00:00.79 James Welcome back everyone to Merge Conflict. Frank, I forgot to put you on the right screen again. Let me just put your little beautiful face. at that a little beautiful face right there on the screen. Welcome back everyone to Merge Conflict, your weekly developer podcast. 00:11.31 James I'm not even going to Frank talk because now I can see his big, beautiful brown or blue or green eyes. um i am one of your hosts, James Monson-Magno. 00:19.89 Frank Thank 00:20.11 James With me, as always, the most starry-eyed, beautiful, bright blue, magenta eye man that I know, Frank Krueger. How's it going, buddy? 00:30.57 Frank I do not have blue eyes. We've only known each other for like 10 or 15 years, though. But good guess. Good try. Good try. Hi, James. You have blurry, blocky JPEG compressed eyes or MPEG compressed eyes. 00:43.57 Frank It's wonderful to be here. i like compliments. Everyone likes compliments. But I feel like you're buttering me up for something. 00:52.15 James No, not at all. i want to give a quick shout out one walk walk walk what wont shout out to the one and only secondary thrift markets in your neighborhood. 00:53.45 Frank I'm 01:02.24 Frank This 01:02.54 James I'm talking about the St. Vinny's. I'm talking about the Goodwills. I'm talking about the Humane Society Restores. I want to give a shout out to the Oregon Goodwill where I picked up a Dell four k monitor. 01:14.95 Frank is why. 01:15.00 James 4K monitor. four k monitor 01:16.77 Frank You got a monitor? James, I wanted to talk about monitors, but I thought there's no way he's going to let me talk about cheap monitors on the podcast. But now you're talking about a Dell monitor. That's cool. i was ah My Dell monitor just died. 01:30.84 Frank I should have. 01:31.70 James Oh, wow. 01:32.77 Frank Yeah, that's funny. It it was a great monitor. Great little guy. Served me well. um I abused it, but it kept running all the way up until it stopped running. 01:44.26 James It's pretty good. I have my Wii set up over here in in in the garage area and I got like a, I got like a, I went to St. Vinny's and They had a 1080p Dell monitor. 01:56.10 James I was super excited about it and it was $20, but it was green stickered and green stickers were 50% off that day. 01:58.00 Frank Cool. 02:01.02 Frank Heck yeah. 02:04.29 James So it was $10 with the power cord. 02:04.62 Frank Oh my God. Basically free. You probably spent that in gas getting there. 02:08.02 James Basically. That's very true. Exactly. So I got pretty excited because obviously for the Wii, I only need, it's like 480p or something like that, right? So I don't need, yeah. 02:17.88 Frank Oh, is it? Yeah. 02:19.26 James So I just have it here. 02:19.84 Frank It's not even HD. 02:20.18 James So my D 02:20.72 Frank The Wii is not HD. 02:22.58 James four a p 02:25.31 Frank That's not HD, buddy. 02:25.73 James Progressive. No, it's not HD. 02:27.00 Frank ah You can put all the P's on the end you want. 02:27.60 James No, no, it's it's not. No. 02:31.09 Frank It's still not HD. Okay. 02:32.79 James It it can it can do widescreen. They'd recommend letterbox. I mean, the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo Wii release date... 02:39.00 Frank Yeah, I guess that was just at the transition time, I guess, when 720p was coming out. 02:40.66 James 2006. 02:43.80 James Yeah. Yeah. two thousand and six 02:47.84 Frank Yeah, I guess so. Doesn't seem 20 years, though. My God. Okay. Wow. It's a collector's item. Can't believe you were able to get it working. Do you have to get an RF modulator for it? 02:56.66 James Oh, it works. 02:59.66 James Uh, no. So I went on. So, so this monitor, the one, the Dell, won the first Dell one that I got, which was only $10. 03:05.53 Frank Yeah. 03:06.39 James is a 23 inch or whatever. I like, this is perfect. It's going to fit really nice. Cause I'm going DDR it. And i was like, just need to cheat monitor came with the power cord. Perfect. And it just has a VGA and HDMI. 03:18.61 James So i was like, cool. I know nowadays they have a, I have, it I have the RGB, but I also have the, the one with the five or whatever, you know, so you can get the boosted colors, the, the, the green and the yellow and the, the blue. 03:31.12 Frank Oh, I guess. You don't need that for the boosted colors, though. You want DisplayPort these days so you can run your AK monitors at 120 hertz. 03:40.34 James Well, again, this is a 1080p monitor and the Wii is only 480p. So I did do ah an amazon purchase or its Amazon purchase, which is you can just get the proprietary port. So the the port on the Wii is proprietary. 03:52.50 James It's not like a, it's not, it's a, it's proprietary. 03:53.12 Frank Ah, sure. 03:55.62 James So they have a proprietary. 03:56.16 Frank Classic Nintendo. 03:57.89 James Yeah, exactly. And now it is better, but proprietary to HDMI out. So I could just HDMI the puppy out. Right. That's awesome. 04:06.62 Frank Mm-hmm. 04:07.54 James So two days ago, I set it up, turn the puppy on. Boom, there it is. All my Wii games. I'm so excited about it. And no audio, just like just like earlier. 04:18.50 Frank Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. 04:19.58 James And I go, wait a second. I look up the monitor online, right? 04:22.18 Frank Sure. 04:24.60 James No speakers. I go, okay, well, no problem. There's gotta be a aux jack out, 3.5 millimeter, our best friend in the world, 3.5 millimeter. 04:32.01 Frank Mm-hmm. 04:33.30 James No, millimeter out, none. 04:34.32 Frank No. ah Classic. 04:36.95 James This is just a monitor, nothing else. 04:37.86 Frank They took that part from Apple, but not the... Well, I guess it could be worse. It could have been a lightning connector. um Yeah, that's tough. 04:46.53 James That's true. 04:47.51 Frank I ran into that because I've been getting back into my RCA video disc collection. Yeah. And I went through all this trouble to get like good sampling cards because it's actually an analog signal like VGA. 04:59.76 Frank And you actually need to get a capture card for it. 05:00.44 James Yeah. 05:02.94 Frank Go through all this work. And then I realized, oh, no audio, Frank. You need to buy the capture card that also has audio jacks on it. 05:07.36 James Yep. 05:11.27 Frank Yeah, big dummy. Kind of forgot about that part. It's so because like we're so lucky to live in the HDMI era where everything's just done over one cable, which is now making me wonder, gosh, does DisplayPort do audio? 05:25.45 Frank Probably not. Huh? Right in if you know the answer to that question. 