Follow-up on my 4K TV

[toprob]

Well, this was a bit of an experiment, which didn't work out. The plan was to try a 4K TV at a budget price, but I don't really think this is a good bet at the moment. Buying a 40" own-brand TV at Harvey Normans for <$500 seemed like a good idea, and it certainly was a nice looking TV, I couldn't fault the image. A Chromecast turned it into a smartish TV, although very Google-centric, as it requires a Google browser. I've lived without any Google device (never owned an Android phone) for a long time now, so they don't know much about me, and I haven't had to see all those ads constantly. Still, it is a small, though annoying, price to pay for the ability to cast in 4K to the big screen.

But the best thing was being able to use it as a second monitor on the PC. This was part of the plan, the idea was always to be able to see photos on the big screen while I modeled in 3D on the PC monitor. This would save a lot of to-ing and fro-ing to see detail of what I'm trying to model, as the 3D tool really requires full-screen. When I first connected the TV to the PC via HMDI, it just worked as a separate 4K screen, and tools like Lightroom, which I use to 'develop' digital photos, really take advantage of the extra screen -- there's a 'loupe' tool which I use a lot to see detail up close, and the first time I pressed the loupe button with the TV connected, it automatically put the image on the TV at full screen, edge to edge. Beautiful stuff. This really improves the speed of modeling by a good factor.

However, over the weekend the TV stopped working. I have yet to return it, but I won't be getting another the same, I'll go for my original choice, a 40" Panasonic HD, rather than 4K. It won't be the same for viewing photos full-screen, but it won't really make much of a difference for normal media viewing -- there isn't a hell of a lot 4K content out there, so I'd be happy to live without it.

So, the moral is, if it seems like a great deal, it probably isn't.

[Charl]

Too right... but don't imagine buying good stuff buys you a long and happy life!
The 4k thing is being thrust upon us, like it or not.
Witness the nice box set I got for Christmas which says "UltraHD Blu-ray" on the spine.
This is code for: "All your high-grade optical disk players just became obsolete, sucker, because this disk needs a 4k player and a 4k display to work."
Well, I made up the latter part there, because none of the optical drives I have would even recognise the format.

Remember MS Word 97 (I think it was?)
It couldn't read any old Word docs.
The faithful got annoyed and flocked to MS Office clones.

Probably time consumers got it together again, and voted with their wallets and feet...

[Dinga]

Yes its usually the case with few exceptions.!080 TV will still give a great picture and Panasonic are one of the best.

[dbcunnz]

My old 2009 Panasonic 42" plasma HDMI is still serving me as well as the day I bought it and I don't see any reason to change it.
The 1080 picture is as good as my 85 yr old deteriorating eyes will ever see, unless of cause I could get a brand new younger set of eyes

[toprob]

That's a very good point about our eyesight -- the 4K resolution is great if I'm sitting at my desk close up to the screen, but normal TV viewing, from my couch, I would never notice the difference from 1080... I notice a slight softening with 720p, and the old 'standard res' broadcast channels look like rubbish. Still, there's not much on those which I want to watch, even the Maori channels are 1080 these days.

Happy Waitangi Day!