Seiki SE50UY04 50-Inch 4K Ultra HD 120Hz LED TV (Discontinued)

I'm a software engineer and screen real estate makes a big difference to my productivity. Some calculations say this 50" 4K monitor becomes a retina display when 39" inches or more away (88 PPI). This monitor is basically like four 24/25" 1080P monitors, with no bezel in the middle. I have been running a very nice 3.7 megapixel monitor ( ASUS PB278Q 27-Inch WQHD LED-lit PLS Professional Graphics Monitor ) about 30" away, and had to increase the scaling size in Window's to about 117%, this monitor at 39" inches away and 100% scaling is an excellent combination.Mine arrived yesterday, in perfect condition, and I must have said "Wow" about thirty times in the first hour. Even the delivery driver said wow when I flipped to 4K desktop resolution in Windows 7. He also said he delivered 4 of these that day. I used Photoshop full screen mode to put pure black/write/red/green/blue images across the whole monitor, and have yet to find a single dead or stuck pixel. I'm currently driving it with an under $100 AMD HD 7750 based video card ( Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 1GB DDR5 HDMI / DVI-I / DP PCI-Express Graphics Card 11202-00-20G ) and it seems to display 4K just fine, although sometimes get the sense a higher performance video card would be better. 4K video playback via Flash on Youtube seems a little less smooth that is ideal, 1080P seems fine. I have a single slot width Nvidia GeForce GT 640 ( EVGA GeForce GT 640 2048MB GDDR3 Dual DVI, mHDMI Graphics Cards 02G-P4-2645-KR ) which is supposed to drive 4K HDMI but have yet to try it. I also have a new Intel Core i7-4770S ( Intel Core i7-4770S Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.1 GHZ 8 MB Cache- BX80646I74770S ) on an Intel DH87RL motherboard ( Intel Boxed Desktop Board DH87MC Micro ATX DDR3 1600 LGA 1150 Motherboard BOXDH87RL ) which is supposed to support 4K HDMI with just the CPUs GPU, which I also have not yet tried.I was initially a little concerned about the smooth screen surface. It seemed more reflective than the Asus PB278Q monitor I was using, but so far, reflections have not been a problem. The room I have it in doesn't have a lot of bright objects to reflect. I personally prefer a very non-reflective screen, although many argue they are not as sharp.I am seeing some slightly strange behaviors from a few apps, like Photoshop CS6 seems to slow down for the first minute after being opened, and only refreshing tiles of an image unless you move the cursor around. After a little bit, if finishes "warming up" and seems happy. I don't remember it doing this on a smaller display. This is not a issue with the monitor, but might be a display driver or application issue. I see IE10 html5 video playback of 4K youtube video does not work either, you have to use Flash for 4K. Youtube 4K video also has a lot of compression artifacts, and think 4K streaming video may just not be viable (I have 55 mbps cable modem service).Initially I was seeing the monitor image drop out every few hours, requiring power off/on with the remote to fix. Updating the firmware seems to have solved this. I also turned down the backlight to about 70 while in the service menu, as the default 100 was too bright when sitting 3 feet away. Turning down the backlight also reduced the monitor power consumption to about 75 watts, from about 100 watts. When off, my UPS says power consumption is close to zero.The display settings I'm currently using are: Contrast 61, Brightness 46, Color 48, Sharpness 0 (important for computer monitor text sharpness) and Noise reduction to off.So far (only 24 hours of ownership) I have only found three things I wish were different.The display acts like a TV as far as power management goes. This means if your computer goes into sleep/screen saver, the monitor displays a message saying "no signal" for a few minutes and then turns totally off. Unlike a good computer monitor, it doesn't turn back on when the computer wakes back up, you have to manually press the power button on the remote. It looks like this TV does not support DPMS, the standard use to put computer monitors into standby mode and wake them back up. This might be fixable with a firmware update, and plan to contact Seiki technical support.The second thing is it could have a better base. The base is really simple (although reasonable attractive), does not tilt or swivel, and is about 2"-3" above a desktop. The monitor does have mounting holes in the back, so a TV stand/wall mount is a possible solution to get optimal ergonomics. Considering this monitor was $4000-$5000 less than alternatives (the 39" is even less), having to spend money on a mount is not so terrible.The third thing is I wish it had a DisplayPort interface. I believe this would allow 4K x 60 Hz today. The HDMI 1.4b interface only allows a maximum of 4K x 30 Hz, which for typical desktop computer use is not a major problem (the panel refreshes at 120 Hz). For gamers, and people editing 60 Hz video, and smoothest text