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Comment by PhrosTT | Hacker News Reader

The fact that this has a thunderbolt resolution display shows how lame it is most desktops haven't adopted 4k yet.

I've seen no evidence that 490 DPI has any advantage over ~300 DPI; it sounds like spec wanking. And there are rumors of a 5K retina iMac tomorrow (4K tends to be a downgrade from 2560x1600).

Downgrade? 4K is 4096x2160! Sounds like an upgrade from 2560x1600.

I think that he means with the typical pixel-doubling you get with "retina" branded screens, UI elements on 4096x2160 would actually have the same on-screen size as UI elements on a non-retina 1080p display, which on a 27" screen is probably too big. (27" iMacs are 2560x1600 which makes onscreen elements considerably smaller than if they were 1080p.)

OSX on a "5K" 27" display would maintain the same size of on-screen elements as the current 27" iMac, but everything would be twice as sharp. I would probably buy one in a heartbeat if the price is right.

(Edit: I guess the other alternative is that OSX would use a 4k screen but would do some graphics card tricks to render everything at 5120x3200 and downsample it to 4096x2160, but that's an odd ratio (5/4-ish) so things may not look as good. That's what they do on retina MBP's when you set the display settings to "more space", which renders everything smaller.)

4k monitors are not that rare/pricy. You can get pretty cheap 60hz ones from Asus and the best ones from DELL.

Problem is that most consumers who would buy those monitors would expect every application to run on it without problem, that includes games and for that you need to spend a lot of money on GPUs.

Before anyone goes jumping on the "best ones" from Dell, take a read through this 35 page support discussion about their UP2414Q:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/peripherals/f/35...

Anecdotal, but a friend and I both have problems with ours, and he got lucky with the 1.1 firmware revision (Dell won't let you upgrade it, you have to go through support for a replacement, and they'll send you a refurb that might have the newer firmware because they decided it would cost too much to update their existing inventory). And even then it might not work. He's waiting on Dell Support for his 3rd unit.

Do yourself a favor and wait until DisplayPort 1.3 is widespread and can drive a 4k screen without using Multi-stream Transport. It's not worth the headache.

Right now my computer is convinced that the left and right halves of my screen are separate displays and nothing will convince it otherwise. Other times MST will fail to connect and it only picks up 1/2 the resolution in the middle, with 1/4 width black bars on the left and right. From what I remember reading, Dell botched the DisplayPort handshake, and the workarounds that AMD/Nvidia have put into their drivers to try and fix it aren't 100%.

I need to return mine for backlight flicker too. But I'll write that off an an excusable manufacturing flaw that's going to pop up occasionally on some number of any model.

EDIT: Just for perspective, this is a screen with an MSRP around $1100, though we both bought ours on sale. The amount of shit we're dealing with for a screen that expensive is not reasonable.

    UPDATE

My friend's 3rd display just came in this afternoon. When he plugs it in and turns it on, the computer stops responding. When he turns it off, the computer resumes working normally.

Ordinarily I would scream "driver problem" at that one, but the 2nd screen did not have this problem with the same GPU and driver installation. (That one just randomly disconnected and reconnected every 30 seconds or so)

He's trying it on different computers next, further updates as events warrant...

    UPDATE 2

Hooked up to his Mac. It flickers on and then goes blank.

Even running at 30 Hz on single-stream transport, it doesn't work over DisplayPort. HDMI works at 30 Hz, but DisplayPort 1.2 with MST is the only option with enough bandwidth for 4k at 60 Hz.

> Do yourself a favor and wait until DisplayPort 1.3 is widespread and can drive a 4k screen without using Multi-stream Transport. It's not worth the headache.

It reminds me of getting an external monitor for my T420 from Dell and seeing that DisplayPort to DisplayPort 1.2 cables are practically non-existant. I ended up getting one after hours of search online, the only proper manufacturer of these being Lenovo itself. I wonder if the situation gets any better...

I was under the impression that DP's cables have all been backward compatible, and a 1.0 device could just plug into a 1.2 screen and work. Not the case?

I have my UP3214Q working just fine. You need to A) make the SIMULATED_* monitor settings match the 4K ones; and B) use an HDMI cable along with the displayport cable. My instructions are here:

http://jmswrnr.com/blog/the-firmware-issues-of-dell-up3214q-...

I'd say the real problem is the fact that the affordable ones you mention, tend to have terrible specs apart from resolution (and latency). Low contrast, bleeding, terrible colour representation. At least that was my experience.

Just got up a Seiki 39" from Walmart.com for $329. After some flashing and calibration, its a beast! Highly recommended for day to day/dev use. Gaming, too, but not in 4k. It can do 1080p 120hz.

Can you elaborate on the flashing/calibration? Is that to get better than 30Hz at native 4K resolutions?

For coding / web browsing, how good is the screen (i.e. can you notice lag for those use cases). I have heard mixed things about the Seki 39" but it looks like it could be a great development monitor

I use one for development and love it. There is lag and it is noticeable - it's most noticeable for moving the mouse cursor, and it is somewhat annoying because it makes any mouse operation feel slower and less precise. The lag doesn't really affect anything else I do.

Still worth it for the price IMO, the screen real estate makes a huge difference in my productivity.

If it only does 1080p, you're not getting any additional screen real estate, just huge pixels.

It's basically the equivalent of four 20" 1080p monitors with no border between them. For (nowadays) a bit over $300. Pretty nuts.

It's 4k.

Sure.

Flashed it with SE50UY04, the 50 inch models, firmware. Just extracted the zip, put the install.img on a FAT32 formatted USB drive, and went into the secret menu (with the menu open press 0000) and updated the firmware.

After that I started with these calibration numbers: Contrast: 42 Brightness: 66 Color: 34 Sharpness: 0 Color Temp: normal Turned off Noise Correction.

--These settings can be changed in the secret menu - other settings options. Red Gain: 141 Blue Gain: 126 Green Gain: 132 Red Offset: 532 Blue Offset: 510 Green Offset: 504 DCC: Off Backlight: 75

And modified it to my liking. Actually had my Macbook Retina open next to it and sort of color matched. My numbers could vary greatly from these. My backlight is at like 50.

Overall, I'm really happy with it. Yes there is a mouse lag, but the 50" firmware makes it LESS noticeable. Also tbh, you sort of get used to it. In my case I try to minimize mouse usage anyway.

It's significantly harder to produce large, 4K panels without imperfections when compared to small panels.

What on earth is a "thunderbolt resolution display"?

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