# Day 1 of 4K



## Gerhard Westphalen (May 17, 2015)

After seeing that John Powell is using a single 4k TV for Logic I started to look at options. Most options are still rather expensive and an unjustifiable cost. 

Yesterday I picked up 4k LG 40UB8000 which was on clearance sale for $630 (CAD so $520 USD). I thought that perhaps my experience with it might help people here.

Initially it was great. Hooked up fine and my graphics card (HD 7750) handled the resolution without issues. There is a significant strain on my processor when playing 4k videos but it handles it. Videos do need to be given enough time to load (even though my internet should be fast enough for it).

Before this I was using a 27" Qnix 1440p as my main with a 1080 on both sides and a TV in the back. I had Cubase on the main and the left one with the right one just being for my mac mini (slave and for iTunes) and video on the TV. 

With the new TV I now have it in the middle with the Qnix on the left and the TV in the back. One issue that I had here was that I didn't have an active displayport to HDMI adapter so my graphics card didn't want to run 3 monitors so I put in a 5450 to handle the TV in the back. 

I read that colors are a problem with this TV but haven't noticed anything. I also haven't noticed a problem with it being at 30 Hz (using HDMI 1.4) 

The TV didn't fit on my VESA desk mounts which I had for the monitors it replaced so I had to improvise and it is currently on 2 stacks of books. 

Now I'm working with Cubase only on the 4k. I have 1 workspace with the main window on the entire screen and 1 with the mixer open at the bottom. This is great and I don't miss having it on 2. The Qnix that I have on the side is just a secondary monitor now in case I need to have anything open beside Cubase. Its definitely not necessary to have it. 

The problem - the TV has a huge latency. It feels as if your mouse is underwater. Putting the TV on game mode and turning off the enhancements did help but its still noticeable. I thought that I would get used to it and so its not worth returning. When I started watching Youtube videos the audio was noticeably ahead of the video when watching on the 4k TV. This morning I updated the firmware and it did improve it. Now if you look for the sync problem you can see it but its not too bad. I don't think I will return it as I'm liking working on a single monitor and I can't afford any other 4k TV (>$1000).

To sum things up - this is great and I definitely recommend going to 4k but not with this particular TV because of the delay.


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## Simon Ravn (May 17, 2015)

May I ask why you bought a TV instead of a monitor? Size? That would be the only reason I can think of.

I am personally on day 1 4K as well - however, I got the BenQ BL3201PT 32" monitor. I am still not 100% sure if things look too small for my liking on this monitor. Not the font in Logic X, that seems to be too big on non-4K screens, but plugin fonts, some plugin GUIs etc. are a bit hard on my eyes, even having moved the screen closer than my former 27" was.

The real estate and sharpness is nice, but I am also still on the fence regarding using a consolidated view with piano roll on the bottom of my Logic window compared to being used to having it on a 2nd monitor on the right. I could of course try having the piano roll window to the right of the arrange window on the same monitor, but I think the horizontal resolution doesn't seem high enough for this.

It might be a question of getting used to a new workflow (I also am coming from Logic 9, not used to Logic X yet at all) - I'll give it a chance for sure but I am still not certain if I will regret going this way or not.

There is no lag at all, running 60hz (I tried at 30hz for fun, I don't think I could get used to that jerkiness of the mouse+GUI, honestly), colours and contrast is nice etc. I can recommend this monitor for anyone wanting to go the 4K route with a fairly inexpensive IPS panel 8)


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 17, 2015)

I was considering an Acer 32" since it would have displayport for 60Hz and it wouldn't have the lag but it would be $1000 and things would be very small. If I were thinking about getting a $1000 TV instead then I'd probably go with the monitor but my TV was much cheaper. 

Compared to my 27" 1440 monitor a 32" the pixels would be 78% of the size and the 40" is 96%. So with the 40" I've basically kept things at the same size but just added more screen space. I sit about 1 meter away and I think the size of things is great. If I watch 1080 video I do need to sit back a bit as I feel too close or I play it on my other TV which is about 2/3 meter away. 

