Leon Yiu

I've recently just purchased a full 8 bit IPS panel which is the NEC EA234WMi. The colour rendition, gamma and viewing angles are great but contrast is appalling. It is better than the tn screens on my laptop of course, when I walk into a showroom in curry's, despite the heavy lighting, in what should be a black part of the screen the laptop screens still show a lot of light, the 23inch ah-ips panels from hp and aoc look gray but to a lesser extent. You mentioned a contrast ratio of 10m:1 in your review, but that is a dynamic ratio achieved by dimming the backlight when the screen should be black, and has no effect whatsoever, most ips panels are rated at 1000:1. My Ips panel also has ips glow especially at the corners which is really frustrating when watching in the dark, especially a cinemascope movie. I wonder why va panels aren't more popular for computer monitors, they have deeper black levels around 3000:1. Tv's have much better black levels than computer monitors since they tend to use va panels and have local dimming whether it's edge lit or the rarer fald. Having seen LG's new 4k OLED however, it's ruined everything for me, every other tv looks appalling, computer monitors a million times worse. If LG can create a 55inch Oled tv and Samsung a 10inch tablet screen, surely someone must be able to make a 21" computer monitor, or a laptop screen, I don't think burn-in is as much of an issue anymore, and computer monitors can be fixed more easily than laptop screens. It's probably not going to happen anytime soon as unlike a tv which can still be possible, most people use laptops rather than desktops so the market for computer monitors is poor. It makes me think whats the point in earning the money I have if I cannot spend it on a monitor with good black levels? My Ips monitor which probably has the same contrast as yours looks dull next to my tv.

The Samsung 40hu6900 is not much more expensive, you get a proper 40 inch tv with an hevc decoder for Netflix/amazon in 4k, a tv tuner, and a va panel which is far superior to the tn panel. Of course biggest downside is size, it's not a monitor but a tv.

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/26-home-theater-computers/1477339-so-you-ve-built-your-htpc-now-what-next-how-get-ultimate-picture-sound-quality-your-htpc-madvr-svp-xbmc-mediabrowser-jriver.html For those worried about the effects of scaling when watching less than 2160p footage If you use windows there is a high quality video renderer available called madvr for mpc-hc which bypasses your graphic cards destructive upscaling algorithms for more advanced but computationally intensive ones which are of much better results. For those of you using intel integrated graphics, they have dedicated hardware scalers, while there are better algorithms, they do a decent job, for those using NVidia or AMD which I expect to be the majority here, they use bilinear, a crude but cheap form of scaling that results in a blurred pixelated image with loss of detail. Have a look at the above link

Hello I was wondering about your thoughts on whether its best to film in 60p or 50p for those in 50hz countries. In the Pal/ntsc days with the tradeoff from the 60i ntsc standard being 480 lines over 576 lines in Pal the increased frame rate came at a cost.   Now however Hdtv resolutions are standardised. There is a push for 50/60p frame rates for uhd video, however in 50hz countries that'll mean 10 fewer frames per second and in future with 120fps/100fps that'll be a difference of 20 fps which is significant.   There were several issues with filming at a framerate different from the electricity supply, however many of these issues are now non-existent, most flat panels sold now can happily except 50/60i and fluorescent lights have ballasts which up the frequency to several megahertz to prevent flicker. For broadcast of a 2160p/60 to a hd 1080i/50 channel, every sixth frame can be dropped and interlaced for hd broadcast.   Wouldn't it be better to have a standardised frame rate throughout the whole world rather than multiples of legacy frame rates otherwise here in europe we'll be watching fewer fps than in the u.s and japan.

Has anyone had any luck with finding a compact flash to sata adapter for recording to an ssd? Its disappointing to hear the usb slot is only usb 2. If somehow ssd recording were to be made possible would 3840x2160/23.97 be made possible?

