Seiki SE50UY04 3840x2160 50" TV ($1300)

using the 50" firmware on the 39" i am also passing the ufo frameskipping test. tyvm for the help
 
monomaniac00 said:
So I recieved my 39" Seiki 4K a few days ago and I'm living a nightmare trying to get 4K to work.

I purchased the Accell active adapter (mDP > TB), I updated the television firmware (was reading that the 50" works too, but I'm waiting until I can get 4K working) and downloaded SwitchResX.

I currently use a 2012 Macbook Air (Intel 4000) running 10.9.1 (I had to upgrade to so I could use Final Cut 10.1) and I can't get any custom resolutions in the display options other than 1080p, 1080i, 720p, and 1600 X 900.

The most frustrating part is finding a solution that works. I've tried going into SwitchresX and creating custom resolutions that people have found success with on the internet, but even after saving and restarting my computer, the status still says not installed. What am I missing?

I understand that since I'm running Mavericks (10.9) I can't install the Tom patch for higher monitor frequencies, I just want to get 4K at whatever Hz works.

Is there a solution that I'm just passing over or is my computer just not compatible? (I've read that people are getting even getting 4K on the 2011 Mac mini). Thanks!
Click to expand...

Are you absolutely sure that you are indeed using the accel active adapter and not the passive? I would verify the part number on the dongle to be absolutely sure. Are there any other computers you can atleast test the dongle on? All rpots I have heard is the intel cards have generally worked just fine with the accel active adapter.
 
If anyone can work out how to get the display to look how it does at 1080p@30hz when using 1080p@120hz, I will love you forever :)

Currently something weird is happening and at 30hz everything looks as you would expect, great crisp text, great colors etc... but going above that and weird shit happens :(
 
HexedHavoc said:
If anyone can work out how to get the display to look how it does at 1080p@30hz when using 1080p@120hz, I will love you forever :)

Currently something weird is happening and at 30hz everything looks as you would expect, great crisp text, great colors etc... but going above that and weird shit happens :(
Click to expand...


So you are saying at 1080p@30Hz the TV says 1080p@30Hz on the OSD and it looks better? If so take a picture so we can see what you are talking about as far as the differences. Some close up ones would work best.
 
I noticed a huge degradation in image quality after applying the 50" firmware on my 39". It was just the sharpness setting that i had to once again turn to 0.To be on the safe side i decided to reapply the custom .inf and recheck everything in CC and CRU.
 
Yeah it's really weird. We tried it on my co-workers rMBP15" and it worked perfectly. I double checked the part number and it checks out. Any one out there had success with my exact situation before?
 
Anyone experiencing different colors when using 1080p 120hz vs 60hz? With the same settings within the TV, im getting slightly shifted colors.
 
Its possible that we r all getting varied results, due to not having exact same units, running off different systems too.

On mine, 24/30/60hz looks the same, which looks different to 120hz. All 1080p. Luckily, i prefer the 120hz look.
 
HexedHavoc said:
Try setting to 1920x1080@30hz and see how good it looks...
Click to expand...

After your many complains i decided to look what where you talking about.

Honestly using CRU+AMD driver patcher i haven't found a way to reproduce your problem, but i can do something similar:

When i set resolution in windows or CCC for 1020x1080@60hz or 30hz, the TV reports 3840x2160@30hz, with HORRIBLE SCALING, since i have disabled GPU scaling. In some instanecs the TV reports 1080p@60hz, also horrible.

But if i set resolution to 1920x1080@120hz, the TV correctly reports 1920x1080@120hz, NOT 1080p@120hz.

I realize it is frustrating that you complain of bad scaling at 1080p above 30hz, and my findings are exactly opposite: i have bad scaling at 60 and 30Hz, but not in any other refresh rate. Can anyone point me towards a test image so i can compare scaling at 1080p60hz vs 1920x1080@120hz?

So my advice is that you reuse the custom .inf, reapply the driver patcher and reset CRU customs resolutions.

The TV must report AAAAxBBBB @ CC Hz, not BBBBp@ CC hz.