I'm noticing that with the piano roll editor in Cubase as well. It seems a bit awkward and I keep moving around as opposed to having it on a second monitor. I can always just resize the main sequencer window. I think we'll both get used to it


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## pmcrockett (May 17, 2015)

I'm considering getting a 4K monitor and using it in portrait orientation as an aid for drafting orchestra scores in Finale -- it would mean less zooming in and out to get a full view of all the staves. I'm a little concerned that running it in native resolution would make the Windows desktop difficult to use, though, especially since I'd like to keep a secondary lower-resolution monitor, and my understanding is that display scaling can't be applied separately to different monitors in Windows 7.


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## samphony (May 17, 2015)

I can highly recommend the Crossover 44K UHD. A sleek 40" Display with Displayport 1.2 @60hz for mac and PC!


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## samphony (May 17, 2015)

@Gerhard
What Android device do you use for touch osc?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 17, 2015)

pmcrockett @ Sun May 17 said:


> I'm considering getting a 4K monitor and using it in portrait orientation as an aid for drafting orchestra scores in Finale -- it would mean less zooming in and out to get a full view of all the staves. I'm a little concerned that running it in native resolution would make the Windows desktop difficult to use, though, especially since I'd like to keep a secondary lower-resolution monitor, and my understanding is that display scaling can't be applied separately to different monitors in Windows 7.



But with Finale you can just easily zoom in and out so I don't think resolution is so important for it. Why not get a lower resolution like the widescreen 1920x1440 and use it portrait?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 17, 2015)

samphony @ Sun May 17 said:


> @Gerhard
> What Android device do you use for touch osc?



I'm running Emulator Pro in Windows 8 on an Acer touchscreen monitor. It runs on my slave rather than on my master just because when you touch it the mouse moves there and I don't want to have to keep constantly moving my mouse back to my DAW. There is also a free program which you can use. I believe its called Surface Control or a similar name. I had a physical midi connection between the computers but now I just run it over the network. A Microsoft Surface Pro would probably be great to run this on.


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## pmcrockett (May 17, 2015)

Gerhard Westphalen @ Sun May 17 said:


> But with Finale you can just easily zoom in and out so I don't think resolution is so important for it. Why not get a lower resolution like the widescreen 1920x1440 and use it portrait?



That's an option, yes. My goal is to make up to approx. 40 staves readable without zooming, which can be achieved with a vertical 1920 resolution, but just barely. It's less about the difficulty of zooming and more an aesthetic preference -- I find it easier to orchestrate when I can take the entire orchestra in at a glance (like with a paper score) and not have to chop it into zoomed slices or fool with staff sets.


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## Scrianinoff (May 18, 2015)

Gerhard Westphalen @ Sun 17 May said:


> ... The problem - the TV has a huge latency. It feels as if your mouse is underwater. Putting the TV on game mode and turning off the enhancements did help but its still noticeable. [...]
> To sum things up - this is great and I definitely recommend going to 4k but not with this particular TV because of the delay.


Oh, oh, oh, Gerhard, and all that after I warned you about this 

If anybody is interested in finding out latency _before_ buying a screen, look at my posts in Gerhard's earlier thread about 4K screens: http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtop ... t=#3861610


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## charlieclouser (May 18, 2015)

I got a Samsung 32" 4k monitor (not TV) for my new Mac Pro cylinder - and it's freaking fantastic. I don't have any control surfaces, mixers, or other stuff between me and the display - just the music keyboard and Mac keyboard - so I have the display pretty close to me, and I actually like the teeny-tiny text.

I did try out a 27" 4k display and on that one the text WAS too small - but a 32" is about right as long as you can have it fairly near. Of course, you can use the "scaled" mode in Sys Prefs to enlarge stuff on the screen a bit if it's too tiny, but where's the fun in that?

On either side I have 32" 2560 x 1440 monitors and now that I'm accustomed to the 4k, when I drag a window over to the side monitors things look positively HUGE and primitive by comparison. But it is handy to have the ability to move plugins or mixer windows off to the "chunky-vision" displays so things are easier to see when they're farther away and off to the sides.


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## karelpsota (May 18, 2015)

Does anyone know what 4K model John Powell uses ?