05:30.04 James I want to say yes, but it is called dis it is called display port, not with display and audio port. 05:31.49 Frank You think it does? i know, right? Not MediaPort. 05:36.99 James so 05:37.06 Frank ah not media port 05:40.92 James well So I'm running into this scenario and I go, oh, dang, because I bought the one cable. They actually have a bunch of adapters for the Wii that is just a dongle. 05:45.01 Frank yeah wow 05:49.83 James And most of those dongles have an HDMI out and a 3.5 millimeter out on them. on them 05:54.50 Frank gotcha 05:55.10 James So I go, okay, well, maybe I'll return the cable, get the dongle. Well, it's been so long that I can't return the cable. And if I want to get the dongle, it's like, well, I got to get the dongle, but then I also got to get speakers. 06:05.98 James And then I'm like, okay, what if I just keep the cable? Is there another way to extract said audio? And there is, there's an h dmi x an HDMI audio extractor that you can get. 06:14.89 Frank I have an idea. ah 06:20.48 Frank OK. So what what's it doing? it it's It's connecting into the Wii and presenting an HDMI port, like a female HDMI? 06:28.02 James So, so it has an in and an out. So it sits in between and it hijacks the audio. So you would plug the HDMI from the Wii into the audio extractor and another HDMI out of the audio extractor into the TV. 06:40.97 James And then there would be audio pipes out that you could do to a speaker. 06:42.43 Frank Love it. 06:46.14 James And I go, 06:46.37 Frank I love AV dongles. 06:48.41 James And I go, this, Frank, is getting too complicated because one, I'd have to go find another HDMI cable. And that's like, yeah, I guess I get a St. 06:54.88 Frank Yeah. 06:55.81 James Vinny's. But then this HDMI audio extractor, $25. That is two of the monitors. 07:03.12 Frank Yeah. 07:04.74 James And I go, i can this cannot happen. 07:05.26 Frank Yeah. 07:07.22 James And then I'm like, okay, maybe I'll just get the dongle. The dongle's five bucks. And then I'll get little speakers. I'll get little 3.5 millimeter jack speakers. 07:16.56 Frank Yeah. 07:16.58 James And I guess I'd have to get the cable. These speakers are expensive. 07:19.31 Frank I feel like... 07:21.63 James They're like 15, 20 bucks. 07:23.62 Frank Yeah, okay. So your store didn't have those. People are always getting rid of receivers. At least they used to be like 20 years ago. And they used to always be getting rid of junky PC speakers. 07:35.57 Frank Remember when you used to buy a PC, you always had to buy speakers with it because that's how we rolled back in the day. 07:39.34 James Yeah. 07:40.94 Frank God, no one does that anymore, huh? Because all the laptops have unbuilt it and everything. But I feel like because of that, all those kinds of stores are just full of those things. But maybe yours is a little picked over. 07:52.09 James Well, I hadn't gone to the store yet, Frank. So then i said, well, take this Amazon. I'm going to Goodwill. So I walked my butt over to the Goodwill and I go, okay, we're on, it I'm on the hunt for one, either a monitor that has speakers, right? 07:59.38 Frank Yeah. 08:05.88 Frank Yeah. Oh, okay. 08:07.33 James That'd be ideal. 08:07.62 Frank Fair enough. It's called a TV, but yes. 08:08.95 James They have them usually sometimes. Or a TV. yeah Yes, or a TV. Or a TV, because they also have little tiny TVs there. that's also But it would also need to have a Visa mount. 08:17.56 Frank Yeah. 08:19.92 James And TVs usually don't have Visa mounts, always, on the smaller ones. 08:22.81 Frank Oh. See, I was going to suggest you get like a cool CRT TV if you're going to go full retro, but it's hard to visa mount as a CRT TV. 08:24.38 James Sometimes they do. Yeah. 08:31.64 James yeah So I go, okay, like maybe I'll get that or at least need to get a monitor that has an audio out. And then I would need speakers as well. So I walk into the store, back wall. I know back wall, electronics area, let's go. No one's back there. but up but but but but but but up Right. All these, I don't know, 10 of them or so. 08:50.33 James And I lay my eyes on this beauty 27 inch Dell monitor. That's bigger than a 23 inch by four inches, Frank. 08:58.16 Frank That's a lot bigger. Yeah. yeah 09:00.22 James So the first thing I do is I start to go through and I go, okay, let me just look at all the inputs. And none of them have speakers. 09:05.11 Frank Mm-hmm. 09:06.24 James They're all actually monitors. There were some TVs, but they were bigger. i don't got that size. The visa amount is only up to 30 inches. 09:10.63 Frank OK. 09:12.12 James So, cause it was 10 bucks, you know, and it's already, it's already installed on the wall. So I go, okay, let me look up this AOC one. I don't know. It's 10 ADP or let me go this other one. And then I look and they're all 25 bucks, every single one of them, $25. 09:25.62 James It doesn't matter if it's 20 inches, 30 inches, 09:25.63 Frank Oh, great. 09:28.27 Frank um A pricer is just like, whatever, it's a monitor. 09:30.94 James um It's a monitor, a monitor is a monitor. So then I look at this Dell and I'm like, it's a little big, 27 inches. It's got a display port. It's got an HDMI. 09:41.63 Frank Ah, ah. 09:41.78 James It's got a, it's, it's got a multiple USB threes underneath it. And it has like a three or four other adapters. Like this thing's got ports, bro. It's got ports for days. 09:52.71 Frank Oh, I love it. Proper monitor. 09:54.42 James Um, and 3.5 millimeter Jack. 09:59.89 Frank Love it. 10:00.94 James Mm-hmm. So I'm like, okay, well, let me make sure that this thing like is good. 10:01.75 Frank Classic. 10:07.22 James Let me find a spec sheet. Cause again, I can't really see much besides the ports. 10:09.22 Frank Yeah. 10:10.70 James I'm like, maybe it even has speakers. 10:11.72 Frank Should have just brought a little Raspberry Pi in your pocket so you can plug it in and see if there's any dead pixels. 10:11.82 James Like, I don't know. Right. um 10:19.16 James That would have been great, right? So I typed this puppy in. This is a 27-inch Ultra hd IPS monitor, by resolution, hertz refresh rate, random refresh rate. 10:28.22 Frank Wow. 10:34.80 Frank What? Yeah. 10:36.70 James um it is ah it's got 10:39.85 Frank That's a beautiful monitor. 10:40.35 James 1 billion colors, 78 degrees vertical and horizontal viewing angles. It's got twilt um tilt and swivel projection. 10:51.05 James It's got an LED backlight in it. 10:52.88 Frank My God. 10:53.78 James um and 10:54.41 Frank You lucky devil. 