Seiki SE50UY04 3840x2160 50" TV ($1300)

The good news is that they are going to be showing new 4K monitors at CES.
The bad news is that their old monitor is class-action lawsuit material.
And actually the same can be said at the 50 inch version.

It does not have a motion interpolation feature (like the 55inch version). Nor does it have 1080p at 120hz as an official resolution option.

You can only run it at 120hz with a video card that supports custom resolutions. Barring that, it's not possible to make use of 120hz.
 
And actually the same can be said at the 50 inch version.

It does not have a motion interpolation feature (like the 55inch version). Nor does it have 1080p at 120hz as an official resolution option.

You can only run it at 120hz with a video card that supports custom resolutions. Barring that, it's not possible to make use of 120hz.

All video cards that can do 30Hz at 4k can do 120hz @ 1080p. It doesn't need to support 'custom resolutions.' They just don't advertise it in EDID. Honestly Idon't care if the display advertises it or not... The 50 inch can do it. It is as simple as that so I am not going to call them out on false advertising since it can indeed do 120hz even if it is only at 1080p or lower. Actually I much perfer native 120hz compared to the interpolation/upconvert BS which I could honestly not care much about.
 
All video cards that can do 30Hz at 4k can do 120hz @ 1080p. It doesn't need to support 'custom resolutions.' They just don't advertise it in EDID. Honestly Idon't care if the display advertises it or not... The 50 inch can do it. It is as simple as that so I am not going to call them out on false advertising since it can indeed do 120hz even if it is only at 1080p or lower. Actually I much perfer native 120hz compared to the interpolation/upconvert BS which I could honestly not care much about.
Because it's a custom resolution you can not use it in full screen 3D programs (at least on Windows). Unless you use a third party tool to add a "detailed resolution". Without that it's desktop only at 120hz. Setting 1920x1080 ingame only leads to 60hz. And shitty looking 60hz while we're at it because some different upscalling kicks in compared to 61+hz.

I also prefer true 1080p@120hz over motion interpolation. Especially since motion interpolation ads input lag.

However had someone not figured this out then the 50 incher would have no 120hz support either.

It's not listed in the manual and the last time I called (more like was able to get through to them after multiple tries) I was actually told not to do it as it will magically somehow "void the warranty". Of course that won't stop me at all from doing it anyway. And they still haven't responded to my email from weeks ago. Sure takes them a while to get back.
 
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Because it's a custom resolution you can not use it in full screen 3D programs (at least on Windows). Unless you use a third party tool to add a "detailed resolution". Without that it's desktop only at 120hz. Setting 1920x1080 ingame only leads to 60hz. And shitty looking 60hz while we're at it because some different upscalling kicks in compared to 61+hz.

I also prefer true 1080p@120hz over motion interpolation. Especially since motion interpolation ads input lag.

However had someone not figured this out then the 50 incher would have no 120hz support either.

It's not listed in the manual and the last time I called (more like was able to get through to them after multiple tries) I was actually told not to do it as it will magically somehow "void the warranty". Of course that won't stop me at all from doing it anyway. And they still haven't responded to my email from weeks ago. Sure takes them a while to get back.

I guess someone being me? I verified 120Hz capability way back in April like within the first page of posts in this thread.

Not able to use it in full screen 3d programs? That is just wrong. I have no issues using 120Hz in steam apps or quakelive on windows on my laptop (geforce gt 650m) and I was able to do 1920x1080@120Hz on my dad's machine as well that runs ATI on his 7900 series eyefinity 6 card. I actually asked him to if he could really feel the 120hz difference (He couldn't tell all that much).

You can always completely over-ride the EDID via a custom inf/driver for the display with your own modes. One way to make sure games run at 120Hz is to simply remove the 60Hz modes so the only 1080p mode is 120Hz but I didn't even have to go that far.
 
120Hz @ 1080 isn't happening, at least on my Seiki. It -says- 120Hz, but it's only 60Hz; every other frame is skipped. If you're happy with your 'reported 120 that is 60' then by all means, be happy, but you're lying if you attempt to convince other people that the 39" Seiki can actually achieve 120Hz.
 
