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Comment by blagie | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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_11f836ca2100...

[2] https://i.dllu.net/2024-10-30-09-37-18_DSCF2617_eeab771f780f...

On a LG tv you can disable this with buying a ‘service remote’ from amazon and acces a special menu. ( look for TPC or GSR settings ). I don’t know about samsung though.

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

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