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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

$1299 Seiki UHDTV 50" SE50UY04 - Bought it today

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Simon Dunne said:
Probably not this one, but looks handy if this set is any good......;

http://www.aja.com/en/products/mini-converters/hi54k/#overview
Click to expand...

I can't imagine why Jeff couldn't talk about the AJA Hi5-4K mini-converter as it was being shown at NAB. My hope is that there are other players getting into the UHD/4K market or perhaps new approaches by the existing stakeholders. ODEMAX/RedRay is brimming with potential but it's not up and running just yet, it also requires the purchase of a $1,400 piece of hardware which will truncate its potential reach.

FWIW we are entering the next phase of the UHD/4K rollout (post 2013 CES) with some critical metrics being established based on tiny sample sizes. As mentioned by other posters, what's the point of UHD/4K if the real world signals being distributed are over compressed 8-bit crap? I suppose there's not much to lose since over compressed 8 bit rec709 HD is the de facto standard at the moment anyway, but what if we get to the 4K "promised land" and it looks like kaka? Manufacturers have significant lead times in bringing products to market so sales figures being scrutinized during Q2 '13 could determine quality/pricing targets for 2nd gen displays. It's safe to assume that under $1,500 sets like the Seiki will sell more units than the $20K and over options, but companies about to sink tens of millions of dollars into an emerging market with virtually no historical data to analyze are going to seek every possible clue.

Is S3D a legitimate example of the market response to new display tech? I don't think so, but if I was counting beans at one of the CE makers would I bet my job on UHD faring better? Perhaps more critically, would I aim at the low end or the high end? Margin or volume? Issues like these could very easily have significant impact on not just quality/price metrics but could actually make a difference in the popular perception of UHD/4K. In other words, if people aren't impressed enough by UHD/4K because the hardware and signal are too compromised then it could really slow down the UHD/4K train.

There are a lot of variables in this equation. For example, in this thread we have already discussed scaling (I am using the term scaling generically here) options. Sony went hard core and put an excellent scaling system in their first wave of UHD/4K devices, presumably to allow them to tout these expensive units as terrific FHD displays while buyers wait for significant UHD/4K content availability. I follow their logic, but can they withstand the lower unit sales that come with higher price points? Moreover, as Stacey and Jeff have noted, dedicated outboard scalers and source devices with internal scalers feeding a low cost display like the Seiki that essentially just shows whatever it's fed can be a good thing.

I am a UHD/4K honk who has been counting the days until displays became widely available and relatively affordable. In the category of be careful what you wish for, that's happening - but is the timing well synced to content access? I doubt the CE companies will keep investing if sales don't hit some fairly decent levels and I can't imagine that happening without significant availability of high value content. The CE companies can "double down" by subsidizing the delta between UHD and regular HD program creation costs as some did with HD. Sony in particular may be compelled to go "all in" in order to hedge their bet on UHD/4K, which, arguably, could determine the fate of their company as currently configured (I am assuming that if losses continue they will split up and sell divisions - note, that is pure conjecture, but logical).

IAC, I am pumped up to finally have displays available that allow me to actually show people why all the fuss about 4K.

Cheers - #19
 
AJA Hi5 4K, nice box and I can talk about it all I want. It's a handy gizmo -- we can monitor 4K right out of the current Rocket card with one of these. :) Among other uses... I wouldn't buy it for use just as a way to monitor 4K from a Rocket though, most of my monitoring is out of other apps that don't use the Rocket for output, so better to use a DeckLink Extreme 4K or a Kona 3G card. Rocket-X can spit out 4K via HDMI.


As for the other box I'm not supposed to talk about, well, I don't have anything else to say. It outputs 4K. I'll say that. But I guess I already made that pretty clear above. Y'all will learn about it soon enough.
 
Are its initials 4k Blu Ray?
 
Blue by-U?

Blue by-U?

