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But the Seiki 39" TV has its framerate capped at 30Hz while on 4k resolution, which makes it inadequate as a monitor.

by btian 13y ago

jfb 13y ago
It's likely easier for Seiki to move up than it is for Dell/Apple/&c. to move down.
gknoy 13y ago
I'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 ago
Yes, 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 ago
    Displaying 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.
    - joosters 13y ago
      Drop the screen refresh rate to 24hz to match the video then...
      - majormajor 13y ago
        That was an option on CRTs since you could control the speed of the beam, but I'm not aware of any LCDs that have an adjustable native refresh rate. Ah, the good ol' days, when blacks were black and "non-native resolutions" weren't a thing. :)
        derekp7 13y ago
        That's one thing I never understood. With CRT's, you still had discrete pixels (either clusters of 3 RGB dots, or 3 RGB bars). But no matter the resolution (within the CRT's limits), nothing looked blotchy. Whereas on an LCD, you can always tell when it isn't running in a native resolution (or even divisor). So what is the difference? Other than a CRT would naturally do analog interpolation, couldn't an LCD or graphics adapter be programmed to simulate the same effect?
        majormajor 13y ago
        The hardware side is where things start getting out of my area of knowledge, but my understanding is that yes, CRTs had a native upper bound on their resolution which had to do with the dot pitch of the display. I would guess that the way this worked in practice is that for lower resolutions they were effectively partially lighting up multiple phosphors per pixel on each pass? I imagine the difference between this an an LCD is that the amount of time a single pixel was lit by the beam on a CRT is far, far lower than the refresh rate of an LCD. I believe there were monitors that went both ways with this, not just letting you run lower than native but also higher than native (I had a 17" CRT that claimed to support 1600x1200, but not without a lot of blurriness, for instance). edit: man, it's really hard to find specific info about how exactly that worked online these days
        bhauer 13y ago
  - bhauer 13y ago
    Admittedly, we've not yet watched a film on the Seiki. We have fired up a few Youtube videos at full-screen and aside from looking comical (due to the large lossy compression artifacts present even in Youtube's highest quality videos), the video seems as smooth as Youtube ever does, at least to my eye. I suspect for video from a higher-quality source, my opinion would not be so forgiving. But put briefly, for consuming crummy web content, I have no complaints. Don't get me wrong. I haven't yet bought one for myself principally because I am waiting for Seiki (or someone) to offer me a similarly priced 4K monitor with HDMI 2 (60Hz). If I got the current model today and a v2 of the Seiki arrived next month with HDMI 2, I would be sad. The 30Hz limitation is the most significant disadvantage of this display. So I wait. But if you don't want to wait, the 30Hz limitation is tolerable. At <$500 now, it's very hard to restrain myself from just buying another and being done with the temptation. More of my crazy thoughts: http://tiamat.tsotech.com/seiki-4k http://tiamat.tsotech.com/seiki-4k
    - Locke1689 13y ago
      I don't understand why you would want HDMI 2. DisplayPort is pretty much better in every single way.
      - bhauer 13y ago
        DisplayPort is indeed superior and I'd gladly take a cheap UHD monitor with both HDMI 2 and DisplayPort.
    - kllrnohj 13y ago
      YouTube is 30fps, so it should match up with vsync nicely.
  - jfb 13y ago
    I wouldn't want to watch a movie at 30hz, or at 4k.
    - potatolicious 13y ago
      Aren't all movies at 30Hz or 24Hz? I don't think there are any mainstream releases at a higher FPS...
      - tcpekin 13y ago
        The Hobbit [1] is the only movie I can think of that is shot at a higher frame rate, it being shot at 48 fps. [1] http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682085/will-the-hobbit-start-a-48-fps-movie-revolution http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682085/will-the-hobbit-start-a-...
        potatolicious 13y ago
        Very cool. I don't think it'll be distributable at 48fps though, at least not via blu-ray, which seems capped at 30fps by spec.
        selmnoo 13y ago
        Current direction of cinema trends raises lots of interesting technological questions. I'm especially intrigued by those concerning media discs. The next FIFA World Cup is set to broadcast in 8K, so I think one can reasonably predict there'll be movies recorded in 8K by 2018. Now, imagine, something the length of the LoTR trilogy, in 60fps, 3D, and 8K. You're looking at a lot of data right there... that's asking for discs to contain half a petabyte worth of data by around that time. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
        jfb 13y ago
        There are some noises about higher framerate movie production; The Hobbit was the first, and it was not well received. Motion at 30fps and higher looks very different than motion at 24fps, and part of the resistance to HFR is simply unfamiliarity; however, a lot of shots in The Hobbit were not improved by the 48fps presentation; I think that we won't get good results until film projection is dead, and directors and DPs can present at arbitrary frame rates -- there's no reason that, given a digital projection, a movie couldn't use 48 (or 60!) for certain sequences, while retaining 24 (or 30) for others. It would add another technique for directors to use, just as video has.
pepsi_can 13y ago
How does it fair for software development or email? Is it inadequate even for those tasks?
- victorhooi 13y ago
  fare
benatkin 13y ago
It's also too big.
patriciaecastro 13y ago
my best friend's aunt makes $86 hourly on the computer. She has been unemployed for 8 months but last month her pay was $12133 just working on the computer for a few hours. you can try here======> http://www.jobs25.com http://www.jobs25.com
bcheung 13y ago
I just got the Seiki 39" as well. It works great for coding and browsing the web. Even watching movies. However the color fidelity is absolutely crap. Everything looks oversaturated and blown out. I have an apple cinema I switch to whenever I want to do any of my photography stuff. The 30fps is noticeable but it doesn't feel encumbering. But I'm not doing any arcade style gaming. 32" and definitely 24" would be too small for me to read the text. I'd have to hunch forward or blow the font up to read things. I already have that problem on my retina MBP.