120Hz @ 1080 isn't happening, at least on my Seiki. It -says- 120Hz, but it's only 60Hz; every other frame is skipped. If you're happy with your 'reported 120 that is 60' then by all means, be happy, but you're lying if you attempt to convince other people that the 39" Seiki can actually achieve 120Hz.

Are you talking to me? I have both the 50 inch and the 39. I was of course talking about the 50 inch in my previous post. I am the one who first discovered the frame skipping issue on the 39 inch so I don't even bother giving it 120hz on that one.
 
Got a 39in to see what its like. The remote is missing from the box did get it "like new" from amazon warehouse, but still. Markings all over the screen which took a good 15mim to clean. Screen panel is very fragile, slightest touch causes a large portion of the screen to be impressed. Terrible uniformity, two dead pixels (more like clusters since they are approximately 2mm each which is way bigger them one pixel should be). Color has a strong red push and orange skin tones without enough settings to fix.

Calibrated what I could. Contrast is decent with strong bright whites. Uniformity can't really be seen during gaming or with an image on the screen.

Overall, being returned. Don't know if its a really bad sample or not, but I'm guessing even the best wouldn't be much better.
 
Got a 39in to see what its like. The remote is missing from the box did get it "like new" from amazon warehouse,..

I got a refurb monitor once from Dell. It had a few dead pixels. I sent it back and they sent me another refurb as a replacement. This went on 3 or 4 times before I concluded that refurbs have a higher probability of being less than perfect.

With the Seiki 39" I have, I'm not experiencing any of the issues isssues that you've described, and my monitor also doesn't have any dead pixels.

It works reasonably well, but now I'm bothered that 120Hz will never work properly.
 
I guess someone being me? I verified 120Hz capability way back in April like within the first page of posts in this thread.

Not able to use it in full screen 3d programs? That is just wrong. I have no issues using 120Hz in steam apps or quakelive on windows on my laptop (geforce gt 650m) and I was able to do 1920x1080@120Hz on my dad's machine as well that runs ATI on his 7900 series eyefinity 6 card. I actually asked him to if he could really feel the 120hz difference (He couldn't tell all that much).

You can always completely over-ride the EDID via a custom inf/driver for the display with your own modes. One way to make sure games run at 120Hz is to simply remove the 60Hz modes so the only 1080p mode is 120Hz but I didn't even have to go that far.
So you just add a 120hz custom resolution and then all (most) games run at 120hz? And you aren't running in windowed mode?

I'm not the only one who had to use CRU to make games run at 120hz.
http://120hz.net/showthread.php?2057-120hz-at-desktop-works-but-games-locked-at-60-fps&
http://blog.hemp-society.de/2013/02/how-to-use-your-120hz-monitor.html
http://120hz.net/showthread.php?978-Catleap-returns-to-native-resolution-upon-fullscreen&

There's more that I could link of course. Figuring out how to get my friend's overclocked lightboost monitor to run at highest HZ possible ingame was how I found out about CRU. I then also had to use it on my X-star and my Seiki now. Else they all default to whatever is their highest non-custom hz on fullscreen. This is on Nvidia.

Adding a detailed resolution with CRU after adding one in Nvidia's control panel was the way to force fullscreen apps to run at the custom resolution hz. Prior to CRU I saw people adding 1920x1081 and the like in order to force overclocked HZ to work ingame.

I of course would prefer not to have to rely on a third party app and just use the Nvidia control panel if possible. But it doesn't work like that for me :(.
 
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So you just add a 120hz custom resolution and then all (most) games run at 120hz? And you aren't running in windowed mode?

I'm not the only one who had to use CRU to make games run at 120hz.
http://120hz.net/showthread.php?2057-120hz-at-desktop-works-but-games-locked-at-60-fps&
http://blog.hemp-society.de/2013/02/how-to-use-your-120hz-monitor.html
http://120hz.net/showthread.php?978-Catleap-returns-to-native-resolution-upon-fullscreen&

There's more that I could link of course. Figuring out how to get my friend's overclocked lightboost monitor to run at highest HZ possible ingame was how I found out about CRU. I then also had to use it on my X-star and my Seiki now. Else they all default to whatever is their highest non-custom hz on fullscreen. This is on Nvidia.

