Quick Look - LG 31" DCI 4K Monitor

[Will Keir]

Going to check. I believe it's display port or hdmi. Which gives 60hz?

 

[Brandon J.F.]

For 4K @60hz. Which connection do I use

DisplayPort.

 

[Will Keir]

DisplayPort.

Sweet. Thanks Brand9n. Does display port 1.2 include sound?

 

[Brandon J.F.]

Sweet. Thanks Brand9n. Does display port 1.2 include sound?

Yes.

 

[D Fuller]

Yes, but sound is really not this monitor's strong suit. It's OK for confidence monitoring, but be forewarned, it's not going to replace even a modest set of speakers.

Sweet. Thanks Brand9n. Does display port 1.2 include sound?

 

[Will Keir]

Yes, but sound is really not this monitor's strong suit. It's OK for confidence monitoring, but be forewarned, it's not going to replace even a modest set of speakers.

Oh yeah. Just a sweet little scratch audio perk.

 

[Will Keir]

Well it's plugged in working alone side my 30" Cinema display. It looks like there is only one resolution the monitor likes. 4096x2160.

I haven't installed a single driver. It's hooked up VIA Display Port to Display Port.

One thing I notice is that the refresh rate in OS X is grey at 50 Hertz (PAL) and on the monitor the Contrast is unchangeable, also grey, at 70/100.
Phil, did you notice the same. Did drivers or a firmware fix it?

Time to plug in my 4k footage.

Anyone have 4k Links to share?

 

[Phil Holland]

Well it's plugged in working alone side my 30" Cinema display. It looks like there is only one resolution the monitor likes. 4096x2160.

I haven't installed a single driver. It's hooked up VIA Display Port to Display Port.

One thing I notice is that the refresh rate in OS X is grey at 50 Hertz (PAL) and on the monitor the Contrast is unchangeable, also grey, at 70/100.
Phil, did you notice the same. Did drivers or a firmware fix it?

Time to plug in my 4k footage.

Anyone have 4k Links to share?

This is a Mac issue. Do a Google search, I think there was a driver fix or something. I'm on PC and can't really help there.

 

[Will Keir]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNJdPyoqt8U&list=PLp0bvWrSe3eYGxC5IT8wCHIk0N04biVuV&index=2

Hard to say if this content is uprezzed or full 4k but side by side there isn't much of a difference between 2650x1600 and 4k.

--------------------

With my own 4k, 5k and 6k content, I can't say I'm blown away by the upgrade from 1/2 res to full. The extra pixel gain in practical terms is hard to justify the added expense. 1080p is 4 times less resolution and the difference I see in RCX is slight.

I love watching anything on the big screen and this must be where 4k shines over 1080p but on a 30" monitor... might not be worth it where I'm standing from and these Apple Cinema Displays might not be so bad after all.

Some of my older footage, I was hoping would finally look "AWESOME" in 4k. Still looked like the crappy footage I saw in 2k! Fuck me.... hahaha.

 

[Jonas Klittmark]

I got this LG and returned it because I realized I needed a much larger screen to do justice to all my 4K material. The monitor itself was fine but the size just didn't do it for me.

Right now I'm 5' away from my 55" 4K and the difference between 4K and 1080 is suddenly very obvious. On the 31" LG the difference was always more subtle. Or maybe I just need glasses.

 

[Will Keir]

If you need glasses at 5' from a 55" display your in trouble.

I'd like to do 4k projection, ideally.

The trouble with this 4k monitor is the tiny font size everywhere. If I'm not blind already, I will be.

I got this LG and returned it because I realized I needed a much larger screen to do justice to all my 4K material. The monitor itself was fine but the size just didn't do it for me.

Right now I'm 5' away from my 55" 4K and the difference between 4K and 1080 is suddenly very obvious. On the 31" LG the difference was always more subtle. Or maybe I just need glasses.

 

[D Fuller]

Well it's plugged in working alone side my 30" Cinema display. It looks like there is only one resolution the monitor likes. 4096x2160.

I haven't installed a single driver. It's hooked up VIA Display Port to Display Port.

One thing I notice is that the refresh rate in OS X is grey at 50 Hertz (PAL) and on the monitor the Contrast is unchangeable, also grey, at 70/100.
Phil, did you notice the same. Did drivers or a firmware fix it?

Time to plug in my 4k footage.

Anyone have 4k Links to share?

Phil's right, on Mac OS, the monitor will run at 50hz over displayport or 30hz over HDMI. no other options, as far as I know. But 50hz is just fine--at least for my uses, which area all photography and r3d grading. (I'm not a gamer.)

I've never tried to manually adjust the contrast, because the Adobe RGB and DCP settings seemed pretty good out of the box. I did try to calibrate the monitor with an i1 probe (one of their recommended devices) and the software is broken on Mac OS 10.10. I've been getting no real help on that from LG. That's about the only disappointment.

I find that the monitor has enough resolution to work really well with feeds down to 2K, and for some work (writing, etc.) I'll lower the resolution so the type is a more normal size. I only use it it it's full 4K glory when working with images. Otherwise I'd have to get my eyes replaced with higher-res models.