I'll watch it tomorrow on the 15inch mbp retina display

[quote name='sanveer' timestamp='1351843608' post='20853'] Could you post urls for the 4k videos on Youtube. I thought Youtube downsized all those videos to 2k. [/quote] Yeah of course, I don't know where people get the 2k figure from, I downloaded the videos and had a look at the statistics on vlc, the bit rates are roughly 35mbps and the resolution is 3120 x 2160, it varies but around that number so not quite 4k, more like 3k and the videos are heavily compressed. On the 15 inch macbook pro retina the panels res in 16:9 is 2880 x 1620 so thats less than the resolution of the video, it works out as 4.6 megapixels, considerably more than the 2560 x 1440 on the 27inch imac dell xps 27 which yours truly has and the 13inch macbook pro retina. Its effort to list all the videos but heres a few of my favourties and some channels whcih contain 4k videos by producers owning red cameras. I'd highly recommed visiting your nearest apple store and watching them in original on the 15in mbp retina. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-b2DLD-nNY&list=PLED392D682E559193&index=5&feature=plpp_video"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-b2DLD-nNY&list=PLED392D682E559193&index=5&feature=plpp_video[/url] [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnM0E81P8UE&list=PLED392D682E559193&index=6&feature=plpp_video"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnM0E81P8UE&list=PLED392D682E559193&index=6&feature=plpp_video[/url] (hosted by yours truly) [url="http://www.youtube.com/user/hd4tv"]http://www.youtube.com/user/hd4tv[/url] (only the newest are 4k) [url="http://www.youtube.com/user/jacobschwarz/videos?view=0"]http://www.youtube.com/user/jacobschwarz/videos?view=0[/url] (these are my fav to watch in 4k, I had people stop looking over my screen in the apple store and telling me they have never seen such good quality video) [url="http://www.youtube.com/user/VOXLIBERTUM"]http://www.youtube.com/user/VOXLIBERTUM[/url] (some of these do contain compression artifacts at times but still amazing quality) [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUSwBpW6we8&list=PLED392D682E559193&index=33&feature=plpp_video"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUSwBpW6we8&list=PLED392D682E559193&index=33&feature=plpp_video[/url] (unfortunately this one is heavily compressed even in original but still stunning on the mbp retina, although you may too a bit pervy watching it in the apple store) Compared to watching the same video in harrods on the sony 84inch 4k tv, the picture is more detailed, but not that much more so, much bigger, and less crisper, but the difference in res between this and macbook pro retina isn't day and night. By now I sound like a salesman for the 15inch mbp retina, the 4k videos don't play back smoothly on the 13inch unforutnately. Seeing the detail on the 15inch though which to meet looks lifelike even with the heavy overhead lighting in the apple stores and small size of the screen and lack of depth and seamlessness of reality leads me to believe that the skyfall movie was not shown in 4k but rather upscaled 2k. If anyone else goes to watch skyfall in a sony 4k cinema, you could provide a second opinion. I could go see the movie again on wednesday at the odeon imax in greenwich but I still remember what I saw, and in the age of smartphones, sitting through over 2 hours gets boring

[quote name='Axel' timestamp='1351835050' post='20849'] Upscaling? You are talking about the Alexa upscaled to 4k? Yeah, in arriraw in 4:3 the resolution is 2880 x 2160, if the movie was mastered and distributed at a lower resolution it'd appear soft when upscaled to 4k You mix up things. That a scope image is narrower than a widescreen image is due to the sound system of modern surround. The loudspeakers need to have the same distances. A DLP image needs no mask, it's borders are sharp. If the borders are not deep black, it's because the screen reflects the ambient light of the room (EXIT-signs asf.). The cinema could have installed a black velvet cache to get rid of it. And anamorphotic projection is a for analog cinema, a DLP projects square pixels. I didn't mix things up, on many cinemas, a scope picture becomes wider with little or no loss in height, when you get close to the cinema screen you can see the screen is perforated to allow the sound to come through, the speakers are behind the screen. The projectors are Lcos (liquid crystal on silicon) not dlp. Anamorphic lenses can be used to digital cinema too. This is like judging and comparing 720p and 1080p in the default 640p window of youtube. Really not possible. How is this like judging and comparing 1080p on a small youtube window? both the cinema and sony tv's have 4k resolution, its like judging a 1080p video on a 42 inch tv and the former 17 inch macbook pro. Wiki says: [b]"Retina Display[/b] is a brand name used by [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc."]Apple[/url] for [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_displays"]liquid crystal displays[/url] which they claim to have a high enough [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_density"]pixel density[/url] that the human eye is unable to notice pixelation at a typical viewing distance." Resolution is ONLY about size. With a retina display, you will learn instinctively to move the display closer to your eyes. [/quote] Resolution is not only about size, you can have massive screens with very low resolutions like advertising boards, or very small screens wiith very high resolutions, resolution is independent of screen size although it is harder to squeeze a higher resolution in a small screen