Adding a detailed resolution with CRU after adding one in Nvidia's control panel was the way to force fullscreen apps to run at the custom resolution hz. Prior to CRU I saw people adding 1920x1081 and the like in order to force overclocked HZ to work ingame.

I of course would prefer not to have to rely on a third party app and just use the Nvidia control panel if possible. But it doesn't work like that for me :(.

Does using this inf make any difference for you?

http://box.houkouonchi.jp/seiki_custom_edid_120_240hz.inf

If you install from device manager by going to properties for the display and then chosing custom driver.. location.. .etc...
 
Does using this inf make any difference for you?

http://box.houkouonchi.jp/seiki_custom_edid_120_240hz.inf

If you install from device manager by going to properties for the display and then chosing custom driver.. location.. .etc...
I click on it from browse and it won't let me use it. Doesn't give an error just makes a sound for not allowed.

Perhaps it has something to do with Secure boot? Would be more helpful if it gave an error.
 
Can you right click the link and chose 'save-as'?

If not just rename it from .bin to .inf using this link:

http://box.houkouonchi.jp/seiki_custom_edid_120_240hz.bin
Yeah I didn't see that it got saved as .inf.txt. Derp.

Restarted with driver signature enforcement disabled and it installed now.

However it still defaults to 1080i 60hz according to the info display on TV and doesn't have 120hz as an option in Windows.
http://i.imgur.com/ULZe9ds.png

EDIT:
Even with CRU for games to run at 1080@120hz I have to set the desktop to that resolution before starting the game. If I leave the desktop at 3840x2160 the games will start at either 1080i@60hz or 1080p@60hz.

Perhaps it's a Windows 8/8.1 thing?

EDIT2:
I figured it out now.
Since the Seiki does not expose 120hz as an option the "Preferred refresh rate" setting is missing in Nvidia's control panel. It appears if I plug in my friend's BenQ monitor (but only for that monitor). So without this option it just uses standard resolutions unless something like CRU is used. Or perhaps with a custom .inf like you provided.

As such I don't think adding 1920x1080 120hz as a custom resolution would be the only thing needed to allow games to run at 120hz.
 
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Interesting. On my macbook pro retina with a geforce gt 650m it actually defaults to 120hz with that inf when I just pick 1920x1080 and definitely shows it as an option. Just out of curiosity what video card is this? I assume its one that actually natively supports HDMI 1.4 right?
 
Anyone else notice how font's seem to have tiny rounded edges to them, making them "feel/look" a tad blurry. I have sharpness turned to 0
 
Looks just fine to me.... But I am running linux so probably different font aliasing than you have.

Here is a PNG of that section on what it looks like on my browser:

seiki_font.png


Physical picture:


Mine is a blurry mess... native res, AMD M8900 w/ accell adapter
 
Interesting. On my macbook pro retina with a geforce gt 650m it actually defaults to 120hz with that inf when I just pick 1920x1080 and definitely shows it as an option. Just out of curiosity what video card is this? I assume its one that actually natively supports HDMI 1.4 right?
I'm using an (evga) GTX 660 and it does support HDMI 1.4 according to Nvidia's spec sheet.
 
Hooray I can reply to this thread...

So, today I got this tv delivered from amazon and I sat around for like 8 hours trying to get it to look right but in the end failed :(

Problems I had:

4k looked great but 30hz sucks :p
1080p @ 30hz looks great
1080 @ anything greater than 30hz = weird artifacts appearing (hardly noticable) and text not as crisp etc

One thing I was able to deduce is that when I set the display to 30hz, I'm able to then set 'Maintain aspect ratio' under image settings in AMD control center. When I set it to 60hz then I can no longer..
 
no longer use that setting, resulting in the tv doing the scaling, hence it looks worse and artifacts!?!

:(

I think what may work is If I can somehow force it to let me use that setting in amd control center (is greyed out when I select 60hz as I think it thinks it is my native res)

Really frustrating :(

TL;DR - 30hz looks great on all resolutions but as soon as you go higher you lose display quality and artifacts appear! grr
 
no longer use that setting, resulting in the tv doing the scaling, hence it looks worse and artifacts!?!