Good guess Elsie. I've heard some say that a 4K Blu-Ray variant is already in development, others claim there is no spec under consideration by the consortium. I figured that if UHD/4K was ever going to have an optical disc delivery system at all, better compression would be required than AVC, MPEG-2 or VC1. Now that H.265 has a published spec, perhaps it's game on...

FWIW, I'm not convinced optical disc is the way forward. I do think some sort of physical media will augment IP delivery schemes, but my bet is on flash media. Perhaps if volume production brought down the wholesale cost of USB3 64GB sticks low enough...

Cheers - #19
 
40 GB of h265 compressed UHD would look fantastic !
The bankers that run the media biz are so cheap they don't want to have to manufacture any physical product at all. They want your money and they send some bits down a wire to your house. They don't want you to have a copy of the movie either. How will they keep selling bits if you have them on the shelf. To you and your kids ?

Back on topic: I still really like my two Seiki monitors. ( pronounced 'Say-kee' I am told ) .
Anybody else running them from a PC ? All good so far ?
I can't believe there isn't more excitement about this cheap solution to seeing your 4K media the way it was meant to be seen.
It's like a kid on the end of a diving board looking down at the water below. A little scary to see your media in 4K , perhaps ?

Dive in.
 
Les Dittert said:
... Anybody else running them from a PC ? All good so far ?
I can't believe there isn't more excitement about this cheap solution to seeing your 4K media the way it was meant to be seen. ... Dive in.
Click to expand...

Thanks Les for the initial reports. I am still waiting for my panel to be delivered. Are you using it with Premiere? If so, what card are you using to pump out 4K to the panel? Right now, I am using a Kona 3 (2K obviously)-w-Premiere. To step up to 4K I believe I would have to go to either a Kona 3G or a Decklink 4K Extreme. If so, the Decklink is less $$$ and it also has HDMI out (so no need for a SDI to HDMI converter box). Curious minds want to know. Another interesting thought (at least in terms of up-scaling) is to use the Oppo 103. It has a HDMI input / pass-through that allows you to up scale whatever signal is fed into it. Obviously, not real 4K, but it still might be useful.
________________________________
Scarlet X # 1859 “Bettie Page”
“… preparing to ‘whip’ the competition …”

Zeiss Lenses:

CY 21/2.8
ZF 28/2.0
CY 35-70/3.4
CY 50/1.4
ZF100/2.0

Nikon Lenses:
G 14-24/2.8
G 24-70/2.8
D 80-200/2.8

Tokina Lenses:

11-16/2.8
 
Check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXBu9nxLN78

This guy did an hour long video on the monitor. I am still waiting for mine.

Anyway something he said at 46:48 gives me great hope. He mentions:

Guy 2: Oh, thats funny.
Guy 2: That's a sticker over the manual. And in the manual they have like a Y HDMI cable that is going into HDMI 1 and 2.
Guy 1: Oh really? So they were initially splitting it?
Guy 2: Thats what it sounds like.

I actually now have hope that this thing might be able to do 60Hz by running over both HDMI 1 and 2 like other 4k monitors/tv's can do.
 
Bill,
I'm driving them with commodity Geforce cards. One ststem has a 480 the other a 670.
I am not sure why anyone would need something more just to get an HDMI signal to it. Unless the sync dropouts are geforce related.
I am still getting intermittent sync dropouts, once every few min. or so, not sure why.
I'll mess with the custom timings a bit this weekend to try to fix.