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## termin (May 18, 2015)

Gerhard Westphalen @ Sun May 17 said:


> samphony @ Sun May 17 said:
> 
> 
> > @Gerhard
> ...



may i ask you if templates for daws are included? i am interested in emulator pro, but am not very clever at building templates


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## EastWest Lurker (May 18, 2015)

charlieclouser @ Mon May 18 said:


> I did try out a 27" 4k display and on that one the text WAS too small - but a 32" is about right as long as you can have it fairly near. Of course, you can use the "scaled" mode in Sys Prefs to enlarge stuff on the screen a bit if it's too tiny, but where's the fun in that?



I don't find squinting fun


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## Scrianinoff (May 18, 2015)

But you'll look funny with reading glasses 

I use +1.0 reading glasses with my 4K 28" Asus screen, and I love the screen size, still after 7 months of using it. That makes it 4K Day 200 something for me. It fits very well with my 27" 2560 screens left and right of it.


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## snattack (May 18, 2015)

Sounds like you have some kind of processing going on in the TV that's slowing it down. Try enabling "Game mode" or something similar in the Input-settings.


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## Scrianinoff (May 18, 2015)

He did:


Gerhard Westphalen @ Sun 17 May said:


> [...] Putting the TV on game mode and turning off the enhancements did help but its still noticeable. [...]


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 18, 2015)

Scrianinoff @ Mon May 18 said:


> Gerhard Westphalen @ Sun 17 May said:
> 
> 
> > ... The problem - the TV has a huge latency. It feels as if your mouse is underwater. Putting the TV on game mode and turning off the enhancements did help but its still noticeable. [...]
> ...



I do remember that you warned me! For me the issue of the mouse lagging isn't too noticeable now that I've gotten fairly used to it. The issue was just with watching videos and having the audio be ahead. I assumed that Windows would automatically compensate for it since TV's having latency is fairly common but it doesn't. With the firmware update which reduced the lag it's possible to comfortably watch videos.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 18, 2015)

How many DPI does it have? The 30" Cinema Display has about 101, and that's pretty much normal for a computer display. Pixel density is the important spec for comparison, not so much screen size when you're talking about TV monitors on a computer.

I sit maybe 2-1/2' back, and that's comfortable for me (I have good vision - no reading glasses).


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 22, 2015)

A little update - The only issue that I've had aside from the latency is that text in things like Windows menus or Finale has been a bit pixelated and "rough" looking. I noticed that the TV was running at 4096x2160 even though its advertised as 3840x2160. Reducing the resolution in Windows to 3840 has made the text clear. Sadly, the latency wasn't affected by this change in resolution (I was hoping that some sort of upscaling was causing it but that doesn't seem to be the case).


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## pmountford (May 27, 2015)

I bought this LG 40UB800V TV a couple of months back (which I'm pretty sure is the same European model as the 40UB8000) for running Windows/Cubase too. Because of it's relatively low cost compared to the only 40" 4k monitor I'm aware of (Philips bdm4065uc which seem to be in short supply) I thought I'd take a punt and for the price (£400) if it didn't work out then it could be moved into the house. 

My first impressions were that the colours are quite washed out compared to my 27" LED's and that there is definitely a noticeable lag when moving the mouse/windows around (I've not updated the firmware - so thanks for that suggestion). BUT for me at the moment you'd really have to fight to take it off me - the 4k deskspace at the same pixel density as my other monitors outweighs the lag and any colour issues. TBH I am running this at 30hz so the simplest solution would be to buy a new graphics card with HDMI 2.0 if the lag was that much of an issue - as I really thought it would be.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 27, 2015)

pmountford @ Wed May 27 said:


> My first impressions were that the colours are quite washed out compared to my 27" LED's and that there is definitely a noticeable lag when moving the mouse/windows around (I've not updated the firmware - so thanks for that suggestion). BUT for me at the moment you'd really have to fight to take it off me - the 4k deskspace at the same pixel density as my other monitors outweighs the lag and any colour issues. TBH I am running this at 30hz so the simplest solution would be to buy a new graphics card with HDMI 2.0 if the lag was that much of an issue - as I really thought it would be.



