decent mega-monitor?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 04:47:07PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> What I want is the mass market to supply the things I want.  I've been
> really disappointed in the lack of price movement, takeup and
> improvement of 30" 2560x1600 monitors.  I've had mine for 7.5 years
> (almost 4 cycles of Moore's law).
> 
> Analogy: I bought a couple of Sun workstations (sequentially) but
> eventually the PC got good enough and I saved a bundle and had a lot
> of choices.  Of course the PCs were not made to the mechanical
> standards or sanity of Suns, but they sure were good enough.
> 
> I keep expecting higher resolution to become mas market.  The glimmers
> of hope are:
> 
> - Apple "retina" displays
> 
> - tablets and cell phones in resolution wars
> 
> - "4k" TV around the corner.
> 
> This 39" Seiki is almost good enough (on paper).  And a very nice
> price considering that there is no competition to speak of.
> 
> I don't know what a dual-dual-link DVI KVM is.  Does it switch pairs
> of DVI connections, each of which is dual-link?  I assume "quad"
> means that four different computer systems are connected to the
> switch, exactly one of which is actually connected to the keyboard,
> video, and mouse (+USB probably).

Sounds like a two monitor dual link KVM switch, which would allow driving
two 30" monster screens at 2560x1600 resolution and switch them between
four machines.  Dual link DVI should be able to drive a 4k display at
30Hz, but of course no TV comes with dual link DVI ports, and none have
dual link HDMI-B either (it seems nothing has HDMI-B dual link ports).
Too bad TVs don't seem to have displayport on them to allow good use
with computers.  HDMI 2.0 will solve the problem of course by doubling
the bandwidth of HDMI 1.4 and hence allowing 60 Hz 4k displays (3D will
have to do 30Hz or half resolution of course, but that seems to be what
they have often been doing anyhow so far).

> I think that it would work, but I don't know.  DVI and single-link
> HDMI are or were essentially the same: a cable with two appropriate
> connectors are all you need for conversion, I think.  At 30 Hz, HDMI
> *can* drive this monitor, but I'm not sure that that's within specs
> for single-link DVI.

It isn't.  Single Link (which HDMI is) DVI only supports the original
HDMI signal speed, not the new high speed modes that were added in
later versions of the HDMI standard (which the 4k uses to even get
30Hz refresh).

> HDMI switches can be quite inexpensive ($20?) but they are made for
> video and don't have any keyboard capability.
> 
> Are you visiting the US soon?  With a car? :-)
> 
> I hope that 6 months or a year of patience might be rewarded with
> something like this with a higher-bandwidth input.  $700 is hard to
> resist.  The price seems to have crept down: maybe that means that
> something new is about to replace it.

Well things seem to get cheaper.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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