39" Skyworth 39E780U ultrahd display observations ...

[Filip Vandoorne]

Because it was difficult to get the Seiki in europ, i turned to my uncle in China - really, i do have a uncle living in China - to have a look for the 4K monitor. But it seems that the Seiki is not sold in China itself. We could find the Skyworth 39E780U for a resonable price with shipping to europ. So the monitor was ordered and we received it monday. So here some first impressions :

The monitor is 220VAC, 50Hz, so in europ, i only need to change the 220V connector as the cable is fixed to the screen.
The most difficult was to find in Chinese menu's the way to change to English.
No batteries AAA for remote and neither a hdmi cable is included, but you get 2 3d glasses.
The hdmi cable was less than a problem than i anticipated with all the stories on the Seiki cabling: i tested 3 brands of decent 3m high-speed hdmi cables and they all worked fine.

The monitor has a slim bezel design, and is also very thin. The back of the screen is white plastic, the front is with a small 1cm black border which is nice. From the front the monitor is my liking, but the back.., well its not Apple.. The screenpanel itself semiglossy, which i like. not a mirror and not too much coating so all details are still visible in the image even from close.
The 39" size is very usable on the desktop: i need to be at less than 39" to see all details with comfort. No pixels to see at that distance, except of course when using the belle-nuit testchart - see photo's. The blacks seem to very good and dark, and the standard setting - for once - shows the best range - using this testchart - https://developer.apple.com/quicktime/
of course you still have to disable all other tricks as DNR, dreampanel and Matix BL. I you have HD images, you also turn off Magic Pic II, MEMC, 120, ... Whatever they do, best to turn them off..
The panel claim to be 10 bit and when i try a known 10bit testimage - a gray ramp with half in 8bit , half in 10 bit : in the 8bit half, i can see the banding, and much less in the 10bit half... so it could be true..
When shown a white even image, i can see some vignetting on the borders, especially the right side, but with a panel and border this thin, it was to be expected, and with most images it's not visible or distracting.

to get the image in quadHD, we already had our Blackmagic UltraStudio 4K ready. drivers are now 9.7.5. I first tried it with Finalcutpro X, but till now, all we get is a green image in 4K. BUT in Finalcutpro 7 the 4K settings at 25fps works fine for prores 444 and 422. Also the Blackmagic Media express works fine to playback the images. The full version of Davinci resolve shows also the display and show all pixels when asked. nice.
i will try in the next days how Adobe behaves in the combination Skyworth and Ultrastudio 4K.

using the display as a computer display should also be possible and its size makes it even not a so stupid idea...
On a plain 10.8.4 or 10.7.5 mac os, the display goes up to HD, but i hope with Maverick or some tools/patches to get the full resolution soon. to be continued...

I also did some testing with HD images, but it seems that the scaler give me trouble to get a decent image. some work will be needed there, but who want HD when he can have 4K ( ultraHD) ;-)

i'm very happy with the quality and the price ratio. a real winner and 4K show-off...

attached some crapy iphone photo's - the pixels in the 1-block of the testchart are perfect on the real display

 

[Filip Vandoorne]

some extra observations :
in fcp7
if you set the output to 1080i50, the display will overscan, no way to turn it off.
solutions = use 1080p25 and p setting in the control panels, also 1080p50 works, and seems best.
another option in fcp7, EVEN if your timeline is 1080, set your external video to the 3840x2160p25- setting.
the scaling is realtime in fcp7 drivers or the ultrastudio 4k and seems a much better/nicer the scaler in the display,
even if there seems some field shifting happening-only visible on testcharts.
But in this way, a HD image is more as if the display was a native HD display: the internal HD scalers of display seems to add some image tricks that you cannot disable when using plain HD and are not so nice...
As with other cheap 4K displays, it seems best to add a external scaler...

to get the best viewing distance = show the belle nuit HD testchart - you can show 4 at the time on the Skyworth,
look if in the 1-pattern you still can see the black-white line patterns. if not, get closer to the display.

 

[David Cole]

Filip:

What type of 3D glasses? Active or passive?

Thanks!

 

[Filip Vandoorne]

didnt try them, but active, rechargable over usb cable.

 

[Kwan Khan]

Nice

 

[Janis P.]