scrolling, 60 Hz would be a better. When programming, I can see a little jitter when scrolling a text window which I'd guess is a 30 Hz artifact, although due to the resolution I can also just make edit windows twice as high and scroll half as much. This will definitely not be a firmware upgrade. One argument I have seen is current DisplayPort could not do 4K x 120 Hz for shutter glasses 3D, so Seiki working on a next generation interface would at this point be better use of their hardware engineers. Adjusting the EDID data to show 1920x1080p@120Hz as supported would be a nice firmware update too, and reports are this monitor can do this today, over the current HDMI interface, but you have to manually configure a set of display parameters. I was considering buying a 3D computer monitor, but guess I just need to buy some appropriate shutter glasses now.I would love to see either a computer/monitor OEM or Seiki themselves sell a slightly tweaked version optimized for computer use.So how does the image look? Wow best describe it. On the AMD 7750, text is super sharp, colors seem decent although perhaps not good enough for professional graphics/photography work (maybe with calibration, I'm slightly colorblind so I will have to pass on having a useful opinion). If you display a pure white screen, you can see some unevenness to the lighting on the edges, although this is not uncommon for LCD TVs. It might bother a professional graphics designer, but personally I can only see it if I make the whole screen white. A pure black screen looks quite even with no apparent light bleed, and for a LCD screen pretty black.I have not tried feeding 1080p video from anything except a computer, so can't comment on things like the upscaler quality. Some people report it as not having such a great upscaler. For use as a TV, at typical TV viewing distances, I'm not very convinced 4K is all that useful on anything less than 70"-80" screen. The retina display calculator (Google is this retina) says a 50" screen at 1080p is a retina display at 78", which is just over 6 feet way. For a computer monitor at 39" away, yes 4K is a lot better than 1080p.I should also say the sound is not very impressive, but sound on HDMI does work. I have some $25 Logitech S220 powered speakers that sound better, although they did sounds incredible for the price, but see are not longer available ( Logitech S220 2.1 Speaker System with Subwoofer ). With the $4000 you saved, buy some better speakers if you want good sound.I want to take off a tiny bit on the rating, as it could be a little better in a few areas, but at this price point, software companies should buy one for every engineer. I probably would not recommend it as a 1080P TV replacement. Something like the latest Panasonic plasma TV has more TV features and a better 1080P image ( Panasonic VIERA TC-P55ST60 55-Inch 1080p 600Hz 3D Smart Plasma HDTV (Includes 2 Pairs of 3D Active Glasses) ).

OK, some important information before you will consider it 5 stars also. All of the controls on this SE50UY044 -- SEIKI --function in linear fashion as opposed to the correct logarithmic setup; For example, most of the volume increase occurs in the first 10 points of the 100 it has. So the difference between 0 and 1 is quite a jump-- so there's no fine control at low volumes-- it just won't happen. This linear approach effects All of the controls, which leads to uncommon results when you try to fine tune the picture; therefore, what you know about adjusting LCD screens has to be ignored and, you have to re-learn how to adjust this SEIKI, e.g., typically most manufactures controls are set up for bright rooms. At home, I don't always keep my place brightly lit, so the first thing I typically do is turn down the brightness of my displays-- on this unit that is a mistake. The brightness control starts out centered at 50; and even there, the deep charcoal blacks are already crushed to black, so turning down the brightness (using the brightness control) below 50 just makes it unwatchable in my opinion. Typically the next logical step would be to adjust the contrast. Again with 50 being center, typical contrast controls decrease the "Contrast" of the image equally, but not here. Turning down the contrast seems to crush mid to bright detail, making faces look unnatural, but does little to help decrease the dynamic range of deep blacks. All of this aside, it's not my biggest complaint about this SEIKI. My biggest complaint about the design of this unit; is the dynamic backlight and, the utter lack of control over it. Even when you access the factory settings, there's no way to adjust or disable the automatic dynamic backlight. The dynamic backlight is far to dynamic in my opinion. Dark scenes become very dark, and if a TV commercial puts up a all white screen behind their logo, light rays will beam from every window in your home! There is a glimmer of hope, I have learned how to access to the factory settings. In there I can lower the backlight's power and make this TV actually watchable in