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Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

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Re: Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

#201
post #183
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like jfb says, different strokes. I use multiple 30" monitors on my two workstations and I would prefer a single 50" display. My wife's Seiki has more raw pixels than two of my 30" monitors. I admit that an ideal 50" display would be OLED and concave, but I'll keep those off my wish-list for the time being. I don't want the manufacturers to think I'm being unreasonable. High-DPI and large form-factor seem reasonable…

> When you say you know people who can't handle a 30" monitor, do you mean that? They would refuse to use a 30" even if they were given one? Yes. There are a few issues at play: 1. I want more screen space so I want a bigger monitor 2. My desk has a finite depth. For better posture the monitor should be far enough away that I don't need to move my head to see from a corner to any other corner Multi-monitor set ups ar…

Your physiological perspective makes sense. I don't know a whole lot about posture and physiology.

For my multiple 30" monitors, I keep them each about 3 feet from my eyes, more than an arm's length away. I suppose I have been blessed with fairly good eyesight because I don't zoom the view, instead keeping everything at 100% for most day-to-day usage. If I'm feeling like I want to relax, I'll zoom things in and recline a bit.

I guess from my layperson perspective, I'd much rather move my eyes and head than deal with the contextual and organizational problems I would face by having to deal with a window stack. I'd rather not have to throw my left hand over to the tab key or have to reach for my mouse to shuffle some windows. I've used a multi-monitor configuration with the largest monitors I could afford for over a decade now and don't yet feel this has affected my physiology. But maybe I have a silent killer sneaking up on me?

If you did need to zoom in to keep text legible for eyesight reasons, I'm not sure if the value would be as pronounced. But yes, I do think the clarity and crispness would be compelling enough for me. I've routinely said that if I rest my 300+ DPI cell phone on the surface of one of my Dell 30" U3011 monitors and look at both that and my monitor's display at the same distance (roughly 3 feet), the cell phone looks shockingly more legible and superior in just about every way. I so want to just tug at the edges of my cell phone's screen and make its screen big enough to fill my entire desk surface.

Re: Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

#202
post #190
post #9

Awesome. I say this is a sign that the incumbent manufacturers are finally adapting to the heat brought on by Korean and Chinese newcomers. "Industry's most affordable Ultra HD monitor" is semantics. The Seiki 39" is still substantially cheaper, now at less than $500 on Amazon. Technically, that is a television, so I suppose "monitor" is a clever use of words by Dell. If Seiki drops an HDMI 2 version of their monitor…

you want a 50 inch screen as your desktop monitor? Good god.

Indeed!

I also want deep color to finally come back from the 1990s. I want 300+ DPI in all my displays, everywhere. I want lossy compression to be a thing of the past. I want 10 gigabit symmetric Internet connectivity to my home so I can run a data center in my garage. I want VPNs to evolve into always-on strongly-encrypted private networks that laypeople can use, and do so routinely. I want self-driving flying cars. I want to never have to synchronize anything ever again. I want portable computing devices that are subservient to my central application server and not the plain cloud, and certainly not first-class computers in their own right.

More ranting at [1].

All told, I think a 50" desktop display is among the least wishful-thinking of the things I want technology to give me in my lifetime.

[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/technology-sucks

Re: Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

#203
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me for not understanding, but how does having multiple large monitors help avoid alt-tabbing? Seems to me that if you have several open apps then to type into one of them you have to either move your hand to the mouse and click it or you have to alt-tab. Even if you have "focus follows mouse" then you still have to move the mouse over to the window before you can type…

topbanana already provided the key point in his response—visibility of a great deal of context. It's especially useful for programming, allowing for, for example, related code side-by-side. A large desktop also allows some user interface paradigms such as drag-and-drop to work more elegantly. Drag-and-drop on a small monitor is often frustrated by the need to first arrange the source and destination so that both are…

> Drag-and-drop on a small monitor is often frustrated by the need to first arrange the source and destination so that both are visible at the same time.

At least in Windows and KWin, drag to the destination window's icon in the task bar and it should come to the front... But yes, still not as convenient.

Re: Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

#204
post #54
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50" for my desktop. What? Most people I know can't even handle the current 30" monitors. It feels nicer having two 27" monitors from a not-grossly-exceeding-peripheral-vision viewpoint.

I own the 50" Seiki and I use it as a desktop monitor. I need to modify my desk so I can move it further back but I'm getting used to the size. The lag due to 30hZ is a big drawback, my mousing accuracy is noticeably lower, but I can live with that. What I cannot live with is the fact that the monitor goes blank and then re-detects the HDMI signal all the time -- perhaps 25 times in the first few minutes and then onc…

Maybe replace the cable? I had a monitor that did the same thing over DVI, blanking out every few minutes. Replaced the cheap pack-in DVI cable with a better one and then it was fine.

