LG 5K display must be kept at least 2 meters away from Wi-Fi routers

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/apple-lg-5k-display-issues

by minikites • 9 years ago

103 80 9 years ago

jbmorgado2• 9 years ago

What seems a complete disregard for the costumer is that the solution proposed by LG itself is to "increase the distance between the monitor and the router".

Seems that working directly with Apple made them take a hint from the "you are just holding it wrong" excuse of Steve Jobs.

ClassyJacket2• 9 years ago

Steve Jobs never said "you are just holding it wrong".

jbmorgado2• 9 years ago

He wrote, ipsis verbis, "don't hold it that way".

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jun/25/ipho...

naz• 9 years ago

Does this mean LG is violating the FCC requirement that a device must accept interference?

throwaway37482• 9 years ago

It's the reverse. The FCC is about jamming the signal not being jammed.

jrkatz• 9 years ago

Elaborating, my understanding is that the 'accept interference' bit is more about placing such devices low on the legal totem pole: The TV owner or manufacturer doesn't have a legal right to _not_ be interfered with; it _must accept_ interference. Whether it continues to work or fails after 'accepting' the interference is its own business. With that interpretation, they would be in violation of that clause if they sued the router manufacturer over this.

aexaey• 9 years ago

It's both:

Title 47 - Telecommunication. § 15.5 (b) [...] subject to the conditions that no harmful interference is caused and that interference must be accepted [...]

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2015-title47-vol1/xml/CFR-...

PeanutNore• 9 years ago

No, but it raises the question of whether the lack of shielding causing this issue also causes the monitor to radiate excessive RF noise that may interfere with other devices. If it's sensitive to 2.4Ghz signals, there may be signals generated inside it in the same frequency band which can likely escape just as easily as the signal from a router can intrude.

jrockway• 9 years ago

USB 3.0 has been known to interfere with WiFi for quite a while. I think Intel mentioned it when they announced USB 3.

Of course, this is a slightly different signalling mechanism (Thunderbolt 3), but basically, you have to put the spurious emissions somewhere that doesn't interfere with licensed radio services, which basically means 900MHz, 2.4GHz or 5GHz, and they picked 2.4GHz.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/universal-serial-b...

Johnny555• 9 years ago

Sounds like it's going above and beyond the regulations by not just accepting the interference, but it's inviting it with open arms.

blackguardx• 9 years ago

The clause about accepting interference means that the device must not fail when recieving interference in a way that would cause it to radiate on another frequency. Product functional failure otherwise is not regulated in the US. The FCC doesn't care if your product bricks itself as long as it doesn't jam the spectrum.

I've been through this testing before. They blast your device with many different frequecies and measure what comes out.

The test was harder to pass in the old days when there many discrete mixers inside radios and poor isolation between the RX and TX paths through the duplexer.

gm-conspiracy• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_47_CFR_Part_15 ?

knarph• 9 years ago

Sounds about right. Nothing some creative use of foil wont fix. Just what I'd want to do to my new ~$1000 monitor.

edwhitesell• 9 years ago

Part 15 is only for transmissions. However, it sounds like it isn't handling reception very well.

lightedman• 9 years ago

Bet that USB-C cable is the issue. I've come across plenty that had horrible RF shielding.

ihuman• 9 years ago

I wonder if a simple ferrite bead would fix the issue.

romanovcode4• 9 years ago

This monitor is pathetic. 900 dollars for a monitor and it doesn't even support upstream.

Save your time and money and buy a DELL or something that actually works guys.

refulgentis• 9 years ago

What is upstream?

paws4• 9 years ago

According to a comment[1]" "An upstream port connects to the host device (PC) while the downstream ports are where you plug in peripheral devices (thumb drives, printers, etc.)."

Of course the 5k monitor does have three USB3 ports. (Not Thunderbolt ports, ostensibly because there isn't enough bandwidth left.)

[1] https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/upstream-vs-downstre...

romanovcode4• 9 years ago

It's when you connect your keyboard and mouse to monitor instead of laptop/pc.

Essentially only one wire goes to your laptop/pc instead of 3.

AJ007• 9 years ago

Best looking monitor I've ever owned, no problems yet.

$1000 (after tax) is a great deal compared to the long dark years where the LCDs weren't as good as the CRTs which they had totally replaced.

wukerplank2• 9 years ago

What irks me is the lack of an Ethernet port. Would a USB-C to Ethernet adapter work?

markonen• 9 years ago

I have one of these displays at the office (as well as the 4K version) and they both very much feel like an Apple product sans the aluminum casing.

So this makes me suspect that the metal case was really supposed to be there when the electronics were put together.

bluedino• 9 years ago

I disagree. I used one at an Apple store and it was terribly slow. It looked great, of course, but as soon as you tried to use Expose or Mission Control (whatever it's called now) it turned into a slideshow and almost made me think the computer froze up.

throwawayish• 9 years ago

The computer being unable to render it's UI fast enough has exactly what to do with the display...?

falcolas• 9 years ago

I'd be curious if an enterprising soul with some foil and a ground could identify the specific vulnerable hardware and put out some notes on how to, err, patch it.

