iMac 5K screen - why can’t I see more?

[carbontune]

My old Mac mini is connected to a 34-inch curved Asus MX34VQ monitor. This has worked really well over the past year, allowing me to easily have two app windows open side-by-side all the time and both windows perfectly readable without having to scrol horizontally in either of them.

The resolution of the Asus monitor is 3440x1440.

My new iMac 5K has a resolution of 5120x2880.

Here’s the issue: displaying the Mail and the Evernote apps next to each on the iMac display less information (visible text) horizontally on the iMac’s screen compared to the Asus monitor. I was expecting more displayed text due to the significantly increased screen resolution.

Is this a default font size issue on the iMac or something else? With a far higher resolution, I expected to be able to see more text displayed in two side-by-side app windows on the iMac.

 

[jerwin]

Think of the 5k mac as having as much space as a 2560x1440 monitor-- but twice as sharp.

so your asus monitor will be able to display more windows, more text etc-- it just won't be as sharp as your imac 5k.
ALternatively, you can try this:

If you press the option key while selecting the "Scaled" radio button, you can even select the full 5k resolution-- with tiny, doll like controls. I use this mode occasionally to fool older digital archives into serving up the highest resolution imagery. Some older games also need this sort of trickery to run in 5k.

 

[carbontune]

Thanks for the explanation jerwin. My Retina display settings are currently set to 'Default for display'. However I believe that this is still a scaled setting equivalent to the Default scaled setting. I'll have a play around the scaling.

 

[294307]

You are thinking about the resolution from the point of view of non-HiDPI displays. Your iMac is still rendering at 5120 x 2880 but the operating system is scaling the UI by 2x (for a perceived resolution of 2560 x 1440). Even if you select a different "resolution" in Display preferences, the display is still rendering at 5120 x 2880 because these options are simply changing the UI scaling factor. It is only if you select a low resolution mode that the display will actually reduce its physical resolution. This is the behaviour of HiDPI displays. Windows PCs do the same but just less consistently – usually the display "zoom", as they call it in the Windows world, is set between 150% to 200%. If the iMac is used in Windows, you would set the zoom level to 200% to achieve 2x UI scaling.

To see how small everything would appear at the native resolution with scaling at 1:1, go into Display preferences and hold down the Option (⌥) key and select 5120 x 2880 from the list. So hopefully after you do that, you can see why Apple does not ship these iMacs without scaling the UI. Personally, I usually keep the scaling at 2.5x (as shown below) but you can choose whichever scaling size works best for you.



It warns you that using a scaled resolution may affect performance but I don't notice any differences. I'm not sure why they warn you about that because you are always technically scaling the UI even at its "Default for display".

To summarise, what you are changing in Display preferences is the perceived resolution. The quality happens to remain the same when you change between the default resolution and a scaled resolution because you are only changing how big or small text, images and app windows are displayed onscreen. See the screenshot below with low resolution modes enabled – if you go ahead and do the same and select 2560 x 1440 (low resolution), you'll see the difference – text will look fuzzy because it is now running at half of its native resolution.

 

[carbontune]

So if half of the real resolution is being used normally, when does the full native resolution work? Is it used in video playback, for example?

 

[jerwin]

Text, vector graphics, images and videos. The exceptions tend to be those who depart from Apple's APIs. Apple has had retina screens in its macs since 2012, so most vendors have adapted to the new scheme of things.

 

[carbontune]

It also appears that viewing 4K videos on YouTube is limited to 1080p on my 5K iMac. I believe this is due to a codec not being supported in Safari. Perhaps Chrome or Firefox browsers would show 4K YouTube videos?

 

[294307]

It also appears that viewing 4K videos on YouTube is limited to 1080p on my 5K iMac. I believe this is due to a codec not being supported in Safari. Perhaps Chrome or Firefox browsers would show 4K YouTube videos?

If you have at least 25 Mbit download speed, you should be able to stream 4K content but I have never seen content on YouTube being offered above 1080p in Firefox or Safari on my Mac but I do get the option to stream 4K in Chrome or Vivaldi, so you might want to try one of those browsers. From what I can see, Google uses the VP9 format for YouTube UHD content which Safari does not support, so that might explain why it doesn't work there, but I'm not sure why I can't get 4K content to stream in Firefox on my machine.

