CRT vs LCD?

[Rory Brennan]

What sort of a budget are you dealing with. I believe it will dictate things a bit as cheaper HD flat screens don’t do so well with interlaced SD.
If you have the money, I like the Sony and JVC Pro Broadcast monitor with HD SDI etc.

RB

Rory Brennan
Editor
New York City

“Have a nice day!”

[Andrew Crosby]

I’m not exactly sure about the budget but I tend to think it would be on the pricier side of things. My only reasoning for pushing back on eliminating the interlacing CRT is using it to check for shimmer.

For example, our last big budget production had orange text on a white background. On the HD flatscreen we currently have the text looked fine, but on the CRT it was very shimmery. I have to assume that if the CRT is eliminated that the problem would not be detected even on an expensive monitor. I believe we ended up changing the colors slightly to fix the problem.

Am I missing a step? Is there some sort of filter or something that should have prevented the orange on white from going bonkers? What do most edit suites have for monitors?

-Andy

[Grinner Hester]

bust a sweet flat panel for the client monitor and keep monitoring off a good ntsc monitor.

and tell your boss to stay in his office!
best way to run off great talent is to go pokin around in their suite.

[Rich Rubasch]

I’m with grinner for the most part. We have the JVC 26 inch new broadcast LCD for HD monitoring only, and a Sony PVM-14U for SD monitoring. Component analog feeds the Sony and HDSDI feeds the JVC. Together they offer the best combination for our shop which still does quite a bit of SD work.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Andrew Crosby]

Awesome, thanks guys! Amen to that Grinner, he does a lot of micromanagement.
Yeah right now we are currently using an 18″ Sony PVM-1954Q for SD and a 20″ Sony LMD-210 for HD/SD. Personally I think they are both fine, but he is insistent on getting one big HD/SD monitor. At least now I have some ammo for the next confrontation.

-Andy

[Grinner Hester]

He wants to wow a client with a big screen and the driver needs to see out da window.
its kinda like that.
maybe run a line to his office with a bif flat screen so he stays on his side of the building?

No non creative types over here, man! were like, tryin to create and stuff!

[Todd Terry]

Good advice from all… I will throw in my late two cents here…

In each of our edits suites we have a reasonably big (not gigantic, 42″) plasma monitor for clients. However the editor has LCD monitors for computer and HD, and good old-fashioned CRT for NTSC monitoring.

I find the CRT critical for NTSC, for reasons including the one that you mentioned… sometimes stuff can knock your socks off on the plasmas or LCDs, but definitely reveal problems on the CRT. But if it looks good on the CRT, it’s almost always going to look good on the others. And since we mostly do broadcast commercials, they have to look good the way that most people are going to see them… which at this point is still CRTs.

I’m reminded of a story I’ve told before… years ago I was visiting a zillion-dollar recording studio in Nashville. The audio wiz was mixing an album for some group (I don’t remember who, but somone well known). He was sitting there behind a million-dollar board probably twelve feet long, surrounded by banks of huge monitors that would make any audiophile drool. He would make countless tiny tweaks with the sliders, diffferences he could hear, but I of course couldn’t. Then every so often he would kill the room audio and reach arond to turn up the sound on a little crappy 12″ black and white TV set from Wal-Mart. I’m sure I had a puzzled look… but he quickly explained that the song had to sound just as good as possible on the TV’s little 3″ speaker, that a lot more people would be hearing it that way from the song’s video on MTV or VH1 than would be hearing it from monitors like he had. He had to make sure it was adequate for the weakest link, as well as the best one.

Sometimes CRTs are a bit like that.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mike Cohen]

I use the 2″ speaker in my Sony 14″ CRT for the exact purpose Todd mentions. It may temporarily be annoying for others in the office, but 90%+ of people do not listen to television through external speakers. I even stopped using my surround sound system at home when I got a newer tv with decent sound.

Stick to the CRT+LCD principle:

CRT = Common Regular Television
LCD = Lowest Common Denominator

Mike Cohen

[Charley King]

I totally agree with you guys. I have always had a crt that would not filter anything so I could see what I really had without the corrections that many monitors do. Audio was always final mix down using small speakers known as near field speakers. So you gotta have near field video and a near field audio in order to see what that sweet little old Grand mother is going to be watching and hearing at home.
Wait, that sweet little old grand mother is my wife.

Charlie

ProductionKing Video Services
Unmarked Door Productions
Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel
Las Vegas, Nevada

[Mike Cohen]

Ah, so that’s what is behind that unmarked door I kept passing in the Flamingo lobby last NAB…