10:56.06 James And it's just sitting there. Now, I don't know if it works. 10:57.75 Frank The 4K monitor. 10:58.18 James There's no power cable. It's 4K monitor. 10:59.36 Frank Oh, you still haven't tested it? You're giving me all these specs. You're killing me. 11:04.12 James So Frank Kruger, $25. twenty five dollars I was like, okay, it's got a blue sticker. And I go to Heather, what's the color of the day? And she's like, purple. I was like, ah, ah so close, but I still need a speaker. 11:15.46 James So i go over and I look at all, like all this. So they do have all these speakers. They have these old ones that aren't even 3.5 millimeter jacks. 11:20.00 Frank review 11:22.31 James They're the old, like nine prong ones. 11:23.75 Frank Yeah. 11:24.95 James You know what I mean? Those are classic. 11:26.72 Frank i have no That seems like way too many prongs. i thought you were going to say it's just the two speaker wires and you actually need an amplifier to drive them. 11:34.01 James They had some of those. They had some of those. They had some of those. 11:35.79 Frank Cool. 11:36.92 James So they had this one. It's kind of like a flat one. It looks like a little sound bar on it. And I was like, okay, it's it's seven bucks or whatever. I'll buy this. So for 30 bucks, I get this monitor and I snag it. 11:44.96 Frank Yeah. 11:48.24 James I'm walking around the store. I'm all proud of myself. 11:50.50 Frank don't Don't let that one go. 11:50.56 James And I got this. 11:51.62 Frank That's a good deal. Yeah. 11:52.57 James Yep. So we get it. And i'm like, okay, I get it home. And it's got a VESA mount at the back. So i unplug it. Boom, boom, boom. 11:57.17 Frank Oh, man. 11:57.49 James Plug it in. 11:58.13 Frank Perfect monitor. 11:58.33 James I get the audio in there. Boom, boom, boom. And i like turn it on. It's like, boom, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. And I was like, whoa, amazing. Audio coming out of the little speaker. And then the speaker, it's got like ah RGB colors. 12:09.89 James It's like in disco mode. I'm like, that is way too much. 12:11.10 Frank Oh my god. Oh. 12:12.45 James It's perfect. Anyways, shout outs to the St. Vinny. Say it out to the to Goodwills. Goodwill, a little little pricey, but like still pretty good. 12:23.38 Frank That is a wonderful story. I want to tell you my monitor story, but I paid a lot more than you and I'm not sure I got anything. I got worse than you. So I'm a little jelly now, James. 12:32.89 James Oh, no. 12:36.29 Frank Good job. 12:36.92 James Yeah. 12:37.17 Frank of Bravo. 12:37.78 James yeah 12:38.25 Frank a Good job to the store for pricing it so reasonably. Bad job to everyone in your neighborhood that didn't catch on to that deal. I wonder how long that monitor was sitting there. 12:45.66 James I know. When I went to the St. Vinny's, they had a bunch of them set up and i what I did like about the St. Vinny's is that they were all tested. So they had a sticker. was like tested, tested, tested, and then it had the resolution on the front and the size. 12:55.47 Frank Ah. Mm-hmm. Nice. 12:58.92 James So you knew right away what exactly it was. Uh, but I didn't look at the ports on that one. So that's totally on my, my fault there. So that was really cool. And at St. Vinny's they're different prices. So they were different prices based on the size and the style and features. 13:13.61 James So i was like, oh, they're doing the research. Whereas Goodwill, it's like 25 bucks, slap it on. Right. that Not even, to i have no idea if it was tested, but it works. 13:18.62 Frank Yeah. yeah Yeah. 13:21.85 James So that's good. 13:22.89 Frank Yeah, I don't have too many on the island. We don't have too many. we have actually two or three stores that could potentially have electronics, but they get picked over pretty fast because it's an island and people are always looking for the reused stuff, but they never test them. So that's why I was bringing up the Raspberry Pi. like I actually want to build a tiny little Raspberry Pi that's dedicated to just plugging into a TV. Or I guess I could just bring like a Chrome stick or Chrome, whatever it is, and bring one of those and jam it in. But I need something to test these monitors so I know what to buy and all that kind of stuff. 13:57.62 Frank Can tell you my monitor story? 13:59.51 James I'm ready. Yes, because you know we had done a whole podcast about we were both like, oh, do we get the new Apple display? 14:05.26 Frank Right. 14:06.24 James And no one has made any decisions. And I got a ah used 27-inch 4K monitor, apparently. 14:10.80 Frank You crushed it. You won. Yeah. 14:14.89 James yeah Anyways, yeah so so do did you need 14:15.66 Frank For 20 bucks, 25 bucks. 14:18.49 James did you need another monitor 14:20.74 Frank I did. um So I used to rock um iMac plus the second monitor. 14:21.82 James okay 14:25.42 Frank And honestly, I don't use the second monitor much. But when you're doing development, you know, nowadays you got Solution Explorer, a code window, a second code window next to it so you can reference code. 14:36.75 Frank And now you got the stupid chat window. horizontal real estate is gone these days. I need my agent. I need everything big. My eyes are getting worse. All my fonts are huge. So I do just like the real estate is gone. 14:48.04 James Yep. 14:50.41 Frank So I used to pride myself on being able to do like mobile development on a laptop, you know, like little iPhone window off to the left and the code everywhere else. 14:58.18 James It's cute. 14:59.04 Frank There's just no room anymore. There's no room. And so I finally was getting frustrated with toggling through windows. I'm like, i actually need a second monitor. And the cool thing was, because my eyes have gone bad, i was like, you know what? 15:13.04 Frank I don't need to pay $1,600 for the Apple Display Pro whatever. 5K sounds wonderful. i can I can't even see pixels on a, I don't even know what this thing is. I think it's a 1440P, 1440 vertical. 15:29.26 Frank So I have this nice cheap monitor. It's an Asus. And I'm like, you know what? This monitor is probably like 10 bucks now. I'll go pick up a second one. It's fine. 15:37.92 James There you go. You want a matching. 