UPDATE: i have installed a 780 and now 1920x1080@120Hz looks like shit, so does 1080p@60Hz. Just as you said, only 1080p@30Hz looks fine. On the bright side NVIDIA custom resolution now display 32+Hz but at a much degraded image quality, which may open the hope that this TV can actually go above 31Hz after all. This all using the HDMI port and cable, not the active adapter, because the 780 has a full sized DP and my adapter is miniDP:(
 
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I had it displaying the full res AAAAxBBBB @ blah for ages... still can't get above 30hz to look as good as the 30hz does.. i mean its almost like when at 30hz it is running a different pixel format and what not, looks so good :/
 
HexedHavoc said:
I had it displaying the full res AAAAxBBBB @ blah for ages... still can't get above 30hz to look as good as the 30hz does.. i mean its almost like when at 30hz it is running a different pixel format and what not, looks so good :/
Click to expand...

Pictures?
 
Will take some pics next time I fiddle with it, basically back to using my Sony 40" HDTV as the image quality is far superior at 1080p (sadly no 120hz tho)

:/
 
leeleatherwood said:
I just flashed the 50" firmware on my 39", it works.

EDIT: Sharpness setting in the menu doesn't function, you can change the setting but it doesn't change the sharpness at all. (correction, it seems to work over HDMI but not DVI, wierd)

I was using the sharpness setting as a form of pseudo anti-aliasing at 1080p to make text look better, but I cant do that anymore. 4k reso is fine obviously.

EDIT: Mouse lag at 4k is MUCH improved with the 50" firmware. With the 39" firmware it was pretty unbearable to me and I found myself using 1080p constantly. Now I have no problems running 4k.
Click to expand...

When you go to the software version in the hidden menu does it say Baseline: 522712. Just want to make sure I have the latest one, since this shows May 21 2013 compared to August for the 39".

I notice the same significant mouse lag decrease over the 39" firmware. Now it feel almost normal like you'd expect, and you only see an impact of the 30hz in terms of mouse trail smoothness, which is perfectly fine.
 
Bumping this thread to remember one important thing about the new firmware for the 39":

I no longer get the annoying "not support" blue screen when i test a custom resolution above 31Hz, instead, sometimes i get a flickering screen, sometimes a degraded image and sometimes an almost clear screen , but with artifacts com the right. Also the OSD displays 4k@32Hz for 32Hz resolution, but 29Hz for 33-35Hz, and 32Hz again for 36Hz+.
We are very close to actually breaking the 31Hz wall on the Seiki
 
I can do 35hz @ 4K on my Sieki with custom timings but the screen gets all blurry at anything above 30hz. The OSD does say though 3840x2160@35hz.
 
rothnic said:
When you go to the software version in the hidden menu does it say Baseline: 522712. Just want to make sure I have the latest one, since this shows May 21 2013 compared to August for the 39".

I notice the same significant mouse lag decrease over the 39" firmware. Now it feel almost normal like you'd expect, and you only see an impact of the 30hz in terms of mouse trail smoothness, which is perfectly fine.
Click to expand...

I will get that info when I get home today.
 
cfennerr said:
Very nice looking TV but sucks for gaming. 30hz looks like ass
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Well I've been using the Seiki since May, and have gamed on it for at least 500 hours but, now that I read your post, I'm totally convinced to take off work RIGHT F-ING NOW so I can call them up and demand they take their TV back and give me a refund!
 
leeleatherwood said:
I can do 35hz @ 4K on my Sieki with custom timings but the screen gets all blurry at anything above 30hz. The OSD does say though 3840x2160@35hz.
Click to expand...

Yeah its a known issue that the scaler activates and it is down-converting to 1080p from 4k and makes it look like CRAP.
 
Hey everybody!

I joined the forum just to post in this thread.

I recently jumped the gun on 39'' version and upgraded it to the 50'' firmware. I also used the settings for custom ToastyX settings.

It is connected to a pc running a gtx 770 2gb.

I have to admit, I have not read each and every page of the thread, so I apologize if I repeat anything that's been already said.