I agree about the deskspace. Its difficult for the cons to outweigh it. Its nice to have Cubase all in 1 monitor (aside from video) but I'm still trying to adjust to opening things up in the 1 monitor. Its tempting to maximize everything rather than splitting the monitor into section for editors, mixers, etc.


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## pmountford (May 27, 2015)

@Gerhard - Yeah, I know what you mean about opening everything up maximized. Having said that for me it's the project area and maybe the mixer which benefit from the larger desktop size. Having a very similar pixel size means that I can line up the older 27" screens and not be too concerned about the mouse moving out of line when jumping between screens. So, for now, the mixer is maximized on a 27" and the project always in full view on the 4k.

Sorry to go off topic, but looking at your studio, can you give anymore specifics about how well your Android running PC and touchscreen work? I'm using Lemur on iPad and then same deskspace problem exists there - too many tab presses to get to where I need. So that much larger touchscreen looks very tempting. Any gotchas or specifics about touchscreen choice? Resolution? Response? How does your Android emulating PC slave talk to your master? Thanks.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 27, 2015)

pmountford @ Wed May 27 said:


> @Gerhard - Yeah, I know what you mean about opening everything up maximized. Having said that for me it's the project area and maybe the mixer which benefit from the larger desktop size. Having a very similar pixel size means that I can line up the older 27" screens and not be too concerned about the mouse moving out of line when jumping between screens. So, for now, the mixer is maximized on a 27" and the project always in full view on the 4k.
> 
> Sorry to go off topic, but looking at your studio, can you give anymore specifics about how well your Android running PC and touchscreen work? I'm using Lemur on iPad and then same deskspace problem exists there - too many tab presses to get to where I need. So that much larger touchscreen looks very tempting. Any gotchas or specifics about touchscreen choice? Resolution? Response? How does your Android emulating PC slave talk to your master? Thanks.



If you scroll up you'll see that I addressed the touchscreen in a reply on this thread. Perhaps I should create a thread about it? Everyone always asks about it when they see it. Smithson Martin should get some more promotion since it seems that no one here knows that the program exists.


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## pmountford (May 27, 2015)

Sorry, I did read your comments re touchscreen but I misunderstood. I thought Emulator Pro was an Android emulator! My bad. I think I was watching JunkieXL's video and noticing the Lemur icon on his screen and his touchscreen put 2 & 2 together - wrongly. But now you've mentioned smithsonmartin I understand a little more.

If you do feel the urge to tell us more about he touchscreen though please feel free to do so - I'm all ears! 8)


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## studioj (Sep 23, 2015)

charlieclouser said:


> I got a Samsung 32" 4k monitor (not TV) for my new Mac Pro cylinder - and it's freaking fantastic. I don't have any control surfaces, mixers, or other stuff between me and the display - just the music keyboard and Mac keyboard - so I have the display pretty close to me, and I actually like the teeny-tiny text.
> 
> I did try out a 27" 4k display and on that one the text WAS too small - but a 32" is about right as long as you can have it fairly near. Of course, you can use the "scaled" mode in Sys Prefs to enlarge stuff on the screen a bit if it's too tiny, but where's the fun in that?
> 
> On either side I have 32" 2560 x 1440 monitors and now that I'm accustomed to the 4k, when I drag a window over to the side monitors things look positively HUGE and primitive by comparison. But it is handy to have the ability to move plugins or mixer windows off to the "chunky-vision" displays so things are easier to see when they're farther away and off to the sides.



Hi Charlie-
I picked up the same samsung 4k as you ... the U32D970q to use with my cylinder mac pro. I'm having some mouse lag and ghosting issues at higher resolutions however... are you seeing this? There seems to be some noise about this and other issues:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6080897?start=120&tstart=0

But the solutions are not really working for me yet anyway. Anyway just curious if you ran into this and if you had any thoughts about it. Thanks!


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## rpaillot (Sep 23, 2015)

Just one thing about the "scaled mode" of OSX Charlieclouser is talking about.
This mode is nice.But it uses a lot of CPU and the graphics are slower and sluggish.
As it does some resolution resizing in real-time, it makes everything much slower.