15:38.89 Frank It's like a 20-year-old monitor. Yeah, I wish I could have gone to your store and pick it. 15:40.44 James Yeah, match it up. 15:42.41 Frank Yeah, match it up, right? Well, it turns out you can't match it. They don't make that model anymore. It's the PA27 blah, blah, blah. Now they only... asked Sorry, it was the PB27 blah, blah, blah. 15:53.76 Frank Now they only make the PA27 blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, fine, whatever. 15:57.52 James Yeah. 15:59.20 Frank But it's like $250. I'm like, well, that's still significantly cheaper than the Apple display. So I'm i'm in for $250. 16:05.02 James Yeah, good deal. 16:06.75 Frank It's fine. It's fine. 16:07.78 James Once it's a half a stick of RAM, that's a half a stick of RAM. That's one gig of RAM. 16:10.85 Frank had Oh my god, RAM is so ridiculous now. 16:12.18 James I believe. 16:13.85 Frank It's like monitors are the only reasonably priced thing these days. like I feel like we should all just be buying monitors. 16:17.21 James i I, I heard a CPUs are like next, like CPUs are like the next like race for some reason. 16:22.47 Frank Oh no, really? 16:24.03 James Yeah. 16:24.96 Frank They already got expensive a little while ago. I think you usually have to spend like $400 or $500 for a decent one these days. 16:27.35 James Yeah. Anyways. 16:32.44 James Well, I saw your breakdown in your blog post and I was like, dang, you're a little 30, 90 box. 16:34.64 Frank Yeah. 16:36.20 James I was like, dang, that is accurate. 16:37.55 Frank Yeah, and that was... 16:37.84 James i didn't know if that was what you spent or if that was like current modern day prices. 16:41.78 Frank It's not what I spent. Thank goodness. I built that machine years ago. So things were a lot cheaper. RAM was basically free back then. CPUs, I think I spent 300 on the CPU. 16:51.96 James Oh, wow. Yeah. Anyways. 16:53.54 Frank Anyway, anyway, monitors, monitors. So I made the mistake of going to a chatbot. So like, hey, chatbot, are any these monitors equivalent? And oh my God, I went down the hardware rabbit hole. I think I was in that chat bot for the next one hour talking monitors. And AV talk is the worst kind of talk on the whole planet. Because all of sudden you start wondering like, do I need IPS or is VA good enough? What does VA even stand for? Do I need 120 hertz? Maybe 240 hertz. 17:24.07 Frank hmm, what is UHD and is that bigger than QHD and what is WQHD? You can go down like definitions all day long. And then all sudden it'll say something like HDR10 compliant. You're like, oh, what is HDR10? I've heard of HDR, but I've never heard of a 10 before. 17:42.60 James Yeah. 17:42.90 Frank And so I went down this funny rabbit hole of I was just going to buy the identical cheap monitor. But through an hour of chatting with an AI, i got upsold to an IPS display because it's better than VA, apparently. 17:56.53 James Yeah. 17:58.68 Frank And then once once it got into my head, i decided I actually do want an HDR monitor. And I have a business excuse, James. Forever, i have wanted to add um HDR support to iCircuit. 18:14.76 James Yeah. 18:15.03 Frank because you can make an LED bright. Overpower the LED and and then it's blinding you and you have to step back and like, oh my God, this connect to LED, it's too bright. It's kind of a dream of mine. I wanna get the app to that point. But sRGB is just not gonna cut it. I need HDR for that. I need something blinding, but I don't wanna spend $1,600. But it turns out for you can actually get some decent HDR um screens there's basically two technologies for this. 18:45.86 Frank Sorry, I'm breaking down an hour-long conversation with a chatbot. 18:48.47 James Well, no, no because hdr so when the Switch 2 came out, it was going to be the first game console. 18:53.26 Frank umna 18:54.22 James I guess the Xbox had HDR, but it was the first time where like the Switch like has 120 hertz as HDR. 18:56.38 Frank Did it? 19:02.07 James I was like, oh, like you know do I have a monitor or do I have a TV or do i have a thing that supports it or do I need to research? And everyone was talking about it. And because I think the Nintendo switch to's calibration screen was like really terrible. 19:17.42 James So there's like all these videos. 19:18.30 Frank okay 19:18.34 James I was kind of interested in that. But then I went down this rabbit hole of HDR because my monitor actually has HDR, but it's like garbage HDR. 19:20.02 Frank Yeah. 19:22.74 Frank Yeah. 19:24.95 James Right. So you turn it on and you're like, oh, it looks worse than it did before. 19:25.50 Frank Right. 19:28.83 James And now there's many reasons for that. It could be that it's not calibrated correctly. Maybe the council's not calibrated or it's just garbage HDR. 19:36.82 Frank Right. So what you learn very quickly is a lot of monitors sell themselves as HDR. And all that really means is they accept an HDR signal. What they decide to do with that signal is kind up to them. 19:49.09 James It's kind of important also. 19:49.77 Frank And a lot of them do nothing with that signal. 19:50.46 James Yeah. yeah 19:52.39 Frank They just don't explode. That's the benefit. That's kind of what an HDR10 is. So in this modern world, you want something called HDR1000. That's where... 20:03.42 Frank it actually does something brighter. You know, like you bring up a photo of a sunshine. And if you have an iPhone, I'm sure Android devices do this too, the screen's fine. 20:14.10 Frank The screen's nice and bright. But you bring up that photo that was pointed directly at the sun, and all of a sudden, the screen really lights up and kind of tries to blind you. They really can't. They can only get like 2x or 3x brighter. But they try. They try. And so I wanted that experience and you can get that these days. um 20:32.36 James Mm-hmm. 20:32.61 Frank OLED can do it and mini LED d micro mini whatever small l LED can do it. And the mini LED really just means they have a big array. of l LEDs in the background. it's It's kind of a hacky way to do it. They just brighten up the LEDs behind the HD surface. But, you know, I'm like, I don't want to spend $1,600. So I'm fine with a hack because all I want is an LED that blinds me. 300 bucks, 27 inch monitor with HDR. So I ended up getting this 21:04.23 Frank Acer something or another. i should Having this conversation, I actually should say. 21:06.37 James Wow. 21:09.25 Frank So it's like a budget brand, right? Acer. But um it's fine. 21:11.33 James Yeah, yeah. 21:12.85 Frank It's fine. um I was a little bit worried about it because like the AI would recommend all these monitors that you can't get anymore because monitors come and go, it seems like every year. 21:22.54 James Mm-hmm. 21:25.42 Frank so finding one that's actually on prime and when you're getting something bigger than a few inches, you want a good return policy because have, I'm that lucky fellow that always gets the dead pixels. 