 

[Eric Santiago]

I got this LG and returned it because I realized I needed a much larger screen to do justice to all my 4K material. The monitor itself was fine but the size just didn't do it for me.

Right now I'm 5' away from my 55" 4K and the difference between 4K and 1080 is suddenly very obvious. On the 31" LG the difference was always more subtle. Or maybe I just need glasses.

Which display are you referring too?

I am still on search for a 4K display that will work on a REDRAY.

 

[Will Keir]

What about 4k projectors? What happened to REDs?

Which display are you referring too?

I am still on search for a 4K display that will work on a REDRAY.

 

[Will Keir]

Where did you find this David?

I thought I heard it was possible to get 60Hz.

Phil's right, on Mac OS, the monitor will run at 50hz over displayport or 30hz over HDMI. no other options, as far as I know. But 50hz is just fine--at least for my uses, which area all photography and r3d grading. (I'm not a gamer.)

 

[Will Keir]

I have a problem with watching videos and screen taring which is because of the 50 hz.

Phil how are you using this for a computer monitor with the tiny text inside applications and the screen tares?

the monitor will run at 50hz over displayport or 30hz over HDMI. no other options, as far as I know.

EDIT: Found the Refresh Rate Option to "HIGH" was causing this. I'm also noticiing a little lag running 4k on this monitor when I watch videos. I think my GTX680 has
trouble handling the resolution.

 

[Will Keir]

I'm seeing conflicting reports on the hertz this panel can do with the display port. Read all 18 pages here and found users running 60hz without problems. Seems like most of those user were in Windows. Found reports on 50hz being the max as well...

What is the actually visual difference between the two?

Some conflicts online as well.

One site says 50hz, another 60hz.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-123-LG

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2014/11/...-listed-officially-supported-mac-display.html

What are users getting?

 

[Will Keir]

What about you doing about the small text?

I can 100% confirm I am achieving 4096x2160 at 60Hz over DP 1.2. It's in the Display Port documentation that it can support this high resolution and bit depth, so it's not really a shocker for me.

Blair, did you ever buy one? Some great questions here about 8 bit / 10 bit mode switching...

Thanx for the clarification Jeff. Assuming Phil wants to use the panel for grading he's really going to want 10 bits which I assume is possible by reducing the refresh rate to 30Hz. If so, is there a simple way to toggle between the 60Hz/8 bit mode for GUI/editorial and a 30Hz/10bit mode for grading?

While we're on the subject; in terms of display driving (not compute capacity) is there any difference between the GTX 970 4GB, GTX 980 4GB and the Titan Black 4GB (or even 6GB)? I ask in part because the 980GTXs w/4GB are roughly $550 and the 970GTXs w/4GB around $350. Just curious what that extra $200 gets me in terms of compute power applicable to what we do. For reference I don't spend a lot of time in Resolve (if I did I'd just go Titan) and I have an RR-X so GPU decoding of R3Ds is not critical for me.

Cheers - #19

Confirmed at 10 bits? Jeff's note was that 4096/60 over a single DP1.2 pipe was limited to 8 bits. FWIW, I'd be fine with 8 bits @ 60Hz as long as I can toggle easily to 10bits @24 or 30Hz for color work.

Cheers - #19

I think I've got closer to keeping this monitor, possibly adding a second. Now there is the 8 bit vs 10 bit question...

I'm running 8-bit as Jeff mentioned at the moment.

What are you doing about the small text as a GUI?

I am behind one for 6 weeks now, can't be happier with it. (as a GUI monitor) I am seriously thinking about adding a second one as a 'ref' monitor.

Humm... Wonder if I can get 60hz from a GTX 980.

You can at 8bit. It also depends on your GPU. Many GPUs are limited to 50Hz at 4096x2160. Like the Macbook Pro...

 

[Phil Holland]

Phil how are you using this for a computer monitor with the tiny text inside applications and the screen tares?

EDIT: Found the Refresh Rate Option to "HIGH" was causing this. I'm also noticiing a little lag running 4k on this monitor when I watch videos. I think my GTX680 has
trouble handling the resolution.

What about you doing about the small text?

There is a good chance your GPU and maybe your system in general might not be able to push out the DCI 4K or UHD 4K video effectively. This is one of major reasons GPU manufacturers are adding more RAM on their GPUs. Just "drawing" some of the interfaces of various programs is a task in itself.

As for the text, depends. I'm a few months in now on using the display. Some Windows users are using the scaling text feature. I'm actually not doing that. Though I do scale my web browser's text. My eyes have actually acclimated rather nicely to how various applications deal with the text. Oddly, it feel a heck of a lot like my old dual monitor setups in some ways, except it's all right there in front of me.

 

[Will Keir]

By the time I get used to the small text I'll be blind. hehehe

I got a feeling they are going to come out with 4k GUIs, including Apps. Text alone is not enough, inside apps there are images that contain text and these remain the same.

I can 100% confirm I am achieving 4096x2160 at 60Hz over DP 1.2. It's in the Display Port documentation that it can support this high resolution and bit depth, so it's not really a shocker for me.

Might be worth a shot to upgrade to OS as well.