Using an 8K TV as a monitor

It may seem like overkill, but an 8K TV allows the sort of smooth rendering of text that makes using a computer all day a lot less of a strain.

There is a dearth of 8K content to use a TV for, just as there was when 4K TVs came out. The prevailing wisdom from entertainment technology writers was to not bother with such new technology until there was content for it. Parallel to this argument was that given the so-called standard distances to be watching TV from, as recommended for theatre viewing, and what I call the car-parking space, the extra resolution was not detectable by our eyes, so was a waste of the extra cost for the technology.

However, there is a whole other contingent of users that both these arguments are irrelevant for, namely computer users. Seating is up close, so big pixels are clearly seen. Full HD at such distances, even on smaller devices than loungeroom TVs, does not come off well. Certainly 4K does more justice to text at such distances. The optimal size for viewing computer output at 4K at its native resolution is 43". However, the pixels are still clearly visible, but usable.

In parallel with this improvement in desktop viewing was the rapid expansion of hi-res displays into portable technology. While Apple tried to stifle this by relying upon the idea that at reading distances, anything below what they called retina display resolution was not worthwhile. 300dpi pages are easily a retina sort of resolution, but 600dpi pages look a whole lot better, with much smoother rendering of the curves of fonts. Fortunately, the rest of the industry pushed up the resolutions and this allowed for very smooth rendering of fonts, allowing much smaller text to be read easily.

Tablets and laptops started getting higher resolutions, but desktop systems were not designed for scaling, so larger resolutions meant smaller text in system controls and dialog boxes. To fix this, scaling was provided to render a lower resolution into the higher resolution space, much like what was eventually done automatically on mobile systems. Early font-scaling in desktop systems was not very good, so text often looked clearer at the native resolution of the displays, despite their small size.

Eventually, mobile font-smoothing made it to desktops, and now even modest scaling can vastly improve the smoothness of text. That means a 27" 4K display, scaled to 150%, makes all text look a lot better and far more readable than a 27" with a native resolution of 2560x1440. The only impediment to this is that 4K monitors at these sizes are rare and expensive. It is the expensiveness and rarity of larger 4K monitors that started the push to use much cheaper TVs instead.

Meanwhile, the rise of gaming and the lack of computer-type video ports on TVs forced video card makers to include HDMI ports, making it easy to pass both video and sound in one cable. In their turn, TV makers included catering for the higher framerates that computer usage and gamers required, so that modern TVs are serious competition for dedicated monitors, and usually cheaper. Into this comes 8K TVs with a lot less dedicated material than 4K TVs had, and that has not changed much, even after a few years.

Development for websites requires knowledge of a lot of computer languages, like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, XSLT, PHP, and a myriad of libraries feeding into these. While those working at larger developers of such software may work in teams that focus on just a couple of these languages, any solo developer will have to keep track of of multiples of these at the same time, typically having a file in each language open at the same time. This is usually handled by having multiple monitors, but larger 4K TVs allow for more flexibility in layout.

However, even on 4K TVs, there can be multiple windows overlapping each other to several deep. I went to two 4K TVs, at least until one died, and I was back to multiple windows deep again. One of the problems with two 4K TVs was that the second one had to be to the side, Which because it was hard to work on by directly looking at it, just because there was no place to put the keyboard in front of it, it was only really suitable for the occasionally used ancillary windows, rather like I did with the upper monitor when I had four 32" Dell monitors in an inverted-T arrangement.

I finally considered an 8K monitor, but to use it at native resolution meant it would have to be 86", a size that is just too impractical to work at. However, a 65" scaled up could be useful, but it makes for very expensive real estate. This kept ambitions in check for a while, with occasional looking for cheaper factory seconds. However, they only ever had one year warranties, yet still cost over AU$2k, making them an expensive investment that might only last a year.

Given that top-of-the-line TVs in Australia must in practice be warranted for several years, that meant going for the top-line Samsung, which was the only 8K TV available in stores anyway. We waited until it was on special and then bit the bullet and got the 65" QN900C. It is a fantastic looking TV, with its 15mm thickness and super thin bezel.