21:36.31 Frank So I wanted something that had a good return policy living on an island. I'm not just going to run off to the store, all that kind of stuff. So I gambled a little bit. What did I end up with, James? 21:48.40 James The Acer QWXW5244ZWP261Z2. 21:48.61 Frank Where did hide? 21:56.08 James No, I want to type it. 21:57.34 Frank Yeah, something like that. Nailed it. 21:59.58 James I'm ready. I'm ready to type it in. 22:01.61 Frank Okay, okay. It is the x v twenty seven 5. Sorry, I have to zoom in and enhance because my eyes are terrible. 5UF3. Nailed screen. Yeah. It's QHD. 22:20.03 James The 27 at least means maybe. 22:20.47 Frank whoo 22:21.24 James Is it 27 inches? It is. 22:22.78 Frank twenty seven edge screen yeah it's a q hd 22:24.57 James This is the Acer Nitro? The Nitro? 22:27.64 Frank Nitro baby, this is a gamer monitor. 22:29.08 James oh wow. 22:31.06 Frank But um so you got to look for a few specs when you're doing this. 22:31.18 James Oh, my God. 22:34.14 Frank Like the HDR spec is an important one and the number of mini LEDs. Like a lot of these only give you a panel that has 384 lighting zones. That's not very many for a 27 inch monitor. 22:47.32 Frank So you want to get the, I think I have 1100 lighting zones. So it's just a little better. So it's less bloom around any object that you're actually trying to light up on the screen. 22:58.61 Frank And has good reviews and the price is reasonable and they have a good return policy. So I figured if I did get the dead pixels, I could just kick it back at the driver and get rid of it. 23:09.78 Frank um And I got to tell you, I was a little worried. Sorry. 23:13.51 James i'm just i'm trying to do I'm just trying to, like, you can't find these things. You know what I mean? I'm just trying to, like, where did you but did you buy it from Amazon? 23:17.53 Frank Oh, yeah. Check Amazon. It's on there. 23:20.94 James Okay. 23:21.30 Frank Amazon, yeah. I can even fetch you the link if people want to buy it. 23:23.20 James Okay. 23:25.38 Frank buy it But i got to tell you, like I got this monitor and i plugged it in for the first time. And I'm like, ooh, I think everything's a little bit washed out. All my coding windows are kind of gray. 23:37.13 James Mm-hmm. 23:37.85 Frank And hmm, that's not great because this monitor is also like has good color calibration. it even comes with a calibration sheet when you buy it, like proving that this is a well calibrated monitor. 23:50.01 Frank And then i felt like the biggest dummy on the whole world. I realized my coding windows are gray. I've just had a crappy monitor for the last 10 years, and it was never able to render the grays correctly. If I put a black thing there, the black was death black. you know you can't see You can't see anything through it. So it turns out there's a lot of gray in my apps that I just never realized because my monitor wasn't good enough to render the color correct. 24:20.76 Frank which I thought was kind of hilarious. 24:21.34 James Oh my gosh. 24:24.18 Frank um So then the next big test is, can you get HDR to actually work? So on Mac, you have to go to settings. 24:29.85 James Yeah. 24:32.06 Frank It's off by default. Thanks, Mac. um So you just hit the little toggle, goes into HDR mode, and then the entire screen just... Nope. 24:42.49 Frank Turns into low contrast, muted colors, garbage everywhere. 24:45.53 James Yeah. Mm hmm. 24:48.58 Frank i'm like, well, darn it. You gamble and sometimes you lose. But I decided to try a little bit of something. I went into the monitors like on screen menu. 24:59.96 Frank And they have modes. Gaming mode, no, still not good. Video production mode, not great. And then there's a funny little mode there called HDR. I'm like, hmm. So we'll try the HDR mode. 25:10.07 James it didn't it it didn't It didn't auto switch to it? 25:12.60 Frank and 25:13.12 James stupid. wow i that let's do it 25:16.41 Frank So you manually switch to the HDR. All a sudden, the colors are back. Everything's back. You bring up some nice HDR photos in the Photos app, and the sun is blinding, and you're covering your eyes, and it's fantastic. 25:29.98 Frank So I'm very happy with my $300 27-inch monitor, which has no ports on it, two HDMIs, two display ports, no USB garbage, none of that. This is a monitor, no speakers, but it's nice because the bezel is small. 25:44.06 Frank The screen is ridiculously light. Like I didn't realize how much they've really improved in technology. 25:48.01 James Oh, yeah. 25:49.75 Frank So fantastic monitor. I'm in love with it. So much so that I have a second part to the story, but were you able to find it at all? 25:57.40 James Oh my gosh. I did find it. 25:59.00 Frank ah 26:00.18 James So let's get in the specs here. So it's the Acer Nitro 27 inch WQHD 250 60 by 1440. So it has a 1440p monitor. 26:09.24 Frank Yeah. 26:09.75 James Um, mini LEDs, the IPS monitor. It's got the free sync premium 320 Hertz refresher. That is so, that's gaming. That's gaming fast. That's hot. That's Nitro. 26:21.90 James That's Nitro. 26:22.20 Frank Yeah, it's Nitro. It's Nitro. 26:23.66 James That's Nitro. 26:24.76 Frank So for the, you know, for the Solitaire that I play, it's going to be fantastic. 26:28.77 James No, it's got, I'm i'm not sure. 26:29.53 Frank The cards will shuffle like nothing. 26:32.30 James I'm not, I'm not, i wouldn't say I'm in love with the port selection. Okay. 26:36.70 Frank now No, no. 26:38.10 James and We got a a display port 1.4. 26:38.21 Frank But... 26:40.66 James That's nice. And two HDMI 2.1 ports. 26:41.77 Frank Mm-hmm. 26:43.30 James And ah is that it? Is that all she wrote? 26:45.08 Frank No, there's two display ports for whatever reason. Like, I don't understand. So you can technically plug four things into it. But I'm ah i'm a one monitor, one computer person. So I didn't really care about the ports. 26:54.33 James I see. Hmm. 26:56.22 Frank All I wanted to make sure was that the ports could actually handle HDR. That was the big thing for me. 27:01.06 James Yeah, I like personally that it's got the height adjustment, pivot adjustment, swivel adjustment, tilt adjustment. 27:01.61 Frank I wanted an actual HDR. 27:07.55 Frank Yeah. 27:08.67 James That is a nice feature. I know that's in the arm and they can really just put an arm on it, but that is important in general. 