Darr Valen wrote:2016 is the great year of UHD TVs. 2017 is the great year of UHD gaming, for those of us willing to pay, of course.
If you want to save cash, get a tv like mine. My JS9000 is fantastic, and has been on sale for $1100 so often it's a bit ridiculous. That's Samsung's flagship 2015 tv, and since the KS9000's are coming, the price is dropping. The KS9000 offers very little, if any, benefit over the JS9000. If you want a cheap UHD stopgap with 120Hz, and amazing picture.. well I heartily recommend it.
You say 120Hz, but is that the actual signal over the wire?
HDMI 2.0 is capable of both 4K@60Hz, and 1080p@120Hz. Unfortunately most ODMs don't do the latter, only the former, so 120Hz doesn't mean much without it. I'm trying to confirm the JS9000 does. I read the JS9500 does not.
Darr Valen wrote:DP1.2 IS fine, of course.. but DP1.4 is coming this year, and I might as well wait for it, since it's going to offer some serious long-term advantages, like 4k120, 8k60 (not that I'll be buying an 8k screen before 2020, of course.
But will the TV manufacturers actually support DP? That's been the problem. The consumer TV industry and the MPAA seem to be in cohorts over preferring HDMI over DP, even though DP can offer HDCP.
Beyond that, we're also talking video cards. nVidia and, even worse, Intel have been notorious for being well behind AMD on adoption of newer interfaces. That was just stupid. Too many ODMs trying to clear out old stock. I really get tired of Intel crippling progress, and we're seeing it yet again with the ultra-crap that is USB-C, when Apple actually designed Thunderbolt correct.
I.e., complete replay of FireWire (IEEE spec'd, including the cables/VRs not _blowing_ electronics), and USB utterly designed like a Chinese adapter you find at Family Dollar (forged UL Listing and all). Don't get me started.
DisplayPort is an EE's dream, and it took forever for both to get eDP notebooks. This should have happened 6+ years ago, but is only coming true in the last 18+ months, and still not on TVs. Beyond stupid.
Darr Valen wrote:WTF, I just used 2020 for the first time as a realistic, short term period of time. That's weird. Future, why you come so fast?
I played The Witcher 3 on my JS9000, and it looked pretty amazing. Framerate wasn't terribly great, since I'm on a launch GTX 780.
TL:DR, checkout LG or Samsung's 2015 models, OLED for LG, SUHD for Samsung. May is a great time to get 2015 tv's.
I basically regulated myself to considering either ...
- a 4K RGBW with its limitations, or
- getting a true 1080p@120Hz capable 4K@60Hz using HDMI 2.0
They are very few choices out there for the latter, so many for the former. I have absolutely no idea why the TV OEMs aren't supporting 1080p@120Hz. But then again, not many OEMs are ODMs, although you'd figure Samsung (being its own ODM) was better than most.
But more and more I'm reading how even the claimed 4-8ms G-to-G refresh rates don't equate to an end-to-end 16ms true response time required for 60Hz (much less 120Hz at 1080p), so I'm most likely going to wait any way as the in-TV logic is still pretty crappy. If they would have just gone DP from the get-go, a lot of this would have been removed. But they didn't, even though it's cheaper for them too. I guess they just want to use those old components, and most home consumers -- who buy >>90% of the units here in the US -- just don't know any better.
The life of an EE who understand how this works at the analog level (yes, it still very much analog down there).
Darr Valen wrote:Ah *Edit* just saw the shelving comment. Oh well, I think my recommendations stand. But I agree, wait for 2017. Remember though, TV's are Q1-Q2 for the good ones, and hardware is Q2-Q3. It's not always as such, but it's *usually* that way. Something to always keep in mind for planning upgrades.
I've yet to spend more than $400 on either monitor or TV in this decade. My Samsung 28" 4K@60Hz DP1.2 LCDs were $399 on a Black Friday special, and my LG 42" 3Dtv is pretty good for gaming, refresh-rate wise.
I just don't want to drop >>$1,000 to have limitations, or have to load alternative firmware.
Thanx for the input. It helps me to talk this out, and then have people confirming. I guess I was hoping for too much.