FrancoDiaz2• 9 years ago

I've had a couple 27" 1440p monitors since those cheap Korean (QNX and the like) came on the market a few years ago.

The natural upgrade path for me would be to ditch those and get a big-ass 5k monitor eventually, but I don't see the market really moving in that direction in an affordable way.

One 4k isn't going to cut it and I'm worried two 4k monitors is going to be to much from a field of vision perspective....maybe I'm wrong there.

Has anybody upgraded from a couple 1440p monitors to a couple 4k monitors, and what's your experience been?

systemtest• 9 years ago

Have you thought about the 40" 4K displays from Philips and Iiyama? I believe they are around $600.

Tom1971• 9 years ago

I went from 2 1440p to one 32" 4K and 1 1440p.

It's been one of the biggest productivity improvements since moving from 640x480 to 1024x768.

The 1440p is now only used for minor stuff like email and not really necessary anymore.

I soon moved to a 32" 4K at home as well, because I just couldn't stand just 1440 anymore.

One of the interesting parts is that I don't use 4K fully: it's too much surface are and your head tilts too much to see everything at once. But what's great is that I can put a background process as full screen in the background and have a 3500x1800 window in front in which I do my real work. So I can observe the proceedings of the background talks without having to toggle windows all the time.

bryanlarsen• 9 years ago

Agreed, I think 32" 4K is the sweet spot for Linux & Windows. The PPI is 140, which is "marginally retina" -- you can see pixels if you get close. Higher PPI is sharper even once you get past "retina", but it's definitely a case of diminishing returns. But the nice thing about 140 PPI is that you can run without scaling if you absolutely need to. You have to squint and you wouldn't want to do it too often, but it does work for those rare apps that don't scale well.

And the 32" size is about perfect too, IMO. The height is about the maximum you can view without head movement.

FrancoDiaz2• 9 years ago

I'm starting to agree with you and Bryanlarsen that 32" 4k seems to be a sweet spot.

scrollaway• 9 years ago

I run two 2560p QNX monitors. They're wonderful, would highly recommend; I think two of them will set you back around $400, a bargain compared to 4k monitors.

mizzack4• 9 years ago

One 40" 4K has been perfect for me. Roughly the same DPI as my old QNIX (~110).

I got the Samsung UN40KU6290 (does 4k@60 with 4:4:4 chroma) for under $300. The PC mode is crisp and responsive. Calibrates well enough. Only complaint is slow GTG time can look blurry when scrolling text.

kentt• 9 years ago

Seconded. I have the same monitor and it's a perfect upgrade from my old 3 27"-24" monitors. 40" seems perfect to not have turn your head too much, two would be too much for me.

cpr4• 9 years ago

I've got a UN40JU6500 (40" 4K Samsung) on my MBP (15" late 2013) but it doesn't do @60, as far as I know.

Are you driving this from a Mac or from a PC? What kind of cable are you using exactly?

2bluesc• 9 years ago

I bought this monitor the other week after hearing things like this but I couldn't get over two things:

1) It doesn't power off or on automatically. I need the remote 2) The viewing angle made seeing the corners difficult on my admittedly shallower then probably needed desk with no scaling, (40" seemed like the sweet spot for PPI without scaling).

How do you cope with (1)? I'm amazed that Intel, Nvidia and AMD haven't thrown a HDMI-CEC IP code into their GPUs and made it trivially to turn on and off displays over HDMI.

Matthias247• 9 years ago

If you have 2 27" with 1440p and go to 2 27" with 4k which do you think the field of vision changes? It should be exactly the same. The potential differences would be that you can have either more screen estate (but with tiny rendering) or a much better image quality if scaling is used. I would at the moment always go for 4k due to better image quality - and not for anything else.

avn2109• 9 years ago

The trick is to put some of your monitors in portrait orientation. It's a game changer for reading text and for writing code (aka 95% of my computer use).

hinkley• 9 years ago

Especially if you can get a new main monitor that is exactly as tall as the old screen was wide. I've seen a couple people pull that off and it works really really well, better still if you do a color calibration.

pbnjay• 9 years ago

Well I'm glad I didn't invest in this monitor yet! My desk in less than 2 meters from my wifi and I can't move either easily... (wifi mounted to ceiling, nowhere else for the desk)

antidaily• 9 years ago

Best alternative?

paws4• 9 years ago

This monitor was Apple's chance to ease the USB-C transition and IMO they blew it.

The previous gen Thunderbolt display effectively brought all the useful ports[1] back to the MacBooks with one cable, and made even the Air viable for a professional. It certainly was a big factor for me back in 2011.