rooms that aren't brilliantly light! -- Here it is. -- With the unit on of course, press the menu button, once the menu is displayed, press the zero key four times. A "Factory menu" will pop up in the upper left corner of the screen. Using the remote, navigate to the last item of the menu titled "Others" and select it with the OK button on your remote. The fourth item down will be the backlight setting, you'll notice it is maxed out at 100. Highlight the Backlight option and use the left right arrows to adjust it, while watching your favorite image or video. Now remember; as I previously stated, the controls are not logarithmically based. Settings near zero change drastically and changes near 100 have little effect. So in order to effectively decrease the TV's brightness and prevent my home from becoming a landmark for local air traffic, I have to lower the number significantly-- I chose 64. The setting is automatically saved as you press a key. To exit the menu press the menu button until it all goes away. Once the backlight is lowered, now I can recover some of the crushed blacks by turning up the brightness control, I find a value of 53-56 to be the best. I also turn down the sharpness control below 25 when ever it's not greyed out. With the backlight adjusted and the brightness and contrast controls counter intuitively turned up, the image is improved. It's far from a plasma screen but at least I can see the pinstripes on a black suit now without being blinded by ridiculously bright images. Whew! I hope this makes sense. I have every reason to believe the SE39UY04 has the same controls and suffers from the same engineering mistakes. Hey, SEIKI engineers- Two things: Make your controls Logarithmic and give us some control over the dynamic backlight. --Thanks. If you are thinking about getting this SEIKI unit or it's 39 inch little brother, consider the learning curve and you'll be fine. If you are in a position like me where you can also drive your SEIKI via your souped up computer and watch HD moves scaled up to Ultra High Def (4K) levels, do it.. looks great!! Plus, working on databases such as foobar2000 or a spreadsheet in LibreOffice is a whole new experience on this thing! Also, at the time of this writing, I cannot find a single HDMI amplifier that shows support for 4K content. So getting a stable image over a HDMI cable much more than 5 meters or 15 feet is a gamble. I know the 35 foot cable I tried was intermittent at best. To run this thing from a computer, here are a few things that may help: If you need to convert your computer's DisplayPort to HDMI, Accell's active DisplayPort to HDMI adapter is a good choice and does work at all the resolutions this SEIKI can display, with audio. I have found the minimum video cards to run smooth video are an AMD HD79xx or better or if you like NVIDIA, you'll probably need the GeForce GTX 680 or better. Either brand should have 2GB or more. Unfortunately these cards run in the $400+ range. I did test a HD7870 2GBD5 Gigahertz edition, in Linux Mint 16 and no matter the driver, playing a HD movie upscaled to 4K in Linux was 1 FPS, if the video showed at all. I honestly believe it would have faired much better in Windows and for $150 after rebate, it might be worth a try-- if anyone does try the 7870 2GBD5 Ghz Edition in Windows, please share your results. This SEIKI can be used as a monitor, it is sluggish turning on and off but it will shut off when there is no signal and turn back on when you move your mouse-- just don't expect it happen quickly-- we're talking over a half a minute on a good day. HDMI 1.4 and gaming: If you are thinking of playing fast motion games and are used to 60FPS, you are not going to like gaming on this thing. If you got a zombie on your tail, and you quickly pan around to see it, one frame it's on the left side of your screen, the next frame shows you've overshot and it's already disappearing on the right. It's a no-go for High Framerate games. This is a limitation of the technology of the HDMI ports used. Sorry. This SEIKI incorporates HDMI 1.4 protocol on it's ports, which is state-of-the-art and the best you can get even now (at the time of this writing). Right now HDMI 1.4 is a limiting factor for 4K. It can carry HD content all day long at 60 Frames Per Second (FPS) but 4K is literally double the height AND double the width of a Full HD so it requires four times the bandwidth! That's why you can only get 30 FPS through a HDMI 1.4 port. Make sense? Don't confuse the supplied frame rate with the displayed frame rate as they can be different. If you want to understand that more clearly, put these words in your favorite search engine and you'll find your answer, "What's the difference between 60hz, 120hz, and 240hz. And, why should I care" There are some HDMI cable manufactures that take advantage of this confusion, by putting your TV frequency on the package of the HDMI cable. That's like saying 89 octane gas is 200mph gas .. yea... OK.. in what vehicle. Hope this information helps and have a great life! :)