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Monitors for grading…continued
I am often lucky enough to be given equipment for evaluation and in the last few months have checked out a lovely 42 inch panasonic plasma (beautiful display)and recently got my hands on one of sony’s 25 incher oleds..the PVM 254.
having a limited budget at the time we set up the edit suite, i decided to throw away convention and invested in a samsung series 7 display. this monitor has always surprised me with how accurate it is considering its low price point and that it is in fact a high end consumer television. however i wasn’t prepared for just how well it stands up to the so called professional monitors out there. at just over a thousand bucks, the samsung costs only 1/5 of the panasonic and the sony and in side by side tests is so damn close after proper calibration it is almost scary.
i know most of you will say there is nothing like a proper (re:expensive) broadcast monitor yet when i cast my mind back to what was state of the art lcd monitoring just a few years back….those horrible washed out looking shiny flat 23 inch things that cost around 20 grand and could only be used head on with no ambient light in the room, it makes me smile to think how far along good monitoring has come!
of course with 4k just around the corner for most of us these cheap new monitors will soon be reduced to door stops or retired to our living rooms….just my thought for the day! -
3 Replies
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You are confusing looking “good” with really being accurate. All plasma displays have serious problems – missing colors in the darks make false contours, and ABL is another biggie.
Extremely irregular color tracking is also hard to fix, even with a LUT
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don’t misunderstand me…i’m not saying that a 1000 buck consumer monitor compares to a 6000 high end “broadcast” monitor…i’m really only saying that for the last week i have had the hi end (sony) and lo end (samsung) side by side in my suite and after a bit of tweaking on the cheaper one, i am very very surprised at just how good the samsung compares to a monitor costing 6 times as much….thats a huge difference in price for a small difference in performance…and yes i agree with your comment about plasma and i did have one of those panasonics for testing for a few weeks as well…..it “looked” nice but i agree that it was seldom accurate (especially the way green comes out)….the most interesting thing about this is in the audio world you often have people doing a final check on a set of really cheap lo end speakers, the theory being if it sounds good on those then it will sound great on everything else. i have come to the same findings about monitors lately…there’s accurate, there’s good, and then there’s middle of the road that everyone else sees! just my observation for the week…..and dont forget that a few years back you would have to spend way over 10 grand for a so called “accurate” broadcast monitor just to watch ntsc or pal on..even the early plasma set of 8 years ago only did SD and never looked great and cost a fortune..now we have 2k+ that blows those old things away for next to nothing….it’s become very interesting!
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There is also a feature set that none of the graphics or consumer monitors offer that is well outside a hobbyist’s requirement and beyond the default requirement for OOB accuracy.
On-screen displays for out-of-gamut, even color pickers with RGB value display, SDI audio dis-imbed with phase and VU metering, programmable hash marks, safe-title, safe-action, 4×3 extraction zones, scopes… long list of value that are a complement even if you already have outboard scopes.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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