A few things to note:
-120hz works now. I will update this post with proof.
-There is still some ghosting at 120hz even though the UFO test validated true 120hz. This is the most noticeable with simply moving the mouse.
-Gaming at 1080p@120hz is fine and the colors are NOT washed out. However compared to 4k gaming, the colors look much better at 4k

For 1080p MKV blu rays:
-Watching movies at 1080p@120hz looks washed out and faded compared to 4k@30hz. In dark parts you can see pixel artifacts of the previous scene.
-Movies are doable at 4k@30hz. It just looks like a big movie theater screen :)
-There is a bit of a difference between 4k@30hz and 4k@25-27hz -most notably in color saturation and blur. 30hz looks great. 25-27 is when motion blur starts rearing its head.
.

What we need to fix:
-Color saturation and quality with 1080p@120hz.
-Motion blur/lag/ghosting with 1080p@120hz.

I was thinking of adding Lightboost tonight, but I haven't seen anyone use it alongside the firmware "hack" nor does it look compatible.

Any tips?
 
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I just got this monitor at work.

How do I find out the current version of firmware it has?
 
shurcooL said:
I just got this monitor at work.

How do I find out the current version of firmware it has?
Click to expand...

I recognize your username from the github username for the refreshrate multitool =)

Anyway its from the service menu... hit menu + 0000 and its under software version (like the first entry). Assuming you got the 39 inch since its at work (I also use on eat work).

Also guessing you were waiting for the 120Hz fix?

You flash by putting install.img on a fat32 usb stick and going to the service menu again clicking 'software upgrade'.

If you haven't already make sure the first thing you do is turn off the sharpness value to 0 and disable the denoise filter.
 
Yep, that's me. :)

Thanks, I just found out how to access the service menu (MENU, 0, 0, 0, 0), and the version info is there. Next up I lowered the backlight brightness, so it's much easier to look from up close now. I've already set sharpness to 0 (made a big improvement), and turned noise cancellation off (didn't see any difference).

Some more details:

-Seiki 4K 39" SE39UY04
-15-inch, Early 2013 Retina MBP (GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB)
-Running it via the supplied HDMI cable using HDMI port, got native resolution right away. 3840x2160@30 Hz.

My only remaining issue right now is that there is some sort of filtering algorithm going on, so the pixels are not being displayed properly. It ruins text, especially in red. Going to update the firmware and see how it looks afterwards. Everything else is perfect.
 
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Rufflefalsky said:
Hey everybody!

I joined the forum just to post in this thread.

I recently jumped the gun on 39'' version and upgraded it to the 50'' firmware. I also used the settings for custom ToastyX settings.

It is connected to a pc running a gtx 770 2gb.

I have to admit, I have not read each and every page of the thread, so I apologize if I repeat anything that's been already said.

A few things to note:
-120hz works now. I will update this post with proof.
-There is still some ghosting at 120hz even though the UFO test validated true 120hz. This is the most noticeable with simply moving the mouse.
-Gaming at 1080p@120hz is fine and the colors are NOT washed out. However compared to 4k gaming, the colors look much better at 4k

For 1080p MKV blu rays:
-Watching movies at 1080p@120hz looks washed out and faded compared to 4k@30hz. In dark parts you can see pixel artifacts of the previous scene.
-Movies are doable at 4k@30hz. It just looks like a big movie theater screen :)
-There is a bit of a difference between 4k@30hz and 4k@25-27hz -most notably in color saturation and blur. 30hz looks great. 25-27 is when motion blur starts rearing its head.
.

What we need to fix:
-Color saturation and quality with 1080p@120hz.
-Motion blur/lag/ghosting with 1080p@120hz.

I was thinking of adding Lightboost tonight, but I haven't seen anyone use it alongside the firmware "hack" nor does it look compatible.

Any tips?
Click to expand...

What setup are you running to watch movies at 4k@30Hz?
 
shurcooL said:
Yep, that's me. :)

Thanks, I just found out how to access the service menu (MENU, 0, 0, 0, 0), and the version info is there. Next up I lowered the backlight brightness, so it's much easier to look from up close now. I've already set sharpness to 0 (made a big improvement), and turned noise cancellation off (didn't see any difference).