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## studioj (Sep 23, 2015)

Interestingly I'm getting perfect performance on the lower scaled modes like 2560x1440 with the samsung. But it doesn't look great compared to my old Dell 30". I'd like to use either the native resolution 4k or perhaps one level scaled below that but both are a bit laggy with the mouse and window movement. Its subtle but its there. I'm fiddling with a preference app called "SwitchResX" that gives more flexibility in choosing resolutions but I haven't been able to solve the issue yet. It sounds like it might have something to do with not being able to run the monitor at 60 hz at higher resolutions. But some have been able to force 50 and up for some benefit. I'm also still on Mavericks 10.9.5 which might be an issue.


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## charlieclouser (Sep 23, 2015)

I'm having none of those ghosting or slowdown issues with my samsung 4k on the mac pro cylinder - but I went for the fully bricked-out 12-core model with the top-of-the-line d700 graphics card - maybe that has something to do with me not having issues? I'm also running another samsung 2560x1440 32" display off to the right, as well as two BlackMagic MultiDocks, a UAD2-Octo Satellite Thunderbolt, and the MOTU AVB 112d+1248 interfaces all hanging off the Thunderbolt ports, and no issues yet. I think the 2560 display and the UAD are sharing a TB bus, while the 4k has one bus all to itself, and the MultiDocks and audio interfaces are sharing a bus. Scary how much stuff I've got hanging off those tiny little cables, but so far so good... and this rig is stupid fast. Logic's cpu meter is barely registering anything.


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## studioj (Sep 23, 2015)

charlieclouser said:


> I'm having none of those ghosting or slowdown issues with my samsung 4k on the mac pro cylinder - but I went for the fully bricked-out 12-core model with the top-of-the-line d700 graphics card - maybe that has something to do with me not having issues?



Thanks for the info Charlie. I have the 6 core... could be it... or I also just realized I am converting the displayport from the mac to DVI to the monitor and that is a difference. I've just ordered the displayport cable plus adapter. Maybe that will improve things. Are you on Mavericks or Yosemite?


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## samphony (Sep 23, 2015)

studioj said:


> Thanks for the info Charlie. I have the 6 core... could be it... or I also just realized I am converting the displayport from the mac to DVI to the monitor and that is a difference. I've just ordered the displayport cable plus adapter. Maybe that will improve things. Are you on Mavericks or Yosemite?


I have no ghosting either. I using the 6core model with a similar setup to Charlie but my 4k is a 40" crossover with 60hz refresh rate.


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## charlieclouser (Sep 23, 2015)

I have had bad luck with the new Samsung 2560x1440 and DVI-Dual Link. That's how I connected my older HP LP3065 2560x1600 monitors to the silver Mac Pro towers, using 30-foot DVI-D cables from Gefen that were $300 each and as thick as a garden hose. That setup worked perfectly on the silver towers. I swapped out the HP monitors for the new Samsungs, and since the non-4k Samsungs have a DVI-D input, I figured I'd plug in the fat DVI-D cable coming from the silver tower into the new Samsung 2560x1440 while I copied files over etc. On this setup (new Samsung 2560x1440 32" connected to old silver tower with fat Gefen DVI-D cable) the Samsung would flash off and back on again every minute or so. No issues with this same monitor connected to the cylinder with a mini-displayport to display port cable.

Also, I thought a DVI cable could not support the full 4k resolution, and my 4k monitor does NOT have DVI inputs, only HDMI and DisplayPort, so how are you connecting a cylinder and a 4k using a DVI and adaptor? That shouldn't be possible. The 2560x1440 Samsungs DO have DVI-D inputs, but when I connect that monitor to the silver tower via DVI-D I get dropouts.

My 4k monitor is connected to the cylinder with a minidisplayport - to - display port cable. No issues at $15.

I am on Yosemite on the cylinders, 10.10.4.


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## G.R. Baumann (Sep 25, 2015)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> How many DPI does it have? The 30" Cinema Display has about 101, and that's pretty much normal for a computer display. Pixel density is the important spec for comparison, not so much screen size when you're talking about TV monitors on a computer.
> 
> I sit maybe 2-1/2' back, and that's comfortable for me (I have good vision - no reading glasses).



A 40" 3840 × 2160 TV has a pixel density of 110 dpi, that is roughly the equivalent of a 27" with 2560 × 1440 pixel.