Unfortunately with the current 5k display, the three included ports aren't even USB 3.1 gen 2. Like many other pros, I prefer to have dedicated keyboard/mouse, speakers, and Ethernet, and would have been happy to run a second cable if it brought those things back.

Right now it's looking like our best 'pro 5k' option is duct taping a hub[2] to the back of someone else's display. And it's not clear which hubs support the 15" MBP 87W charging requirement.

Feels like such a missed opportunity.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Apple-MC914LL-27-inch-Thunderbolt-Dis...

[2] https://eshop.macsales.com/preorder/owc-thunderbolt-3-dock/

minimaxir2• 9 years ago

Like many professionals, I prefer to have dedicated keyboard/mouse, speakers, and Ethernet, and would have been happy to run a second cable if it brought those things back.

Each port provides 5V/1.5A; enough for multiple USB-A peripherals on a single port with a USB-C to multi-USB-A. (I have a LG 5K and I use a keyboard, mouse, and microphone on one port; it works great) And USB-C speed (5 Gbps) will not bottleneck data transfer in that case.

paws4• 9 years ago

Glad that's working nicely for your needs. Are you happy with the display overall?

I agree for the low bandwidth devices you've mentioned it's fine to hang everything off the one line. There is of course a speed hit for higher bandwidth needs[1] e.g. RAID arrays but that was true for the previous gen too.[2]

Nevertheless I still find it a shame we lost the variety of integrated ports from the previous gen. If we have to buy extra dongles anyway I'm equally ready to check out competitor panels.

AFAIK the LG 5k is the only panel offering 87W power output, right?

[1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/07/review-lg-ultrafin...

[2] http://www.macworld.com/article/1163773/storage/thunderbolt-...

davzie3• 9 years ago

I have this 5k monitor. It sits around 30cm from my ASUS 2.4 and 5ghz router. It's connected to my Macbook Pro 2016 15". I connect one USB hub via a USB A to USB C adapter. This hub powers a MIDI keyboard, Native Instruments Maschine, FocusRite Scarlett audio interface, SD cards when I put them in, USB hard drives when I plug them in. The hub hides behind the monitor. I personally love sitting down to work with this monitor each day and I don't understand the arguments against it. There is nothing better on the market today for the spec you get.

SeanDav• 9 years ago

"There is nothing better on the market today for the spec you get."

Aside from the small detail of the monitor getting blown away by a router nearby - a router nearby is not exactly an uncommon occurrence in a computing environment. Not to mention the other issues like possible kernel reboots and flickering caused by unknown factors.

paws4• 9 years ago

Nice to hear you have an audio interface working there! Sounds like you do professional audio -- curious what kind of bandwidth needs you're expecting to have?

It's a minor nit, but one reason I prefer Thunderbolt hubs is because they hang directly off the PCI bus.

Historically speaking, with USB the host CPU intermediates all bus traffic. The 'fire' in FireWire (vs e.g. USB2) was how devices could access host memory directly.

It's probably a negligible amount of overhead these days, but my take is, if it's possible to use Thunderbolt and free up CPU cycles for whatever you're doing, why not?

Love to hear opinions from someone who has more recent knowledge on this.

rocky1138• 9 years ago

I'm not a fan of Apple, but I think it's unfair to blame Apple in this case. If it's an LG monitor, it's LG's problem.

symfoniq• 9 years ago

Apple designated this monitor as the successor to the discontinued Thunderbolt Display, and they sell it alongside Macs in the Apple Store.

deathanatos2• 9 years ago

The kernel panics and lockups are not LG's fault.

I somewhat agree with you, but the manner in which Apple is promoting this display combined with the utter lack of ports on the MBP (hooking up my previous two displays would have been a dongle nightmare) make me less willing to excuse them.

thatswrong0• 9 years ago

Yeah seriously. The display crashed multiple El Capitan running MBPs at my office.. so they had to upgrade to Sierra. You think it would work flawlessly instead.

cm2187• 9 years ago

I had a 60in plasma TV from LG that was systematically disconnecting my DSL connection when the image was too bright. The telephone cable was going under the wooden floor under the TV. Solved it by switching to an LED TV.

iwaffles• 9 years ago

I haven't had any issues with the 5K monitor and it's about 3 feet from the router. At least for me it works incredibly well.

deathanatos2• 9 years ago

You are lucky. I have an LG 5K, and I have experienced every symptom (excepting the "no nearby wireless" bit, as I'm not sure if there is wireless nearby) described here:

kernel panics on the host machine, random flickering […], and USB devices not being reliably detected when plugged into the monitor.

I'll have to check where my APs are, now that I know about this association. But it's been a damn struggle; I feel like 50% of the times I connect to it, I have to disconnect & reconnect USB devices to get them to be detected on the host.

selckin• 9 years ago

I have an ASUS VG248QE (144hz) monitor, and when i put my phone under it, the screen goes black

LG 5K display must be kept at least 2 meters away from Wi-Fi routers

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