Bill Sepaniak said:
Thanks Les for the initial reports. I am still waiting for my panel to be delivered. Are you using it with Premiere? If so, what card are you using to pump out 4K to the panel? Right now, I am using a Kona 3 (2K obviously)-w-Premiere. To step up to 4K I believe I would have to go to either a Kona 3G or a Decklink 4K Extreme. If so, the Decklink is less $$$ and it also has HDMI out (so no need for a SDI to HDMI converter box). Curious minds want to know. Another interesting thought (at least in terms of up-scaling) is to use the Oppo 103. It has a HDMI input / pass-through that allows you to up scale whatever signal is fed into it. Obviously, not real 4K, but it still might be useful.
________________________________
Scarlet X # 1859 “Bettie Page”
“… preparing to ‘whip’ the competition …”

Zeiss Lenses:

CY 21/2.8
ZF 28/2.0
CY 35-70/3.4
CY 50/1.4
ZF100/2.0

Nikon Lenses:
G 14-24/2.8
G 24-70/2.8
D 80-200/2.8

Tokina Lenses:

11-16/2.8
Click to expand...
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
You should check your specs on those cards Les. According to the nVidia site they both top out at 2,560 by 1,600. I paid around $420 for the Radeon 7970 and it worked a charm on the Sony ES-1000 projector over HDMI 1.4a.

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...

Video cards just quote that spec because that was just the highest commercially available resolution monitor at the time. I drove my IBM T221 (3840x2400@33.7Hz) off an old ass geforce gt 6600 AGP (Yes, AGP).
 
Blair,
I specifically asked the Nvidia rep at NAB which of their cards support UHD. He said , paraphrased " All recent Ge-force cards "

Mine worksok, but the dropouts are there once in a while . May be a low quality cable, or need some timing tweaking.

Anybody else driving it with a geforce card ?
 
Speaking of calibration I had a chance to chat with the Klein guy at NAB and spun by the SpectraCAL/CALman booth as well. Since we have one of the true display gurus on this thread, Stacey Spears, I'd love some advice on clever calibration strategies at various price points. I've been wanting to get a proper calibration kit for years and train up on it. I have the EyeOne Display2, but its no good for projection and I'm not sure how much I trust it. IAC, I really need something viable for emissive and reflective uses.

In terms of test patterns for UHD/4K resolution couldn't you build and animate something using Photoshop and AE?

Suggestions...

Cheers - #19
 
If the GeForce gaming cards can output 3840x2160 they might want to let that secret out of the bag over at nVidia. Perhaps they're trying to avoid having to tech support the higher resolution use cases due to stability issues/driver weirdness? Or maybe they're just lazy.

IAC, the lower the price point for the mass public to have UHD capable cards and the more already shipping cards that can manage it the better. Fewer hurdles is good.

Perhaps we should do a sticky that lists cards known to support UHD and/or 4K resolution natively.

My tested solution is the Radeon 7970 which is roughly $400 with enough VRAM to manage UHD rez. I would rate it stable with capable drivers, nothing fancy.

I have seen the Bluefish444 Epoch/Supernova driving demo material but haven't played with it. Specs are impressive, list price is $4K.

_____________?

Cheers - #19
 
Every Kepler based NVIDIA card supports UHD. In fact, most of them can drive four at the same time. I don't know the current state on the AMD side.

In terms of test patterns for UHD/4K resolution couldn't you build and animate something using Photoshop and AE?
Click to expand...

Of course, you just need to make sure the levels are correct and that what ever is outputting is not altering them. The most important thing is to send to the display what you source produces. e.g. If you are outputting 4:2:2 from a device, then you want to send your test patterns are 4:2:2. Some displays have different video memories, or behaviors, based on color space. I have yet to find a single consumer display (non PC monitor) that looks better with RGB than with 4:2:2/4:4:4. Bottom line, never send RGB over HDMI to a consumer display because the first thing that display will do is to convert to 4:2:2/4:4:4 for processing and then back into RGB.

Tektronix introduced the WFM5250 HDMI capable WFM at NAB. I put an order in for one. I have been using a Quantum Data 882EA and 980 Gen 3 to analyze HDMI by looking as pixel values. This will speed things up. I don't know if it supports 4k, I suppose I could read that on their website.

We will probably be giving SpectraCAL some of our pattern algorithms to incorporate directly into the new 4k generator. This will allow them to render much faster than reading a file off a flash drive. It will also make it easier to generate various color spaces and bitdepths.
 
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