[GTALUG] 40" 4k Philips Monitor for $699.95 at BestBuy, Jun. 8 and 9 only

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: CLIFFORD ILKAY <clifford_ilkay at dinamis.com>

Thanks for the great rundown on you experiences.  Very valuable.

The price is really attractive compared with many of the other UltraHD
choices.  It is a little older model (2014?) so there are some things
that newer monitors have or will be arriving soon.  I look forward to:

- HDMI 2.0 (much better for UltraHD than HDMI)

- (maybe) DisplayPort revisions (I don't have the version numbers in
  my head)

- High Dynamic Range (10 bits per "colour" per pixel)

- (perhaps) I forget the name, but both nvidia and AMD are pushing
  new methods of screen updating that use less bandwidth or are not
  locked to 60Hz.  I even forget the marketing names and don't really
  know the technology.

As you have mentioned elsewhere, I have had a cheaper and nastier
UltraHD TV set as a monitor for a couple of years.  I've been really happy.

- the 30Hz refresh is much less of a problem than I had feared.  (For
  my eyes and my tasks.)  I don't watch videos often (some youtube talks)
  and 30Hz is the norm for video anyway.  I don't game.  The only thing
  that I notice is that mouse tracking looks a little cruder.

- I don't actually know the LCD technology of my monitor, but it
  performs better than TN.  In particular colours and brightness don't
  suffer horribly when the screen is viewed from an angle.  That's
  important for a monitor that is going to occupy such a large field of view.

- TV sets (but I hope not monitors) take shortcuts to conserve
  bandwidth.  My TV uses 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, normal for TV
  and normal for many HDMI.  This means that luminance can change
  every pixel but chrominance can only change every two pixels.
  This has almost no effect on videos but can have nasty effects
  on computer desktops.  Interestingly, this has only been noticeable
  on text in funny colours on funny backgrounds.  I guess foreground
  and background are normally distinguished by luminance.  Test
  patterns can show the difference.

- HDMI 2 (which I don't have) can get you up to UltraHD at 60Hz, but
  there are still potential issues.  Beware chroma subsampling.  They
  really don't spell this out in TV set specifications (some TVs even
  do 4:2:0 subsampling which is worse).

- TV sets don't do DisplayPort.  DisplayPort seems to me to be better
  than HDMI.

- TV sets have multiple HDMI inputs (nice for my use cases) but
  monitors usually only have one DP input

  I would like a KVM switch so that I can use multiple computers with
  one set of Keyboard, Video display, and Mouse.  Anything more modern
  than VGA is hopelessly expensive.  Second-best is multiple video
  inputs and a pile of keyboards and mice.

My TV is a stopgap.  I will replace it when a new monitor is enough
of an improvement.  If I didn't have it, the Philips monitor would be
a very attractive choice.  Again, it is at a price that one could
consider buying now and upgrading in a couple of years.

I drive my TV with an MSI GeForce GTX650.  I have it hooked up to a
DVI port, through a DVI-to-HDMI dongle.  I don't remember why it
didn't work when hooked to the video card's HDMI port.  And it only
works on one of the two DVI ports, if I remember correctly.  Oh, and I do 
get sound through HDMI even though that isn't part of the DVI spec.

Nouveau won't drive my monitor.  I try every few months.  So I use the
proprietary nvidia driver.

My computer came with an AMD card.  Unfortunately, the card is a
special version created for HP that cannot do better than 1920x1200 so
I shelved it.  I have no experience with an AMD card driving this monitor.

My Kangaroo (little Cherrytrail Atom system) running Windows 10 can
drive the monitor at 3840x2160 at 30Hz.  But it isn't very fast.  I forget what
other things have managed.  Not the Raspberry Pi.