But the Seiki 39" TV has its framerate capped at 30Hz while on 4k resolution, which makes it inadequate as a monitor.

by btian 13y ago

But the Seiki 39" TV has its framerate capped at 30Hz while on 4k resolution, which makes it inadequate as a monitor.

jfb 13y ago

It's likely easier for Seiki to move up than it is for Dell/Apple/&c. to move down.

gknoy 13y ago

I'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 ago

Yes, 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 ago
  Displaying 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.
  - joosters 13y ago
    Drop the screen refresh rate to 24hz to match the video then...
    - majormajor 13y ago
      That was an option on CRTs since you could control the speed of the beam, but I'm not aware of any LCDs that have an adjustable native refresh rate. Ah, the good ol' days, when blacks were black and "non-native resolutions" weren't a thing. :)
      - derekp7 13y ago
        That's one thing I never understood. With CRT's, you still had discrete pixels (either clusters of 3 RGB dots, or 3 RGB bars). But no matter the resolution (within the CRT's limits), nothing looked blotchy. Whereas on an LCD, you can always tell when it isn't running in a native resolution (or even divisor). So what is the difference? Other than a CRT would naturally do analog interpolation, couldn't an LCD or graphics adapter be programmed to simulate the same effect?
        majormajor 13y ago
        The hardware side is where things start getting out of my area of knowledge, but my understanding is that yes, CRTs had a native upper bound on their resolution which had to do with the dot pitch of the display. I would guess that the way this worked in practice is that for lower resolutions they were effectively partially lighting up multiple phosphors per pixel on each pass? I imagine the difference between this an an LCD is that the amount of time a single pixel was lit by the beam on a CRT is far, far lower than the refresh rate of an LCD. I believe there were monitors that went both ways with this, not just letting you run lower than native but also higher than native (I had a 17" CRT that claimed to support 1600x1200, but not without a lot of blurriness, for instance). edit: man, it's really hard to find specific info about how exactly that worked online these days
        bhauer 13y ago
- bhauer 13y ago
  Admittedly, we've not yet watched a film on the Seiki. We have fired up a few Youtube videos at full-screen and aside from looking comical (due to the large lossy compression artifacts present even in Youtube's highest quality videos), the video seems as smooth as Youtube ever does, at least to my eye. I suspect for video from a higher-quality source, my opinion would not be so forgiving. But put briefly, for consuming crummy web content, I have no complaints. Don't get me wrong. I haven't yet bought one for myself principally because I am waiting for Seiki (or someone) to offer me a similarly priced 4K monitor with HDMI 2 (60Hz). If I got the current model today and a v2 of the Seiki arrived next month with HDMI 2, I would be sad. The 30Hz limitation is the most significant disadvantage of this display. So I wait. But if you don't want to wait, the 30Hz limitation is tolerable. At <$500 now, it's very hard to restrain myself from just buying another and being done with the temptation. More of my crazy thoughts: http://tiamat.tsotech.com/seiki-4k http://tiamat.tsotech.com/seiki-4k
