Samsung just announced the SE790C, a 32″ top of the line  curved Ultra-WQHD monitor.  This monitor has been engineered to give the best curved monitor experience possible and to provide superior eye comfort as validated by TÜV Rheinland.

The brand new SE790C follows the new trend for WQHD displays, with its resolution of 3,440 by 1,440 pixels and 21:9 aspect ratio.  It is bursting with high-end specs like a 3000:1 contrast ratio and 300 cd/m² typical brightness with dynamic lighting and shading.

The viewing angle is 178 degrees horizontally and vertically, which will give a great viewing experience however you choose to set up your desk and office.  The SE790C houses four USB 3.0 super-charging ports which should be able to properly charge more demanding portable devices like the iPad with 2.1A.

The monitor also incorporates dual 7-watt stereo speakers to give the full multimedia experience.  Users can choose from PiP (Picture-in-Picture) and PbP 2.0 (Picture-by-Picture) to connect and view two devices simultaneously without the need to downscale content.  This will be nice for those who want to set up their console and computer to the same monitor to save desktop space.  The SE790C also comes with a height adjustable curved T-shaped, while the panel itself has a hidden VESA mount bracket.  Based on what Samsung calls 3000R (curvature radius of 3000mm) design the curved display is said to provide a “noticeably different viewing experience from traditional flat screen monitors and competitive curved monitors”.   Samsung claims that the monitor creates a panoramic-like view and creates a wider and fuller field of view.  It even claims that the monitor’s design creates a 3D-like effect, though this is not really likely and seems more like they are claiming that it is much more of an immersive display.

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Are you a frustrated Samsung customer? Annoyed by the lack of 4K content outside of Netflix? Well, DirecTV has your back, sorta. DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV) is partnering up with Samsung (KRX: 005930) to release a bunch of UHD content for any and all Samsung 4K TVs released in 2014. These TVs already have DirecTV built into them and do not require a receiver be directly connected to them in order for them to receive TV service.

The real big deal here is not the built-in DirecTV service, which has been available for quite some time, but rather the fact that now DirecTV will be serving 4K video through their DirecTV Genie HD DVR devices to Samsung TVs in glorious 4K. This service currently only offers 19 films to consumers in UHD. Many of the films are remastered in 4K, but that doesn’t change the fact that Samsung’s 4K portfolio was close to nil when they launched these 4K TVs. Sony was the only place you could really get access to a sizable library of 4K content as Samsung only included 5 movies in their Samsung UHD Video Pack on a 1TB hard drive with their curved UHD TVs earlier this year.

Thankfully for Samsung owners, Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) already offers a pretty sizable library of 4K content including both House of Cards and Breaking Bad as well as a few remastered movies and nature films. The expectation is that Netflix’s library will continue to increase in order to stay competitive with all other streaming services and Amazon who will inevitably do the same. If you consider how fast 4K is gaining adoption, there’s a very good chance that if cable providers don’t get on the 4K bandwagon quickly they will be left behind by the streaming providers that are finding a way to deliver 4K to consumers quickly and effectively. There is already talk of Comcast’s 4K video service, which will also supposedly launch on Samsung first, but it remains to be seen if that will use Comcast internet service or Comcast cable service.

The 4K content wars are heating up, but most of the studios and Blu-Ray are still missing. The studios are missing a huge opportunity to capitalize on the high price of 4K TVs and use that to their advantage to charge higher prices for 4K mastered content. The biggest problem is that Hollywood seems uninterested in launching 4K content even though the market is starving for it globally. So, as a result, a lot of older content is getting remastered. And the interesting thing is, if you look at the newer content that is doing well and already 4K ready like Breaking Bad or House of Cards that is because both productions took production into their own hands and did things their own way. As a result, both of them shot their entire productions in 4K and are the premiere content for Netflix 4K.

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DivX was once well known around the world as THE codec that you wanted to use for video. In fact, many pirated movies in the past were encoded using the DivX codec. A simple search of most pirated content online will still yield milions of DivX encoded titles. Why is this? Because DivX was simply the best at the time and it yielded the best quality and file sizes. And they still are in a lot of cases, they’ve just been hidden under the umbrella of Rovi for too long.

At one point, DivX was prominently displayed as a feature in countless TVs, DVD Players, and all sorts of media playback content. But what has remained is the DivX codec and the DivX player. And to this day, those two things remain the company’s core competencies. Their goal is to encourage content providers to use their codec in order to deliver the highest quality video while also enabling it at low bit rates. One of their newest features is DivX Omniview which allows for simultaneous protected viewing of the same content across multiple devices. They also continue to license their codec to consumer electronics manufacturers and already appear to have a 4K HEVC codec and full pipeline ready for implementation. DivX also has some media streaming codecs that enable some of their customers to deliver 1080P video at under 8 Mbit/s.

