FEATURED Seiki Digital SE50UY04 50-Inch 4K UHD 120Hz LED HDTV
- 4K2K Resolution 4 times 1080p
- Upscale HD to 4K
- One year replacement policy
Hi-Def Times Four Remember how excited you were the first time you saw HD? Multiply that by four and you’ll understand 4K Ultra HD from Seiki. With over 8 million individual pixels (3840 x 2160) compared to about 2 million (1920 x 1080) on your current HDTV, the picture provides stunning clarity and colors that far surpass anything you’ve seen before. Put simply, you have to see it to believe it. Plays Well with Others With Ultra HD, you’ll be able to enjoy your favorite shows and movies in the best resolution possible–whether it’s SD or HD, DVD or Blu-Ray. And as more and more 4K content becomes available in the near future, you’ll be one of the first to see it in its full Ultra HD glory. Awesome TV–Amazing Monitor The most affordable, highest resolution screen on the market brings new possibilities to the table–not to mention your computer desk. The same promise of detail and clarity that Seiki Ultra HD brings to your favor
Comments
3 comments
Wayne “Omegafiler”
April 16, 2014
Far from perfect, but still a great value for a 4K UHD TV,
The Seiki 4K TV’s are relatively new and have recently made some headlines with being one of the first manufacturers to build a 4K TV for a fraction of the price of the competition. There are many questions that I have such as what, if any, sacrifices were made to get such a low price, how does it work as a PC monitor, gaming possibilities, blu-ray, low-def content, etc. So let’s jump in and see how it does!
DESIGN & INPUTS:
First thing to note is how the TV is being used. It’s in a medium sized Media/Game room that measures about 14′ x 13′, give or take a few inches. There are 2 windows with blackout curtains. And I’m normally sitting anywhere from 4 ft (at my desk) to 11 ft (couch) away. This room has a couple of computers, so it’s used as an office / game & media room (aka “man cave”).
The TV is only about 2″ deep and has thin ¾” border around the screen. However, there is a larger “base” at the bottom where the included stand mounts. This protrudes towards the back another 1″. It also only weighs about 50lbs.
The TV is currently sitting on a mobile TV cart with it’s included stand so I can roll it around as I compare it to my Toshiba 50L2200U 50-Inch 60Hz LED-LCD HDTV that is mounted on the wall. I wanted time to review before making a commitment to replace the already pretty darn awesome Toshiba. 🙂 It’s only about a foot lower and is using the same sources. The stand is a bit wobbly if you bump it, but I shouldn’t need it for long.
There is also a 2″ wide LED “bar” on the front of the TV that changes from blue (on) to red (off). Even though it’s larger than necessary and can’t be turned off, it’s dim enough so I never even notice it when I’m watching TV, even at night. The buttons are on the right side towards the outer edge, facing back. If you mount on a wall, you’ll need to feel around for the buttons if you can’t find the remote.
You can check out the specs to see what inputs it has. The main inputs I’m focusing on are the 2 downward facing HDMI inputs and 1 side HDMI input. It lacks Optical Out, but does have Coaxial Out (RCA type of cable for S/PDIF). Just a note as some may want to have a way to route high quality audio to an external source. In particular, if you don’t have a 4K compatible receiver (more on that later). Otherwise it has all of the other inputs and outputs most folks are looking for.
PICTURE QUALITY:
So how does it look? After its calibrated, most content looks excellent. As with most TV’s the default profiles leave much to be desired. My sources are OTA (Over-The-Air) HDTV, Blu-Ray, DVD, a Media Center PC, and a gaming PC. I don’t currently have cable or satellite. There have been some mixed results though.
As with all high resolution displays, lower res content will suffer a bit without up-conversion. This is exaggerated even more when you are up-scaling from “normal HD” (720/1080p) up to Ultra HD (4K2K or 3840×2160). As with virtually all high def TV’s this is already done for you, on some level. Although the quality of that will most certainly vary depending on the TV (or external scaler) involved and source material. There are considerably more pixels that have to be filled in on a 4K TV so the quality can vary.
I’m going to have separate sections for the various sources as there was quite a bit to cover. So I’m focusing on overall picture quality of the TV itself. And well, overall, it looks very nice; once calibrated of course (see section below). This is very important. Out of the box this TV had one of the worse picture quality I’ve seen in quite a while, almost entirely due to Noise Reduction being turned on by default for every input.
The TV does have local dimming where it tries to improve overall contrast ratio by limiting the back-light to only what needs light. You’re really only going to notice this on a specific scenes where there isn’t much content on the screen. Such as a small opening logo on the screen. It does a good job of limited this so it’s not annoying. For example, the first fight scene in Star Wars III is a good test, as it’s entirely filmed in space. Black levels looks great, no obvious signs of local dimming, colors were vibrant, no blurring, etc. It’s also more than bright enough for daytime viewing with minimal glare. I even had to turn down the brightness at night time.
Side viewing angles are pretty darn good. If you want to get picky, the magenta test pattern does indicate a slight red tint when viewing off angle. In my case, that’s standing about 8 ft back, and moving to the sides at least 4-5 ft off center. However, when watching “normal” content at this distance, there was no obvious change in picture quality or tint. When sitting off center at my desk, 4 ft…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|Clint Baxley “Truth Love Joy”
April 16, 2014
Total breakthrough for linux programmers.,
So I spent all day working with different modelines to try to manually get the resolutin right. The monitor was impressive and would display all kinds of modes between 1920×1080 and 3840×2160. BUT. They were all kind of blurry and would not have worked to program all day on.