27:12.89 Frank Mm-hmm. 27:14.19 James This one does have a 1001 contrast matte finish screen. Interesting. 27:18.20 Frank Yeah. 27:19.11 James 1000 nits color gamut. It does say that it is Adobe RGB 99% compliant. That's, ah you know, if you want that Adobe RGB, baby. 27:25.69 Frank Yeah. um 27:28.90 James Yeah, that's a good one. 27:29.94 Frank It's display P three also, I believe. um It's modern Apple, Apple. You want display P three if you can on your monitors. ah So I'm so happy with this thing. Cause it's, it's exactly what i wanted. 27 inch low res. My eyes are still blurry enough. There's probably pixels there, but I can't tell my eyes can't resolve them. 27:50.11 Frank It's fine. Yeah. But I put it down, put it down. So I've said all my piece. I love this monitor, right? Thank Maybe, maybe Acer makes a bigger one. 28:02.07 Frank I wonder if there's a bigger sister to the XV27-5U-F3. f three 28:08.55 James Maybe 35 or 32 or maybe a 38 there. 28:09.05 Frank and what um what of 28:10.15 James Ooh. or maybe a thirty eight 28:12.06 Frank Exactly. 28:13.40 James in there 28:13.46 Frank Exactly. so I'm wondering, what else do they make? Well, can't go extreme. It's a desk. You know, I got to fit this stuff on my desk. And I still want a two monitor set up, like no matter what. So I'm like, what else can I get? 28:24.33 Frank Turns out Acer makes another Nitro monitor, 32 inch, same number of micro LED thingamabobs, basically similar specs to this monitor, but 32 inch. 28:35.99 James You already bought the 27. You already bought the 27. 28:37.83 Frank I'm already done. It's on my desk. it's I'm using the 27-inch monitor to shop for the 32-inch monitor. 28:39.34 James It's on your desk. 28:43.65 Frank That's how much I'm impressed by these Acer products. 28:44.92 James Wow. Wow. Interesting. Wow. 28:47.96 Frank Yeah, so um I basically came to the conclusion that this is a beautiful monitor and I love it. And I just don't want to put the garbage old monitor next to it now. So only one solution to that. 28:57.46 James Legit. 28:58.74 Frank I need to buy another monitor. ah So. 29:02.53 James Now, Frank, there is going to be a problem though, which is that you're going to have this 32-inch monitor and then you're going to have this pathetic 27-inch monitor. 29:03.31 Frank Uh-huh. 29:10.88 Frank Pathetic. Tiny. 29:11.59 James It's pathetic. 29:13.19 Frank Irrelevant. 29:13.39 James Pathetic. The pixels are so dense in there because they have to be cramped into the 27-inch frame that you have. 29:15.54 Frank yeah 29:22.36 Frank Yeah. and the 32 inches higher resolution because it's actually a 4K monitor. so So I believe the resolution of the 27 inches, something a little over 100 And then the inch is going to be something 29:28.58 James Oh, my gosh. 29:39.92 James I don't 29:41.08 Frank um Yeah, whatever. i Look, I don't want to ever claim that I'm a smart person. I'm quite an idiot. I go by Vibes and the Vibes were telling me monitors are cheap right now. And look, for 600 bucks, I'm basically getting two monitors. 29:57.18 Frank And that's still less than half the price of an Apple display. I'm getting a 32 inch monitor and a 27 inch monitor. They're both HDR. They're going to be rockers. 30:07.96 Frank I got a little bit worried whether our our Mac minis can actually drive two HDR monitors, but Apple promises me they can if you buy the right dongles. 30:14.84 James Yes. 30:16.24 Frank So I bought a DisplayPort thingamabob for the Mac mini to plug into the 32-inch when it comes. 30:16.92 James Yeah. 30:23.58 Frank and I'll probably drive the other one with the HDMI. 30:24.33 James Nice. 30:26.71 Frank But anyway, and that's my story of ridiculousness. 30:26.79 James Yep. 30:29.47 Frank It went from I'm going to buy a cheap second monitor, just like my original to AV shopping, which is the worst. Got lucky. Got a good monitor. Liked it so much. 30:40.41 Frank Bought another. month So stupid. 30:41.96 James I like it. Uh, I do want to call out though. So my, in mine is the Dell Dell P two, seven, one, five Q. 30:51.14 Frank Dell. 30:57.62 James Um, you know, it's 27 inches because it's 27 inch. 30:57.98 Frank P27. 27. Yeah. yeah okay 31:00.46 James That's in the name. So the digital trends did a review. I want to, uh, I'm going to read this and read this section. 31:06.52 Frank Oh, yeah. Okay. 31:09.12 James It's called port Palooza. That's the name. 31:12.02 Frank Oh, my God. 31:12.04 James That's the H two. It says search around back and you'll find a wide variety of connection options, including DisplayPort and a mini DisplayPort for video in as well as a DisplayPort out. 31:27.22 James That means you can daisy chain two monitors together if you want to, like the Apple shows. 31:27.67 Frank weird. 31:33.32 James Then... 31:33.86 Frank Mm-hmm. 31:34.97 James You can actually get two of these and two 4K displays can be daisy changed at once, but it would drop the refresh rate down to 30 Hertz. There's an HDMI speaker line out and four, that's right, four USB 3.0 ports. 31:42.69 Frank Ooh. 31:48.86 James They're all part of the package. All the USB ports are on the rear panel. 31:50.94 Frank Wow. 31:53.59 James However, it says it is in a great place to plug thumbs dry mid because of other peripherals frequently move. 31:54.78 Frank Impossible to reach, I like to call that. Yeah, exactly. 32:00.00 James I will say three are underneath, but one's in the back. So you can actually reach around and just like it's it's sticking out the back in general. That was actually clutch because then I'm powering the speaker through the monitor, which is kind of nice. 32:11.29 James So that 32:11.51 Frank So what was what was that? 30 hertz? I don't think that compares to my 320 hertz refresh rate, nitro? that the nitro do you have nitro 32:18.37 James was... With a single, no, I have the the P2715Q. If with one monitor, 27 76 hertz on the 4K monitor, 76 hertz for a single. I don't have two. 32:30.49 James they are seventy six hertz 32:30.55 Frank Yeah. Yeah. 32:32.82 James on the four k honor seventy six hers for single 32:37.72 Frank You know what's funny too? 32:37.78 James but don't have to 32:39.10 Frank Like this hurts stuff. I think it's a weird arms race. Like I don't think people can actually see. I know people are sensitive to 60, 70 hertz. So I believe people can see higher than that. 32:49.82 Frank But I don't believe for a minute people can see higher than 120 hertz. But fine, fine. It's all about refresh rate and ghosting and all that kind of stuff. I get it 32:58.46 James Yeah. 32:59.61 Frank But what I didn't realize, 32:59.96 James Well, you you want like if. Go ahead. No, ahead. 