  - Locke1689 13y ago
    I don't understand why you would want HDMI 2. DisplayPort is pretty much better in every single way.
    - bhauer 13y ago
      DisplayPort is indeed superior and I'd gladly take a cheap UHD monitor with both HDMI 2 and DisplayPort.
  - kllrnohj 13y ago
    YouTube is 30fps, so it should match up with vsync nicely.
- jfb 13y ago
  I wouldn't want to watch a movie at 30hz, or at 4k.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    Aren't all movies at 30Hz or 24Hz? I don't think there are any mainstream releases at a higher FPS...
    - tcpekin 13y ago
      The Hobbit [1] is the only movie I can think of that is shot at a higher frame rate, it being shot at 48 fps. [1] http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682085/will-the-hobbit-start-a-48-fps-movie-revolution http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682085/will-the-hobbit-start-a-...
      - potatolicious 13y ago
        Very cool. I don't think it'll be distributable at 48fps though, at least not via blu-ray, which seems capped at 30fps by spec.
        selmnoo 13y ago
        Current direction of cinema trends raises lots of interesting technological questions. I'm especially intrigued by those concerning media discs. The next FIFA World Cup is set to broadcast in 8K, so I think one can reasonably predict there'll be movies recorded in 8K by 2018. Now, imagine, something the length of the LoTR trilogy, in 60fps, 3D, and 8K. You're looking at a lot of data right there... that's asking for discs to contain half a petabyte worth of data by around that time. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
      - jfb 13y ago
        There are some noises about higher framerate movie production; The Hobbit was the first, and it was not well received. Motion at 30fps and higher looks very different than motion at 24fps, and part of the resistance to HFR is simply unfamiliarity; however, a lot of shots in The Hobbit were not improved by the 48fps presentation; I think that we won't get good results until film projection is dead, and directors and DPs can present at arbitrary frame rates -- there's no reason that, given a digital projection, a movie couldn't use 48 (or 60!) for certain sequences, while retaining 24 (or 30) for others. It would add another technique for directors to use, just as video has.

pepsi_can 13y ago

How does it fair for software development or email? Is it inadequate even for those tasks?

victorhooi 13y ago
fare

benatkin 13y ago

It's also too big.

patriciaecastro 13y ago

my best friend's aunt makes $86 hourly on the computer. She has been unemployed for 8 months but last month her pay was $12133 just working on the computer for a few hours. you can try here======> http://www.jobs25.com http://www.jobs25.com

bcheung 13y ago

I just got the Seiki 39" as well. It works great for coding and browsing the web. Even watching movies. However the color fidelity is absolutely crap. Everything looks oversaturated and blown out. I have an apple cinema I switch to whenever I want to do any of my photography stuff. The 30fps is noticeable but it doesn't feel encumbering. But I'm not doing any arcade style gaming. 32" and definitely 24" would be too small for me to read the text. I'd have to hunch forward or blow the font up to read things. I already have that problem on my retina MBP.