Well after about 4 hours of working with random timings and resolutions I thought I would try xrandr with the 3840×2160 modes untill I found one that very closely matched an hsync of 30. I found the closest line that I could get to 30hz was:
root@dv7# cvt 3840 2160 13.8
# 3840×2160 13.79 Hz (CVT) hsync: 30.05 kHz; pclk: 144.25 MHz
Modeline “3840x2160_13.80” 144.25 3840 3944 4320 4800 2160 2163 2168 2180 -hsync +vsync
I guess you could find something closer but that was close enough. So I ran:
xrandr –newmode “3840x2160_13.80” 144.25 3840 3944 4320 4800 2160 2163 2168 2180 -hsync +vsync
xrandr –addmode HDMI1 “3840x2160_13.80”
Those make it so you can select it in the Displays or monitors section depending on your distribution (make sure you have the right HDMI port by running xrandr without any arguments).
If you don’t know where the monitors section is you can run (leave off the quotes):
xrandr –output HDMI1 –mode 3840x2160_13.80
Anyway after I ran that and the monitor came back from being black… BAM! Super high definition and huge display! I was so happy I cried a little. Not a pixel is bad and text is so sharp it is like sitting in front of 4 monitors!
I cannot think of anything I have ever bought that deserved all 5 stars any more than this product.
My monitor prayers have been answered.
You can feel safe with the purchase. (I purchased it from Amazon fulfillment)
This has made my year.
0
Was this review helpful to you?
|Trevor L “God is on the side of the army with…
April 16, 2014
Pioneering 4K TV (+ Firmware Upgrade Steps),
Being first is difficult, especially when it comes to technology. The Seiki Digital SE50UY04 is the first reasonably priced 4K TV. “4k” is the new buzzword for LCD TV technology and the easiest way to understand what 4K means is that there 4 times as many pixels than HDTV/1080i. 4K means the LCD supports a resolution of 3840×2160 pixels and it is also sometimes called QFHD or UltraHD.
Below I’ll outline the status of 4K technology but the summary description is that this TV is excellent but the price point may make it more suitable for console gamers, graphics designers, and “early adopters” who like to play with new technology. Two years from now 4K will come on most new TVs and media components but this is the first inexpensive 4K HDTV.
[Review] 10=Good, 1=Bad
Fit and Finish: 8
Picture Quality: 9
Sound quality: 7
Software: 7
Accessories: 6
Ease of Use: 7
Connections: 7
Warranty:7
What you are getting here is an excellent basic Ultra DH TV and monitor. The basic fit and finish is elegant and minimal. The base seems to be real glass. The bezel is so thin it fits in the same space in my entertainment my 42″ plasma was occupying. The TV has basic controls and adjustment but this isn’t a smart TV.
This TV isn’t perfect. That’s why this TV is meant for early adopters. Unless Seiki comes up with some special double-headed HDMI cable, specialized video card controller or firmware magic trick to feed in true 4K, we are probably stuck using it with unconverted content. The HDMI 1.4 plugs on this TV can’t handle true >30Hz 4K bandwidth. It would be nice if HDMI 2.0 was approved and incorporated into this tv. It would also be nice if Seiki had put a Displayport connection on this TV. But they didn’t. The remote isn’t that greatest either. Under the warranty you are responsible for packaging the shipping the TV back to them.
Unfortunately there isn’t much 4K content available. So why would you buy this? Right now if you have a new, high-power AMD/NVidia PC video card, with a little tweaking you can view beautiful 1080p games unconverted to 4K. But the real reason for most to buy a 4K LCD is because later this year the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 come out and they both support 4K upscaling. Don’t expect streaming 4K from Netflix or Amazon until 2014 or 2015. Youtube has 4K videos (youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5BF9E09ECEC8F88F) but they can be hard to identify. Over the next year you will start to see most major sporting events broadcast in 4K.
There are two technologies that need to be widely adopted for 4K to become common:
1) High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265) that will compress 4K video so that it only doubles the amount of data transmitted rather than quadrupling it as content goes from 1080p to 4K
2) HDMI 2.0 to support higher data bandwidth and frequency for full 60Hz 4K video.
Even if new Blu-Ray players and media streaming devices don’t broadcast true 4K they will still probably utilize more sophisticated 4K upconverting techniques that send better 4K signals to the TV. So what happens if your Blu-Ray Player, DVD Player, DVR, Direct TV Receiver or Cable Receiver doesn’t support 4K yet (probably)? The video stream is “upscaled” in the TV itself. In other words, a chip in the TV creates extra pixels to fill in the extra information. The result looks great but not as good as true 4K. The more the TV has to upscale, the poorer the results.
Here are two things you should remember:
1) If you buy a new Blu-ray player or home theater device make sure it supports at least a 4K upscaling.
2) CHECK/UPGRADE THE TV FIRMWARE RIGHT AWAY, DIRECTIONS BELOW. The upscaling software it comes with had a bug and they fixed it so upscaling works better.
[Tips]
When I set this up I located my Sony Blu-Ray player under the TV in the gap between the stand and monitor. I ran HDMI cables from my XBox 360, Blu-Ray and HTPC directly into the TV and then ran Coaxial Audio from the TV to my Home Theater Audio Receiver.
Set the sharpness filter to 0 if used as PC monitor
Not a 3D set, 3D content does supposedly display on the set as 1920 x 2205 at 24p (untested)
[GOOD]
[+] 4K = Awesome 3840×2160 resolution
[+] Thin Screen and Thin Bezel: 44.80″x26.66″x2.09″ (2 inches taller with stand)
[+] Light (43lbs w/o stand, 49lbs with stand)
[+] 1 Year Full Replacement Warranty (call 855-MY-SEIKI )
[+] 120Hz Refresh
[+] 3 HDMI Ports
[+] Inexpensive 4K
[+] 176 Degree Viewing angle
[+] Comes…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|Write a Reply or Comment: