 10 gigabit symmetric Internet connectivity to my home so I can run a data center in my garage. I want VPNs to evolve into always-on strongly-encrypted private networks that laypeople can use, and do so routinely. I want self-driving flying cars. I want to never have to synchronize anything ever again. I want portable computing devices that are subservient to my central application server and not the plain cloud, and certainly not first-class computers in their own right. More ranting at [1]. All told, I think a 50" desktop display is among the least wishful-thinking of the things I want technology to give me in my lifetime. [1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/technology-sucks http://tiamat.tsotech.com/technology-sucks