GH4 GH4K on 4k TV looks great!

W

wwjd

Well-known member
Got some time at a big box store that was displaying a couple 50+ inch 4K televisions. I brought my camera, 12-35mm 2.8 lens, and a long mico HDMI cable. They let me plugin the GH4 and mess about.

The curved SAMSUNG had a special HDMI distribution box I plugged into but it was passing 4K, and not downscaling to HD - as far as I could tell anyway... it looked really sharp and REALLY FANTASTIC.
I tried UHD 30p mode first, and that plugged right in and worked fine. Then, that TV was overtaken for a sales demo and I got bumped to the Sony 4K whatever model. There, I had some more time,
so I kicked the camera back down to 24hz mode and tried a variety of settings. The image was delayed a half second or so, but still looked phenomenal! The Sony worked at 24 and 30 modes of 4k,
and UHD and C4K modes displayed just fine.
I also switched tween 8 bit and 10 bit output, but am not sure what the TV was able to display and didn't SEE any apparent differences. But didn't spend much time looking into that.

Other than those TVs probably set to high saturated and bright (the Sony seemed closer to neutral) there were no downsides to this test, and I learned these two companies let you plug right in from the GH4 output.
It was funny but two sales guys asked if I was using a "4K Hdmi Cable" and I lied and said I was. It was just a cheapo 12 foot micro hdmi I'm sure I paid less than $20 for, but they seemed to think it was important
that I had the right speed cable. :) It's DIGITAL: it either works or not. And my cheap cable worked fine.

So, in the end, I BELIEVE you can probably plug GH4 into sony and samsung TVs without issue. But, don't buy one based on MY tests, do you own to make sure.

(this still frame looks like crap because I shunk the pic down two thirds, then the upload compressed it again or something. picture for entertainment purposes only)

bb test.jpg
 
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I've spent way too much time sitting about four feet from my 55" Hisense 4K-UHD TV, mesmerized by the wealth of detail and gradation from my UHD clips played straight from the GH4's HDMI port. All output settings on "auto", no problems when hooked to the TV's dedicated UHD port. It's interesting that when connected to one of the regular HDMI ports, the image is auto-downconverted in camera if either "auto" or "1080p" is selected in the "4K downconvert" option. Haven't tried it "off", but assume that leaves it to the TV processor. At any rate, the result is clearly more detailed and smoother than same scene shot at 1080p/100mbps.

Serious "dumbing down" of the monitor's presets is needed to enjoy the footage - especially reducing sharpening to near zero.

It's much easier to select frames for stills with TV output, of course, and when paused, single frame advance with the back wheel works great, with multi-frame backup on reversing the wheel. Simply hit the "set" button and confirm to store the frame selected. Also, the index frame for each clip can be magnified with the rear wheel. At 2X, 4K looks like really good FHD! This works much better than displaying the files with VLC Player on my 24" FHD computer monitor, as fine frame control is lacking, and no capture aside from using the snipping tool that I can find.

Peter
 
Cool. I switched my cam output to OFF to make sure it wasn't down converting to 1080. Haven't messed with FRAME to PIC yet, but sounds like fun. Can you make a pic from a paused 2X still frame?
 
wwjd said:
Cool. I switched my cam output to OFF to make sure it wasn't down converting to 1080. Haven't messed with FRAME to PIC yet, but sounds like fun. Can you make a pic from a paused 2X still frame?
Click to expand...

Once the file is playing, a paused frame can't be magnified - only the initial index frame.

Peter
 
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