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## studioj (Oct 2, 2015)

charlieclouser said:


> Also, I thought a DVI cable could not support the full 4k resolution, and my 4k monitor does NOT have DVI inputs, only HDMI and DisplayPort, so how are you connecting a cylinder and a 4k using a DVI and adaptor? That shouldn't be possible. The 2560x1440 Samsungs DO have DVI-D inputs, but when I connect that monitor to the silver tower via DVI-D I get dropouts.
> 
> My 4k monitor is connected to the cylinder with a minidisplayport - to - display port cable. No issues at $15.
> 
> I am on Yosemite on the cylinders, 10.10.4.



So its working fine now... I learned a few things. 

Yes it seems DVI does not support 60 hz refresh at 4k... it only runs at 30 hz hence the ghosting and lag. Connected with DisplayPort and adapter now and all seems good. BUT

Evidently there is a flaw in the AMD video drivers in Mavericks on this cylinder where it doesn't reach the full 60 hz. So I needed to use a tool called Switch ResX to drop refresh down slightly to 57 hz to avoid a weird tearing anomaly on the right of the screen. 

So this monitor definitely has a single DVI port... you have the U32D970q right? That is what I read in one of your gearslutz posts I believe. 

I may have spoken too soon... as I write this post, I am noticing a subtle tearing down the middle of the screen where it is distorting slightly... hmmph. Yosemite might be my only hope. :-/


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## charlieclouser (Oct 2, 2015)

Well I'll be darned - my 4k monitor DOES have a DVI input. I just never even looked at it since I knew I'd only be using it with a cylinder and TB / DisplayPort / MiniDisplayPort.


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## Jason_D (Nov 17, 2015)

I am about to buy this monitor:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-AMH-A409U-UHD-40-3840X2160-16-9-4K-LED-Monitor-60Hz-DP1-2-HDMI2-0-Remote-/321856997207?hash=item4af02c0757:g:IOUAAOSwFnFV7oOG

The only drawback is quality control. You may end up having a dead pixel here or there.

The reason for slow mouse movements could be running the monitor at less than 60hz and/or input lag.

If you spend a few hundred bucks more you can get this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/WASABI-MANGO-UHD420-REAL-4K-HDMI-2-0-SE-42-LG-AH-IPS-UHD-3840x2160-DP-Monitor-/121703310409?hash=item1c56152449:g:DX4AAOSw3xJVf7fp

I would only use Displayport 1.2 on these types of monitors to get 4K, 4:4:4 color at 60hz. HDMI 2.0 can get weird when you run at this setting.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Nov 18, 2015)

In case anyone is interested - I ended up replacing my 4k TV with the Philips 40" 4k monitor which was on sale (only $600! sold the LG to my brother for a good price so it wasn't and expensive upgrade) in order to reduce latency. The latency is considerably less although slightly more than my other monitors (might be from it being only 30Hz). For some reason I can't get it to do 60Hz (over displayport) but I think it has something to do with my graphics card perhaps having an older DP.

One thing that I really like about it is that you can have multiple inputs showing (up to 4) so my mac mini (which only supports 1080 over HDMI) can be in a smaller window on the monitor instead of being 40" of 1080 which is impossible to use at this distance. Also has a 4 port USB 3 hub on it so now the things on my desk connect to it instead of having 4 long USB cables. 

The only drawback is that you can't put the monitor on standby. If you flip the switch on it (completely cuts off power), the computers disconnect and then it messes up all of the windows. The only way to have it turn off is to have the computer itself turn off the display. But of course all computers connected to it have to do that or else it just auto selects another input.


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## Mystic (Nov 18, 2015)

The other day I bit the bullet and bought a Vizio 49" UHD TV to use in the studio. It has very low input latency and the only issue with it is as a monitor is that it doesn't support chroma 4:4:4, opting to use 4:2:2. As a studio monitor, this doesn't matter as much as if I was using it for other kinds of media. Got to test it out the other day and it worked perfectly. Got it from Sam's Club for $528.

5 HDMI inputs, one running 4K @ 60hz which I like. Wish it had other kinds of inputs like displayport on it but it'll do the job.

http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/vizio/m-series-2015


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