:(

I think what may work is If I can somehow force it to let me use that setting in amd control center (is greyed out when I select 60hz as I think it thinks it is my native res)

Really frustrating :(

TL;DR - 30hz looks great on all resolutions but as soon as you go higher you lose display quality and artifacts appear! grr

If the tv is just saying 1080p instead of 1920x1080@60Hz then it is using the HDTV standard EDID mode which has overscan and makes it look like crap. I dont know if your on the 39 or 50 but atleast the 39 has an updated firmware that has a scaling mode that disables this or use a custom 1920x1080 modeline.
 
If the tv is just saying 1080p instead of 1920x1080@60Hz then it is using the HDTV standard EDID mode which has overscan and makes it look like crap. I dont know if your on the 39 or 50 but atleast the 39 has an updated firmware that has a scaling mode that disables this or use a custom 1920x1080 modeline.

Using the 39" and it does say 1080p @ 60hz etc

I got latest firmware for it

If anyone is able to make a custom EDID (dunno how to do it myself) that doesn't have 1080p @ 60hz treated as default/native res, I think it would be very helpful in my testing.
 
Using the 39" and it does say 1080p @ 60hz etc

I got latest firmware for it

If anyone is able to make a custom EDID (dunno how to do it myself) that doesn't have 1080p @ 60hz treated as default/native res, I think it would be very helpful in my testing.

Yeah the scaling sucks if it says 1080p instead of 1920x1080. Anyway if you updated to the newest firmware you should be able to keep hitting the aspect button and one of the scaling modes should fix it. I forget what its called but they added it since the last firmware.You can also try my inf a few pages back to see if that works for you as well.
 
Yeah the scaling sucks if it says 1080p instead of 1920x1080. Anyway if you updated to the newest firmware you should be able to keep hitting the aspect button and one of the scaling modes should fix it. I forget what its called but they added it since the last firmware.You can also try my inf a few pages back to see if that works for you as well.

When I've run in to "1080p 60Hz" or "1080p 30Hz", I know that there is something amiss.

As stated, In the correct modes, the Seiki will display "1920 * 1080 @ 60Hz", or "3840 * 2160 @ 30Hz", then the display is crystal sharp.

Just today I had that problem, and no amount of resetting my graphics card settings, or swapping HDMI ports on either the TV or between the two GTX570 video cards, would shift the monitor from displaying the crappy HDMI "1080p 30Hz" when I pressed the Info button on the remote.

Turned out that I had to TURN OFF THE 39" SEIKI and turn it on again, and the 'problem' I'd spent 40 minutes trying to fix, went away. Grrr.

Was back to pristine 3840 * 2160 @ 30Hz and all has been sweet.

So, if you are having problems with your video card settings not doing anything to change the mode of the TV, try turning the TV off and on again, it might fix it.

The take-away information here is as stated : if your TV info doesn't gives X * Y @ ZHz information, and only states "1080p zHz" then the TV is using the EDID information rather than what you've set it up to do. power-cycle the TV and see if that fixes your problem.
 
This is so frustrating

been testing again... 1080p @ 60hz the text etc doesn't look that good, even the colors are different

if however I select 1080p @ 30hz then it displays it using only that many pixels (so hardly fills up much of the screen) but then I simply go into amd control centre and scan set it to maintain aspect ratio and it scales it up and it still looks PERFECT!

however at 60hz it auto fills screen (using tv scaler?) and I cannot select any scale modes in amd control center... I think it thinks 1080p @ 60hz is my native res... is there anyway to trick it or something so I can use the scale modes at this setting? :/
 
This is so frustrating

been testing again... 1080p @ 60hz the text etc doesn't look that good, even the colors are different

if however I select 1080p @ 30hz then it displays it using only that many pixels (so hardly fills up much of the screen) but then I simply go into amd control centre and scan set it to maintain aspect ratio and it scales it up and it still looks PERFECT!

however at 60hz it auto fills screen (using tv scaler?) and I cannot select any scale modes in amd control center... I think it thinks 1080p @ 60hz is my native res... is there anyway to trick it or something so I can use the scale modes at this setting? :/

At 30 hz I found yes it will use the GPU scaler that is why it looks so much better. This is a way to see the difference between seiki scaling and good GPU scaling.


It won't do > 30hz since I am sure your TV is getting 3840x2160@30hz (but scaled from 1080p) since it can't push 60Hz at 3840x2160 it can only use that mode for 30Hz and below.
 