Some more details:

-Seiki 4K 39" SE39UY04
-15-inch, Early 2013 Retina MBP (GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB)
-Running it via the supplied HDMI cable using HDMI port, got native resolution right away. 3840x2160@30 Hz.

My only remaining issue right now is that there is some sort of filtering algorithm going on, so the pixels are not being displayed properly. It ruins text, especially in red. Going to update the firmware and see how it looks afterwards. Everything else is perfect.
Click to expand...



Sounds like someone else said (red being really bad). Didn't seem to be the case on mine. I assume even images which wouldn't mess with font anti-aliasing are still bad like for example:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1040405853&postcount=679

That actually has a picture of that red text with a camera to show what it looks like on mine.
 
Yeah, it's the same problem as alamone described.

Here's a .png:

wc75.png


Here's how it looks on my Seiki 39" with Sharpness 0, Noise Reduction "Off":

ypes.png

(Closer view)

Here's that same .png on a normal 1080p monitor, for comparison...

fx7f.png


---

I've tried both the latest firmware for 39" and 50", no difference. :/ This is the only thing bugging me right now, everything else is perfect.

It feels like jpg compression artifacts.

Edit: Which HDMI input is everyone using? I've been using HDMI 3 all this time. I just tried HDMI 1, and I got no image, saying "Not supported". Edit 2: For some reason, HDMI 1 input isn't working under OS X, but it's fine under Windows (and in fact, the above .png looks better in Windows over HDMI 1). HDMI 2 is physically impossible to use because its placement is blocked by the case... :/
 
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shurcooL said:
I've tried both the latest firmware for 39" and 50", no difference. :/ This is the only thing bugging me right now, everything else is perfect.

It feels like jpg compression artifacts.

Edit: Which HDMI input is everyone using? I've been using HDMI 3 all this time. I just tried HDMI 1, and I got no image, saying "Not supported". Investigating...
Click to expand...

Wow that does really look like crap. The pictures were on my 50 inch but I am pretty darn sure that it was not like that on my 39 either. With the 50 inch firmware I use these values for tuning (curious if it helps at all):

Code: 
Picture:
Contrast: 55
Brightness: 52
Color: 50
Sharpness: 0
Color Temp: Cool


Setup:
Noise reduction: off

Service Menu -> Others:
Backlight: 70

Color Temp:
        Color Mode: Cool
        Gain Red: 129
        Gain Green: 126
        Gain Blue: 122
        Offset Red: 503
        Offset Green: 510
        Offset Blue: 492


I think you can see on my image from the link I posted earlier mine doesn't look nearly as bad.

I use HDMI1 or HDMI2. I have had issues with HDMI3 in general (and lots of people have reported issues with losing sync on HDMI3).

EDIT: You may want to give HDMI 2 a try too. I seem to recall on my 50 inch I had a weird issue where both ports worked fine but EDID wasn't being read correctly from one of the ports (I had to dump it and use it as a file in my xorg.conf).
 
I've spent too many hours in the depths of the Sony XBR service menu. If Seiki would open up the bits to control the image scaler, enhancer, sharpener, etc, the user community would be able to find the settings the engineers clearly had an issue with.

The artifacts are not due to the hardware.. Blame it on the programmer and his project manager.
 
Ok, I've gotten to the bottom of the issue.

The TL;DR: I'm very inclined to believe I have a faulty unit.

Here is a very standard HSL pattern image with smooth, uniform color transitions: http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/5143/1vs6.png

And here's how it looks on this SE39UY04:

ae73.jpg


jtdt.jpg


3gmb.jpg


I have tried changing the following things while looking at that test image:

- HDMI inputs 1, 2, 3
- two different HDMI cables
- HDMI port of my rMBP, as well Thunderbolt port using mDP -> HDMI adapter
- 3840x2160, 1920x1080 resolutions
- two of the latest firmwares for the 39" (SE39UY04_20130827.zip, SE39UY04_20130828.zip), the firmware for 50" (SE50UY04_20130528.zip)
- changed sharpness, brightness, contrast, color levels, etc. in the menu
- OS X 10.9.1 and Windows 7 (same computer though)
- also tried another Late 2013 15" rMBP, same result

And that weird stuff with the red channel persisted through it all. (The _only_ thing that had an effect on it was when I lowered color to zero, turning the display compltely black and white.) It explains the unreadable red text.