 

[jerwin]

It also appears that viewing 4K videos on YouTube is limited to 1080p on my 5K iMac. I believe this is due to a codec not being supported in Safari. Perhaps Chrome or Firefox browsers would show 4K YouTube videos?

Chrome works. If you want to continue using Safari-- which does retain certain advantages, you might have to remind yourself to use chrome for youtube, though.

 

[carbontune]

Chrome works. If you want to continue using Safari-- which does retain certain advantages, you might have to remind yourself to use chrome for youtube, though.

I just downloaded Chrome and tried out a 4K test video on YouTube. I think it played in 4K when on full screen. I copied the Stats for next screen. Does this information indicate that the video is playing in 4k?

It's the Viewport information that seems to suggest that it's at a lower resolution.

 

[294307]

Well that depends on who you ask. From the width of the resolution, that is indeed 4K content. However others might say content can only be considered 4K if it has a resolution of at least 4096 x 2160. Personally, I consider both resolutions to be 4K.

You can read more about 4K resolutions here.

 

[jerwin]

The viewport thing is normal.
[doublepost=1537105564][/doublepost]

Well that depends on who you ask. From the width of the resolution, that is indeed 4K content. However others might say content can only be considered 4K if it has a resolution of at least 4096 x 2160. Personally, I consider both resolutions to be 4K.

If you have the bandwidth, the hardware, and the tolerance for limited selection, you can view 4320p videos, and put your anxieties about not having "full" 4k to rest.

 

[Fishrrman]

2012 Mac Mini running Low Sierra.

I just opened Firefox, went to youtube, entered "SONY 4k demo", and got a list of videos that offer me the option to play back in 2160p (4k) or 1440p or 1080p....

 

[carbontune]

2012 Mac Mini running Low Sierra.

I just opened Firefox, went to youtube, entered "SONY 4k demo", and got a list of videos that offer me the option to play back in 2160p (4k) or 1440p or 1080p....

I'm going to try Firefox too - on my previous Mac I used Safari around 95% of the time and Firefox every now and then. I trust Firefox in terms of privacy and security a lot more than Chrome!

 

[carbontune]

I thought I'd come back to this thread as my initial sentiments on the 5K Retina display were a little negative.

I've now had a few days of getting used to the display and it really has grown on me. The vividness and clarity is stunning compared to my Asus monitor. It really is awe-inspiring and a joy to use for hours on end every day. I've set up Night Shift on it too so there's reduced eyestrain at night.

Good quality videos are amazing to watch now that the 4K YouTube video on Safari issue has been solved.

 

[Chancha]

I actually think even a 27" @ 2560x1440 is perfect for side-by-side half-screen windowing, with or without the retina pixel doubling. Each half has effectively 1280px width which fits a typical website, and the aspect ratio is similar to a vertical page of paper (compared to 21:9 half-screen which is like a fat square).

So it depends if you really want / are too used to having the 21:9 ultrawide split-screen experience, where both the aspect ratio and the 34" real estate are just not the same on the 5k iMac screen. But like you noticed, the iMacs use 16:9 ratio which is still a universal aspect for most media, and I notice that most apps' interfaces are developed with an assumption that the user has a 16:9 or 16:10 screen.

On related note, LG has a whooping 5120x2160 21:9 monitor (LG 34WK95U) that has TB3, Nano-IPS, DCI-P3.

 

[jerwin]

now that the 4K YouTube video on Safari issue has been solved.

how did you solve it?

 

[carbontune]

how did you solve it?

My apologies, my wording was misleading. I solved it by installing Chrome and Firefox - Firefox required a config update to play 4K videos.

I followed the advice from Firefox here:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-4k-ultra-high-definition-youtube-videos

In general, and especially on Mac which prefers H264 by default (see above), you can enable VP9 by setting media.mediasource.webm.enabled to true in about:config. But this should only be done by advanced users who understand the impact on battery life and performance.

So, both Firefox and Chrome play 4K videos on my iMac's 5K screen now. Safari does not.

 

[jerwin]

thanks--
firefox works now

judging by the performance of this video, though

I think that chrome is a little more efficient. And for my cpu, that makes all the difference.