Maybe it's worth to read maarten's review aswell. Best points compared to Seiki's UHD TVs - it's nicely overclockable (he could got up to 45Hz using 1.4 hdmi) and interim lesser resolutions work imho better. A bit worse - no fine calibration of rgb colors, just few generic presets. For seiki that could be workarounded via service menu, haven't yet found/googled how to do that for Skyworth. Might be harder to find out how, as this TV is domestic China only model, thus if such nfo is posted, then probably only in chinese sites. Android OS and miscellaneous software imho will be of small demand (and may suffer from being in chinese only), but there is also 3D support on contrary to Seiki (which overclocks only to 31Hz@UHD BTW). Built in scaler purposedly also is of better quality. Extra features result on average ~ extra $100 for 39", ~ +$200 for 50" though. There is nice interim model aswell, of 42" size, for just $100-150 more over 39". (39-42-50-55-58-65, and IIRC 80" & up with different model line name)
Meanwhile i'm trying to get here 50" Skyworth hoping that it will overclock as good, after all, i'd have to pay as much if not more for shipping Seiki from US as i have to for shipping from China and will loose warranty for both, so why not get potentially better one.
BTW, you should also post as help for others how to switch language to english. Something along "3rd menu from the right, fifth item from the top" & click here

 

[Filip Vandoorne]

update - fcpx and computer use of the Skyworth

update - fcpx and computer use of the Skyworth

some more tests with the display :
The combo Ultrastudio4K and Resolve 9.1.5 works very good, as was to be expected. Using RED images you really understand on this display why we need 4K AND the 5K and 6K bayer sensors.

Finalcutpro X 10.0.8 remains a problem when trying to use UHD4K output of the Ultrastudio4K : the image on the Skyworth display remains green.
I tried several combinations and other computers, but it seems a driver or fcpx issue. Blackmagic design is aware of the problem and is looking into it.

so i tried to use the Skyworth as a computer screen. It is not recognized as a UHD4K display in 10.7.5 and 10.8.4,
not on a Macbookpro, but neither on a Retina 15". also fiddling with SwitchRes didnt help. I also tested it with the GTX680 mac edition
with 10.8.4 on a macpro 2008, but no go in 4K: it seems that the drivers need to be patched.
Some people reported succes with OSX 10.9 Mavericks,
so i tried this also. Succes. at least on the Retina, it was recognised immedialty... what a display ... wow. 24, 25, 30hz.
The 39" size is really useable for desktop-use : for me the perfect viewing distance is between 50-100cm. the pixels are perfectly build, text is very readable. I even dont need to make it 'retina' aware to use menu's and applications. it has just more desktop space.. lots more.
Running Finalcutpro X on this display is new experience... But there is a bug with FCPX and 10.9, so it won't use the build-in display of the macbookpro Retina as a second display. So when Mavericks is finally released, Apple will need to update FCPX also.
I also tried to install Mavericks on my older demo Macpro 2008 3.1 with the GTX card, but that would not start, i will try with the ATI card again.

All the minidisplay-hdmi adapters i've tested , even with Mavericks, on the thunderbolt ports of the Macbooks did not show the UHD4K resolution, only the hdmi port of the Retina was capable. I've ordered some other brands of adapters to see what works.

Using the Retina and the Ultrastudion 4K the UHD4K image on Skyworth is alway very stable, no jitter or other instability that seems to bother the Seiki's.
playback as an UHD4K second display on the Retina worked very well: fluid image, good scaling algoritm (better dan the build in HD of the display )
The colors and blacks/whites are very good on this display.
In my opinion its a keeper for desktop use.

 

[Tom Horvath]

so i tried to use the Skyworth as a computer screen. It is not recognized as a UHD4K display in 10.7.5 and 10.8.4,not on a Macbookpro, but neither on a Retina 15". also fiddling with SwitchRes didnt help. I also tested it with the GTX680 mac editionwith 10.8.4 on a macpro 2008, but no go in 4K: it seems that the drivers need to be patched.

I made a patch for OS X 10.7. and 10.8. You can overclock both HDMI and Thunderbolt ports on your Mac with it and my Seiki 50" works just fine at 4K HiDPI @ 31 Hz. PM me if interested - I am curious if you could overclock your TV all the way to 45 Hz.