I just wanna get it to do 1080p @ 60hz without using the stupid scaler >_<

No matter what resolution I use, if I select 30hz then it looks good! but you go higher and bam, shitballs :(
 
I just wanna get it to do 1080p @ 60hz without using the stupid scaler >_<

No matter what resolution I use, if I select 30hz then it looks good! but you go higher and bam, shitballs :(

Only way you could do it without the TV (or GPU's scaler which would be limited to 30Hz as it would be scaling to 3840x2160) is if the TV had a mode where it just displayed the image in the center of the display but then its 1/4th the size as well. Honestly if you think 1920x1080 is bad (I actually think its decent) go take a look at 2560x1440 as I have seen people actually say scaling that that resolution is acceptable (its not IMHO, the scaling at 1080p is but could be better).
 
Actually in my testing I was able to get certain resolutions to fill just the pixels they use, so a small window basically, then I scaled it via amd control centre (maintain aspect setting) and it looked great when doing this... but that setting is greyed out at anything over 30hz for me :(
 
I just wanna get it to do 1080p @ 60hz without using the stupid scaler >_<

No matter what resolution I use, if I select 30hz then it looks good! but you go higher and bam, shitballs :(
Have you tried doing something like 1080p 61hz or 120hz?

When using a non-standard refresh rate/resolution the scaling options get disabled.

In 60hz mode it definitely uses some preset scaling mode that look like ass (to me anyway).
 
i have searched and did not found example of custom resolutions for those trying over 30hz@4k, for example, reducing blanking timings.
 
i have searched and did not found example of custom resolutions for those trying over 30hz@4k, for example, reducing blanking timings.

It takes the signal just fine the problem is the scaler is activated and it turns to crap its not a problem of loss of signal. Atleast on the 50 inch. On the 39 inch as soon as you go over ~31 Hz (probably just under 31) then the panel would just turn off.
 
Honestly if you think 1920x1080 is bad (I actually think its decent) go take a look at 2560x1440 as I have seen people actually say scaling that that resolution is acceptable (its not IMHO, the scaling at 1080p is but could be better).

Is there a way to enable GPU scaling at 1920x1080@120Hz or 2560x1440@60Hz?

When I switch to GPU scaling, the only supported resolutions are 1080p@60Hz (with the monitor displaying 1080p@60Hz) and 2560x1440@30Hz(with the monitor is displaying 3840x2160@30Hz).
 
Is there a way to enable GPU scaling at 1920x1080@120Hz or 2560x1440@60Hz?

When I switch to GPU scaling, the only supported resolutions are 1080p@60Hz (with the monitor displaying 1080p@60Hz) and 2560x1440@30Hz(with the monitor is displaying 3840x2160@30Hz).

I don't think you understand how GPU scaling works. You will never get >30 Hz with GPU scaling.
 
I surely don't, but thanks for clearing it up.

EDIT: Then how come 1080p @ 60Hz works fine?

GPU scaling means that instead of your video card sending out non-native resolutions to the panel (in this case resolutions other than 3840x2160) it instead will do its own up-conversion to the native resolution and scale any other resolution to it. Of course because of this the video card is outputing 3840x2160 (not the resolution windows says) and it looks nice as almost all video cards scale pretty nicely these days.

1080p @ 60Hz works because its not GPU scaling. Your video card sends out an actual 1080p signal (no longer sending at native panel resolution) which the controller board in the display which takes the single-link TMDS signal, IE HDMI, and converts it to a quad-channel LVDS link that the LCD Panel can understand via its TCON. The Panel itself has its own up-conversion in order to render things at full screen which gets around the bandwidth limitations of TMDS/LVDS but unfortunately as you have noticed the quality of said scaling is significantly worse than the scaling of the video card.


Also if its ATI that doesn't always use GPU scaling even when it says it does. If the display doesn't say its 3840x2160 then its not GPU scaling.
 
What about seiki service menu? any secret factory menu on the firmware?
update: found these pictures of service menu

Still no glue on how to disable/bypass internal scaler. Reading maarten review of the skyworth, he managed to achieve higher refresh rates at 4k by fooling the TV in to thinking that it was receiving a 1080p signal, in order to overcome pixel clock limitations.
 
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