What is awesome is that you can still use their DivX Player, DivX converter, DivX web player and DivX HEVC plug-in to allow for some pretty amazing video playback of high-quality content that might otherwise look worse when played back over something like Windows Media player or some other default video player. All of these are still free software, meaning that the standard consumer can still benefit from all of the work that DivX has done and utilize it for their own personal use. Its good to see that they’re coming out from beneath the shadows and are supposedly looking to expand and grow. DivX was acquired by Parallax Capital Partners and StepStone Group which acquired DivX and its subsidiary MainConcept from Rovi Corporation just this week. Supposedly this had been planned for quite some time and yesterday’s announcement was merely a formality at this point. According to the UT, the company was spun off and bought by existing management with the help of Parallax and Stepstone for $75 million.

Not only were they purchased for $75 million (after Sonic Solutions (acquired by Rovi) paid $325 million) but the company’s CEO also said that, “This first year out of Rovi, we will have a good profit margin and a good revenue number. We are looking at hiring more people and maybe even engaging at some merger and acquisition activity as some point.” That’s great news for the San Diego based company that has seen its overall global staff shrink in recent years and may indicate a resurgence of DivX as a prominent player in the media player/codec industry. If anything 4K and HEVC give them a unique opportunity to get back into the thick of it and assert their dominance against other players.

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Google has finally released their findings of their ‘Google Video Quality Report‘ that we had talked about earlier this year which is really their YouTube Video Quality Report. Essentially, what Google went around and did was monitor which ISPs were delivering the best quality video service to their customers and how many of them were streaming in High Definition 720P (HD), Standard Definition 480P (SD) and Lower Definition sub-480P (LD). Google’s test takes a look at people’s video usage and how much of the overall video usage is HD video and then determines which ISP is capable of delivering HD video at a consistent level throughout the course of the month and the day. A simple explanation can be seen from the video Google has provided below.

Now that you’ve seen this polite and bubbly video that basically blames certain ISPs for causing video quality issues, you can also take a look at our own screenshots of Google’s YouTube Video Quality Report. Since we’re in San Diego, this report will mostly be Time Warner, Cox and AT&T Uverse since those are the three primary ISPs available in the entire county of San Diego. Additionally, we do have Webpass as a smaller ISP but they haven’t quite broken out into a major local ISP just yet. Even so, Webpass is clearly the fastest ISP in San Diego, which is why they share the YouTube HD Verified title along with Time Warner Cable and Verizon. The reason why Verizon is even on this list is because Verizon (unclassified) is actually Verizon’s business line service which tends to be fiber and is not offered in residential areas in San Diego. Not to mention, most of San Diego is served by Time Warner Cable and Cox with U-Verse coming in as a last option. Webpass is available, but they are slowly deploying their 100 Mbps service across the city but only to targeted areas where they can get a lot of customers with a single installation.

YouTube Shaming

As you can see, both AT&T’s Other (likely business) and U-Verse services are only deliver SD quality YouTube streaming bandwidth, along with CenturyLink (formerly Qwest) and Cox Communications. CenturyLink and Windstream are both delivering bandwidth to commercial customers, so naturally there isn’t going to be much traffic in the evening like you would see from Time Warner Cable, Webpass, AT&T or Cox. It is very easy to tell which ISPs are commercial and which ones are residential purely by the peak hours of usage.  Below, we’ve included all of the HD and SD charts because results will vary depending on where you live and some of you won’t be able to replicate this unless you manually change your location to San Diego and that isn’t linkable.

YouTube Comparison

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Is it possible that my 2408WFP is already out-dated?

What makes this very interesting is the explanation what Splendid video engine actually is. It is obvious that Splendid is a name for custom design C-Media chips that enhance the sound (on Xonar cards) and video (on selected graphics cards) quality. In case of displays, “Splendid Video Intelligence Technology” is a name for color engine that analyzes and modifies the video playback. There are five presets that should enhance your experience, but one of most important features to us is the fact that this technology clears distortion when playing 4:3 content on these 16:10 screens.
Out of launched displays, we like VK266H the most. This display comes with rotatable 2.0 MPixel camera and those mics that enable seamless internet communication. One of things that pissed me the most was the fact that if you used video conferencing, your notebook would be better equipped than the desktop. I had numerous video conferences where my notebook camera was capturing my face while I watched at 24″ screen, and that just looked odd.
If you haven’t tried working on 24 or 26″ screens, I would personally recommend that you switch from limits of 4:3/5:4. Could any of these four monitors be your ideal candidate? Only time will tell.

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