Re: Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

#205
post #36
post #9

Awesome. I say this is a sign that the incumbent manufacturers are finally adapting to the heat brought on by Korean and Chinese newcomers. "Industry's most affordable Ultra HD monitor" is semantics. The Seiki 39" is still substantially cheaper, now at less than $500 on Amazon. Technically, that is a television, so I suppose "monitor" is a clever use of words by Dell. If Seiki drops an HDMI 2 version of their monitor…

But the Seiki 39" TV has its framerate capped at 30Hz while on 4k resolution, which makes it inadequate as a monitor.

I just got the Seiki 39" as well. It works great for coding and browsing the web. Even watching movies. However the color fidelity is absolutely crap. Everything looks oversaturated and blown out. I have an apple cinema I switch to whenever I want to do any of my photography stuff. The 30fps is noticeable but it doesn't feel encumbering. But I'm not doing any arcade style gaming.

32" and definitely 24" would be too small for me to read the text. I'd have to hunch forward or blow the font up to read things. I already have that problem on my retina MBP.

Re: Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this also the source of the ultra-real "soap opera" effect that ruins movies on new televisions?

No. That's the TV interpolating frames. The effect described would introduce a stutter.

Ugh, I hate that effect. The frame rate dynamically changes based on when the algorithm can find frames to interpolate. It's so disorienting.

Re: Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultrasharp is to Dell monitors what "MacBook Pro" is to Apple laptops. Dell clearly intends, with their 24/32 vs cheaper 28, to have pro quality and mainstream quality displays both at UltraHD/4k resolution the same way they have both pro quality 1080p (ultrasharp) and cheap crappy 1080p (not ultrasharp). It is unfortunate for dell that the 2160p resolution got labeled something so similar to their existing brand.

Sure. But as someone who has owned several Ultrasharp monitors, I don't feel that it would hurt their brand to come up with a different differentiator for 4K monitors. The brand is Dell, not Ultrasharp. I can almost guarantee that anyone who even knows what Ultrasharp means would be the kind of people to research the specs of a monitor before buying it anyway. So maintaining that 'brand' across all their high-end mon…

You don't just toss out branding. When was the last time Apple, king of branding, casually discarded a branding?

Macbook

Macbook Pro

Mac Pro

These names have been with us for, what, nearly a decade?

Re: Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

#208
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you say you know people who can't handle a 30" monitor, do you mean that? They would refuse to use a 30" even if they were given one? I've only met a few people who are of that particular disposition, and I personally consider them odd. It's a weird self-flagellation or quasi-Luddism. The last computer monitor I bought was the original 24" Apple Cinema Display. I haven't used it for day to day computing in 7 y…

I don't mean to criticize anything about your line of thinking because it sounds like you're doing what makes sense to you and you're happy. So who am I to tell you you're wrong? However, I do feel that your description hints at the essence of what I was saying earlier: that avoiding a large monitor is somewhat like self-deprivation. You don't want to get spoiled by becoming accustomed to the increased productivity y…

> If I read you correctly, you'd love to have the increased productivity of a larger virtual workspace, but today's technology and your need to be mobile keep you thinking it's best to focus on mobility first. That makes a lot of sense.

Yes. Also, as my laptops' screens have gotten larger, my desire for a bigger screen has gotten lower. My first laptop was 13" and 1280x800 and I tethered to a big screen constantly. It was just too small for me. My current 15" laptop screen (which is 16:10 aspect ratio and high DPI) is good enough for most things. The wide aspect ratio is great for programming, since it allows 2 columns of even very wide code.

I do wish I had one screen dedicated to the app/web page/whatever and one to the debugger (code/vars/console/etc.), but that's really the only time I feel even slightly constrained. And like I said, right now it's good enough that I'm willing to trade that last desire for more portability.

Re: Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

#209
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the Seiki 39" TV has its framerate capped at 30Hz while on 4k resolution, which makes it inadequate as a monitor.

How does it fair for software development or email? Is it inadequate even for those tasks?

fare

Re: Dell introduces 28" 4K Ultra HD Monitor for under $1K, shipping early 2014

#210
post #204
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own the 50" Seiki and I use it as a desktop monitor. I need to modify my desk so I can move it further back but I'm getting used to the size. The lag due to 30hZ is a big drawback, my mousing accuracy is noticeably lower, but I can live with that. What I cannot live with is the fact that the monitor goes blank and then re-detects the HDMI signal all the time -- perhaps 25 times in the first few minutes and then onc…

Maybe replace the cable? I had a monitor that did the same thing over DVI, blanking out every few minutes. Replaced the cheap pack-in DVI cable with a better one and then it was fine.

That was my first thought as well. I tried a $100 Blue Jeans HDMI cable we had here at the office but there was no change.

It's interesting to me that the blanking events are grouped together and mostly in the beginning. My best guess is that the monitor adjusts some timings and eventually gets it right, and whenever it's turned off it has to figure out the timings all over again. But I don't really know what I'm talking about...

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