I'd be very surprised if this affects other people's Seikis and they didn't notice. But still, if you have one, please see the above HSL pattern image and share how it goes.
 
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shurcooL, my 39 looks like that too. I think that is happening because as someone reported here or on avsforums, the hdmi input is set to limited/video range (16-235 vs 0-255). I run mine YUV422 instead of RGB to avoid the very noticeable crushing of the blacks, but either way I think banding is expected due to the loss of the bits.
 
Looks like more than just banding on his image. Anyway I am pretty darn sure my 39 inch does not do that but I will verify when I get to work. Excpect another reply in <2 hours. My 50 inch at home:


I don't even notice any banding at all and the color change is very smooth.



 
houkouonchi said:
Looks like more than just banding on his image. Anyway I am pretty darn sure my 39 inch does not do that but I will verify when I get to work. Excpect another reply in <2 hours. My 50 inch at home:

I don't even notice any banding at all and the color change is very smooth.
Click to expand...

lol, your images look banded to me too because my display can't show the smooth gradients.

There is a slight vertical color gradient as well in the image, and I imagine that's why the banding doesn't look like simple vertical lines.

If your 39 doesn't have the problem, I wonder if it could be a linux vs windows/mac thing. Maybe linux is forcing the full 24bit color mode, while windows and mac are handshaking the limited bit range?
 
bzo said:
lol, your images look banded to me too because my display can't show the smooth gradients.

There is a slight vertical color gradient as well in the image, and I imagine that's why the banding doesn't look like simple vertical lines.

If your 39 doesn't have the problem, I wonder if it could be a linux vs windows/mac thing. Maybe linux is forcing the full 24bit color mode, while windows and mac are handshaking the limited bit range?
Click to expand...

I honestly think you guys got bad displays. Its fine on my 39 inch at work... pictures:








I will hook up my macbook pro retina (2012 model with gt 650m) which is probably the same as the shurcool's and verify no problem there either. Don't let the reflections in the image through you off. Those aren't weird rendering issues. It looks exactly like my 50 inch at home.

I am actually really starting to think the issue is hardware...
 
No issue on windows from the native HDMI port either. I can't use native HDMI on mac OS X but I did run it with my active accel DP 1.1 -> HDMI 1.4 adapter and I think I would have noticed issues if it had them (this adapter is at my dad's house). Anyway here are the pics:







So it looks like bad hardware... I would test off another computer via the DP adapter just to be sure but honestly when going through the DP adapter I would think that would be almost the same as running it on a different video card. I am sorry you guys got a lemon...
 
Hmm, it seems like your display is getting the full 24 bit color information or else you would see some sort of banding. My feeling is that some displays shipped with the 24 bit color enabled, and others with the limited video color mode. Hopefully the setting is in the service menu somewhere, though it's also a possibility that it is a user inaccessible setting or even a hardware jumper.

houkouonchi, can you try setting your display output format to YUV422 and see if you see the same type of banding? I think that would confirm whether what we're seeing is the limited bit depth or not.
 
If you are having issues with red text you should note that the monitor is BGR and not RGB. Maybe it's Cleartype messing with things?
 
BGR means the subpixel order is Blue, Green Red instead of the much more common Red, Green Blue.

Windows will play with the subpixels sometimes to try to apply anti-aliasing on text. This is called ClearType, and if windows is trying to anti-alias a RGB display but is really hooked up to a BGR display, things get funky.

In the registry you can go to something like >

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics\My Display 1

(cleartype is applied individually per each display, so if you have a multi-display settup figure out which one the seiki is)

If you set "Pixel Structure" to 0, text wont be anti-aliased. This will look bad.

If you set "Pixel Structure" to 1, then you are set up for a RGB display. This should look better but odd.

If you set "Pixel Structure" to 2, things should be perfect.

I also recommend setting your gamma level to somewhere between 1900~2200 (decimal). I prefer 2200 but you can play around with it yourself.
 
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