I'd like to chip in my two cents. On wednesday night I went to see skyfall at the vue in westfield stratford city where the sony 4k projection system is constantly advertised. The picture appeared particularly soft, possibly as a result of upscaling, another thing about the song 4k projectors is that the frame is cropped rather than the use of an anamorphic lens and masking, I found the black bars on the top and bottom distracting even if black levels in the sony projectors are better than other digital cinemas and film. Before seeing skyfall I was watching 4k videos from youtube on the 15inch macbook pro with retina display, obviously this is comparing apples to oranges, the cinema picture is way larger and lcds pixel structure is crisper. The sound however was incredibly impressive, best I've ever heard, sounds realistic albeit directional. Today I went to Harrods to have a look at the 84inch sony 4k tv as a frame of reference, it was like 4 42inch 1080p tvs together resolution wise, I felt the detail was better than in the cinema yesterday, but once again the screen was much bigger, and I've failed to mention until now I was on the second from last row.

It is way too difficult, but I am getting impatient with the big corporations who are not giving consumers what they want. I am also convinced that its possible to make a way better camera than whats being sold. That sony 1/1.7 inch sensor looks really nice, it'd be nice if there was a standardized connector where you could stick it to a processor or an android computer and use apps with customizable recording settings such as frame rates and bit-rates. Then we could use a more powerful graphics card if we wanted. I've recently seen a lot of action cam manufacturers pop out of nowhere, I wonder what kind of engineering talent or software coding people they have. I guess you can't just stack many graphics card together in parallel like you can a battery or electronics components, I think for the jvc 4k cam, you record a quarter of the image on each sd card. Considering you can get cameras which do 1080p for £100 I can't imagine the processors they use costing that much, I think on ifixit, the iphone camera sensor was something like $28 but obviously we want to be using something better. Its a shame electronics are mostly made by large corporations rather than hobbyists, but I am hopeful that the manufacturing process will increasingly become decentralised and this is something that can happen sooner rather than later. On my satellite at home cnn is 4:3 sd, but on youtube I can see cnn clips in 1080i hd and it streams fine, bbc news isn't even shown in hd, I don't understand why it costs them so much when on youtube people with their phones can make higher quality recordings than what you see on the news. I read that the usual 15inch macbook screen costs $64 whereas the retina screen costs $164. If a monitor were to be made from that screen they'd probably charge 5 times that.

After reading the news about Omnivisions forecasted high revenues, I decided to go on their website to have a look at what sensors are available. On looking at the specifications, some of the sensors were capable of an output of 4k at 30fps and some did their full resolution i.e 14mp at 24fps. Obviously these are small sensors, some as 1/4inch the larger ones are 1/2.5 inch. Secondly I highly doubt a company like Omnivision or Sony would be willing to see their sensors even in bulk to a private individual. I've seen the Raspberry Pi mini computer receiving high reviews, I can't remember whether it can encode 1080p video well, just decode, say if it were possible to obtain a sensor from omnivion with a fixed lens attached, and we were able to use several raspberry pis to encode the video how difficult would it be to create our own cameras to our desired speicifications?