33:03.74 Frank i was just going to give the app developer thing here of, I was always so proud. I can drive iCircuit's display at 60 hertz and it comes out great. It's V-synced. There's no V-sync on lie the LCD displays, but whatever. They still call it a V-sync because it's syncing something. 33:22.07 Frank It wasn't until I had a 320 hertz monitor that I realized iCircuit is not capable of running at 320 hertz refresh rate. 33:31.66 James Oh, wow. 33:31.75 Frank I'm getting like 180, 190 frames per second, but it's it's like you actually see it struggling. 33:32.04 James Mm-hmm. 33:37.60 Frank Like it's really oscillating. It'll get up to 180, then it'll fall down to 120, and then it'll... try to get up to 190 and then it'll fall back down again. You know, something gets swapped in or swapped out. 33:48.34 Frank So I was always so proud of like, oh I'm really nailing the refresh rate. Like perfect 60 Hertz. And now I'm realizing, oh, I was i was playing in in the small, small race. Now I'm in the big race. and Can I actually find any software out there that'll actually drive this puppy 300 Hertz? The answer is no. And it's ridiculous and one should. But as a performance weirdo, um I can't help but to stare at my FPS and be like, hmm. 34:12.69 Frank I wonder if I could get a little higher. 34:15.70 James Well, the interesting part now, because I watch a lot of Digital Foundry, is especially with the Switch 2, because it's the first like Nintendo console, there's sport to... to um to support 120 Hertz or, or, item two hundred and 200, 120 frames per second, right? 34:30.60 James Most games are 60 frames per second. That's the goal. 34:32.53 Frank Yeah. 34:32.88 James But nowadays games have different modes because they have to, um, um, support so many different types of monitors, 4k, 10 ADP, they're doing AI stuff. 34:41.94 Frank Yeah. 34:44.50 James They're doing all this other stuff, resolution bumping and And they also are trying to push the systems to the max. So they often have a quality mode or performance mode. And a performance mode usually drops the resolution, usually maybe from 4K to 1080p, but it will say, we'll either give you a buttery smooth 60 Hertz or 60 frames per second, or they'll give you 120 frames per second in the performance mode, right? 35:09.66 James Where a quality quality mode may drop it down to 30 frames per second, but give you the 4K, for example, or if it's ah it's a game that maybe can support 4K and 60 FPS, it'll do that. 35:09.78 Frank Oh, okay. 35:14.82 Frank Mm hmm. 35:21.65 James So that is really interesting. Metroid Prime 4, for example, is a good candidate of that, which supports HDR, but also supports um the 120 frames per second 120 Hertz. 35:32.19 James But what we're also seeing which is fascinating about your Hertz is that this monitor, which is 76 Hertz, that is a garbage refresh rate Hertz because who's coding for 76 Hertz? 35:43.05 Frank I'm sure I can tell. ah 35:45.37 James So 80 would have been better. And here's why 80 would have been better because some game modes now support the 35:48.55 Frank Hmm. 35:53.82 James Instead of doing a 30 frames per second mode, a 40 frames per second mode locked. And why is that important? 35:58.61 Frank Aha. 35:59.82 James It's because more monitors and more TVs are 120 Hertz, which means a 40 divides equally, right? 36:06.19 Frank Sure. 36:07.35 James So 40 doesn't divide into 76 very equally. 36:08.18 Frank Mm-hmm. 36:10.03 James You can't split those frames up, right? But that is why 60 works so good for 120 or 30 for 60, because you're getting these clean divisible lines. So we're actually now seeing that some games will support a 30 FPS mode as 40 FPS mode and a 60 FPS mode. 36:25.28 Frank fascinating. yeah 36:26.33 James And you can go through it, which is crazy. And now there's locking, right? But then others are just unlocked. They're like, just YOLO it, right? Just like go to town, which is good and bad. 36:33.51 Frank Oh, yeah. 36:35.32 James So. 36:36.82 Frank Yeah, i've i've I've gone down the rabbit hole of game engines. it's It's always a little bit of a hobby of mine. And correct me if I'm wrong, anyone listening to this. It seems like almost all games kind of cheat. 36:49.07 Frank Most of the 4K games are still doing a a render at 1080, and then they're using an advanced up sampler or even an AI up sampler to get themselves to 4K. 37:00.03 Frank Because we just can't do 4K at 60 hertz right now. like Our machines just aren't quite powerful enough I'm sure some people out there have machines that are powerful enough, but I think the current generation of consoles, even I think most of the real rendering, like all the buffers are still at 1080p. 37:15.98 Frank And then it's an up sample from there, getting them up to 4k when they want to get up to 4k. Correct me if I'm wrong. 37:21.97 James Yeah. Nope. Yep. 37:22.53 Frank i could be, you know, a year or two behind, but it seems like that's kind of the sweet spot in 2026. Mm 37:29.53 James So upscaling is like definitely every single game, uh, PS five, Xbox switch to. So normally there's going to be FSR, which is AMD's FSR. 37:40.69 Frank Yeah. 37:41.11 James That's very popular. Cause there's a lot of AMD based, like the Xbox AMD base. Um, I think it's AMD based. I'm pretty sure PlayStation has PS are, I think PlayStation SR or whatever. 37:50.96 Frank Sure. so so Some super resolution, yeah. 37:53.72 James ah The Nintendo Switch has NVIDIA's DLSS, which is an AI upscaler. 37:59.88 Frank Right. 38:01.90 James Now, what this normally means is there's tons of tweaks and features and things that these developers are doing for all these things, but we see... um in these modes, you many games that are even maybe running 1080p will be rendered and the resolutions would be native at 540p and it upscates us too. 38:21.39 James But we see a lot of like three sixty p or three twenty p um And these because these ah scalers have gotten so good, 38:22.28 Frank Mm-hmm. 38:31.19 James that you're able to then relay that information back without any lag anymore, basically to upscale or even get any motion blur. So that was the biggest thing is like motion blur and these upscalers. So that saves you on the resolution size. It gives you a better frame rate. And then you can, of course, support these bigger things. Now, what we also see though, cause I've been watching a lot of digital foundry is often they will it's really it's really fascinating they could be dlssing or fsr-ing certain portions of the screen but they might have a hud that is then actually the native hud so like a hud overlay because it's always static they don't want the normally with upscaling you'll see the the aliasing right so the the it's gotten a lot better at anti-aliasing um there but it can it can do that so yeah the ai upscaling on the the dlss is crazy 39:04.65 Frank Right, funny, yeah. 39:18.07 Frank Oh, that makes sense. Render the 2D stuff at real resolution. That makes perfect sense. 