While Samsung stands behind their TVs, and they were fairly prompt in coming on site via a third-party repairer, the fact that it took to the fourth screen to finally get the TV to what it should be was worrying, especially with the screen with the bends in it, which indicates that one employee was very pissed off with them.

In between the tech visits, I decided to get a stand, so that it didn't need to be so close on the desk. Upon noticing that some came with a swivel, that quickly became a necessary criteria, given my experience with screens that are off-angle to work at. The swivel is absolutely a must have because it allows almost all of the width to be used by quickly bringing it into frontal view using just a single finger. Also very useful for angling the screen so we can watch movies without having to be crammed directly in front of the desk.

In regards to video cards, I needed 8K capability, but not being a gamer, I didn't need lots of graphics power. This got me looking at GeForce RTX 4060 cards as the cheapest fitting my needs. It was narrowed down to a two-fan and a three-fan version, but the latter had a special silent mode that won me over. It only uses 9W maximum in my normal use, so the fans are never heard, just because it has a larger heatsink than the two-fan version, and so can relay on just the big slow system fans I have.

One thing strange about the Samsung TV is that to use 8K for a PC, it has to be in Game mode. I don't know if any other 8K sources would also require it, but I would have expected that there would be no need for special modes to use 8K sources on an 8K TV, even if running at 60fps. Unfortunately, it means that switching to PC input means having the game toolbar pop up for two seconds, followed by a reminder for how to keep it there popping up for six seconds. Why anyone would make it pop up for that long, and every time is very strange, given that anyone would get it first time.

Setting up for 8K also means using the nVidia utility to set it for RGB at 10bits per colour to get full bit depth. Any other setting puts the card into a limited mode that reduces the bit depth, so that some colours can only be shown by pairing pixels, making them look lo-res for those colours, especially when in large blocks. Text also looks blotchy for those colours.

I tried different scaling factors and 140% gave the best balance between smooth fonts and maximal screen usage, which amounted to the equivalent of two 4K TVs compared to the native resolution of four of them. I use small fonts in all files to increase the information density when viewing, allowing me to pack in more in the same screen space. The scaling handles Times New Roman and Courier New 8pt font sizes very clearly. Using the Power Toys' Fancy Zones window aligning utility makes it easy to manage all the windows I have open, including the few that I still have to have overlapping.

Having a lot of vertical space for windows means having a lot less dead space used for their toolbars and chrome compared to the room for the actual content, but 8K takes that to the max. I find having to scroll around documents makes it more difficult to keep orientation, but the extra height available using 8K means that I can see all the relevant code for each language without scrolling at all, allowing me to keep focus better, even if I am visually jumping around the code. It is the stability of the locations of each piece of code that makes it less disruptive.

Overall, for those who like to have all that they are working on in sight, compared to those who only want the small part that they are currently directly working on in view, 8K with scaling is fantastic. It has always meant that those of us of the former persuasion were always going to have more expensive monitor setups, but having one screen gives the most flexibility. Multiple screens always placed limits on what could be placed where, and having windows jumping across the bezels of multiple screens is visually disruptive, especially if dialog boxes pop up across the join.

At a couple of months into the 8K experience, despite the screen issues, it is working out to be a much better working arrangement than any multi-monitor setup. I consider it an investment for the future, as I expect to have the TV and video card for several years. The computer will probably need replacement in the next year, as it is 10 years old, and definitely not suitable for post Windows 10 usage after Microsoft finishes support for it in 2025.

Another month or so on, I decided to run the TV at 100% scaling so I got the best resolution of visual media, and set the system text size to 140%, rather than scale everything. Browsers scaled up everything while still indicating they are at 100%. Outlook scaled up everything as well. In most modern apps, the text within their chrome scaled up, but I had to install a macro in Word to scale up documents to 140% on loading. For Excel, I just manually set the few spreadsheets I use to 140%

Older apps like MS Notepad 2007 and Notepad++ rendered their chrome text at 100%, so they are small, but being on 8K are still clear to read. For these, al lease I could up the size of the text used within their documents, which is the most important. I had to use 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to increase the size of the icons, but it did not do anything to the system tray icons.