39:22.58 James Exactly. 39:22.98 Frank Because, yeah, you're not running a pixel shader on 8,000 surfaces at 4K or whatever. 39:23.53 James Yeah. 39:27.38 James Exactly. Yeah. 39:28.11 Frank yeah Yeah, it's a fun world. 39:29.34 James Yeah. And then they can be selective. Yeah. They can be selective about and all this other stuff. So it's really, it's really, really fascinating. So yeah, a cool world. 39:37.11 Frank Well, I just bought two gamer monitors. I don't think I'll be even paying attention to them above any of those Hertz, it's fun to have gamer monitors. I appreciate, I hope um games are actually embracing HDR. 39:51.42 Frank I'm a little bit out of the game world, but For me, it was all about the HDR. Like my my development excuses, it's for the HDR. and That's why I can put it on the business look account so I can actually um add some nice HDR features to my apps, which I could always do because I had ios and iPad had been HDR forever. 39:59.61 James Yeah. 40:10.38 Frank ah But my Mac version never supported it. 40:11.30 James Yeah. 40:13.59 Frank Until now, until now, I'll get working. 40:14.38 James Yeah, that does. There you go Now I think it does. I think i think if you were just go and say Even the list of the top blah, blah, blah. That's like best for HDR. Cause it's, it's also the implementation of the HDR by the engine, all this stuff. 40:27.66 Frank Yeah. 40:28.08 James I remember watching someone, I remember like the, I believe the Metroid HDR, they say is like really, really good. And, but then they say like the Kirby air riders is like really, really bad. So it's just like, depends on the implementation. 40:39.00 James Obviously it depends on the monitor. i think HDR is a very tricky, ah one because often like when I'm switching through modes, i almost have everything set to movie all the time, which is pretty dim. 40:50.20 James but I like it because it gives you more true colors. Whereas most TVs out of the box are blaring you in the face and trying to blind you. And like, you know, really they want those super duper brights because it's impressive walking through a Best Buy. 41:03.77 James um But the hdr it's a mode. So it seems like I just turn on this mode. should be amazing. But there's calibration. There's the the the device calibration and a lot more. And so it seems a lot more complicated. 41:14.46 James So i hope that they figure that out in the future. 41:16.80 Frank Yeah. 41:17.30 James Because i still have, 41:17.71 Frank It's complicated on that side. It's complicated on the programming side still too. Like um i've I've been doing web GPU and Chrome supports everything really nice. You can put the canvas into the extended um tone mapping tone mapping. It really shouldn't be tone mapping because it's supposed to be HDR, but you put tone mapping to extended and it should be rendering out bright things as bright. 41:39.86 Frank ah Safari does sometimes or not at all, or the feature is coming. It's very unclear, but like this is Apple. They've supported HDR forever. 41:50.30 Frank And it's weird that like Safari is still behind. And then from a developer's perspective, like when HDR first came out, the only things that supported it were like movie playback and the built-in photo viewers. You couldn't drive an HDR view, you know, like create a UI view and turn that into Yeah. 42:09.21 Frank For years, they fixed that, I think, in 2021 or something around there. And you actually can. But again, it's limited to some technologies. Like you it has to be a metal um display view. 42:21.65 Frank So there's there's a few other ones. But basically, you need to program at the raw metal level if you want HDR. And configuring it and actually getting it into HDR mode is kind of a pain in the butt. I'm very lucky that I've spent the last year working on a metal renderer for iCircuit I can just plug that puppy in, but that it was not pretty. i I had to do a bunch of experiments to figure out how to actually get those bright pixels right. 42:48.67 James Yeah, bet. Wow, that's crazy. Well, that is our monitor journey. If you have comments or complaints, head over to our YouTube, YouTube.com forward slash at merge conflict FM. 43:01.07 James That's where you can see our faces every single week. Let me look at what we're at right now, folks. We are on the road to 1000 over there and we currently have subscribers. 43:14.74 Frank Oh my god, so close. 43:15.03 James are getting 43:16.26 Frank ah 43:16.88 James Getting close. And um well we got to do a listener bag. 43:17.92 Frank Tell your friends. 43:21.36 James One, we do have some good comments that I think I've commented a little bit on. But yeah, like and subscribe. Watch all the videos. Let's see how close we are to monetization on it. 43:27.96 Frank Mm-hmm. 43:30.62 James We're getting there. We are two two thirds of the way there on public watch hours. So it's, we've got tons of subscribers. We've got the videos. We just need to watch hours. So if you want to listen to this twice and you listen to your, ah the audio feed, check it out on YouTube or maybe check it over there as well and go back and forth every other week and give us those view hours. 43:50.09 James I mean, now people are watching the average view duration. the last one was 20 minutes. That's pretty good. i mean, people are, people are watching, so it's there, but anyways, 43:55.30 Frank fantastic it's when i started talking they all dropped out yeah 44:00.33 James that no or vice versa. We don't know. um Yeah, check it out. Like, subscribe, share with your friends. If you enjoyed this podcast, write a comment over there. We'd appreciate it. Let's get for this week's Emerge Conflict. So until next time, I'm James Watson Magno. 44:12.38 Frank And I'm Frank Kruger. Thanks for watching and listening. 44:16.15 James peace