Dell 24″ for SD? Bob Zelin will think I’m crazy…

[Marc Brak]

Thanks, that a clears up a lot.

But once you zoom in double size or fill the screen, you’ll see breakup. Cuz the pixels aren’t there in the first place to size the bigger size.

Isn’t that always the case when you play video fullscreen? And not only on an HD monitor? You’d need a 720×576 monitor to watch pal footage fullscreen without breakup 🙂

My apologies if these seem like dumb questions to you, I hope one day they will seem like dumb questions to me, too 😉

[Tim Kolb]

No…I don’t think that’s it…the issue may not be completely fleshed out on all sides.

The Dell 24″ is a computer monitor…a 1920×1200 display. It works well as a UI monitor…it’s OK as an HD monitor, it’s not an HD television display however.

You could use the two 24s as UI, and use the one for full screen HD playback from FCP if you want (make sure the panel is sized to 100% so that you have a 1:1 pixel relationship though…no fullscreen)…that would probably be ok.

If you attempt to expand an SD signal to fill that pixel raster (remember that CRTs have scanlines, not pixels, a CRT doesn’t really scale in rows AND columns) it will simply look terrible. Most consumers (in the US at least) are watching primarily up-rez’d SD on their HD displays and it is simply gar-bage. Consumers can watch whatever trash they please, but as an editor, you need a better picture than that to make reasonable decisions.

A CRT SD video monitor isn’t that expensive if it isn’t a broadcast level piece (though a truly top end CRT is a pleasure to use, I have to say)…there are used SD CRTs all over as the industry moves to HD. Depending on your I/O (Kona or AJAio, MXO or other card) this shouldn’t be a huge issue.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

CPO, Digieffects

[Chris Borjis]

[walter biscardi] “Our Panasonic Pro Plasma displays don’t display SD well.

Mine does. Sure its not tack-sharp like the CRT in front of it, but its way better than any consumer LCD set thats for sure.

Panasonic Plasma’s have a reputation for showing SD content better than any Consumer LCD out there.

I can attest to that. SD looks great on my 50-9UK at work
and the one I have at home. Its a crisp, colorful image with great contrast thats way ahead of the dull muddy image on say a sharp aquos LCD.

[Sean Oneil]

Marc,

You can make SD look good on that monitor. Find a high-end consumer HDMI video scaler that has a DCDI scaling/deinterlacing chip. Or if you can find one with the Realta chip (which was designed by Teranex).

An interesting product is one from Gefen:
https://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=4298

There are other products as well. A lot of home stereo receivers can do this.

This kind of product will make SD look very, very good on the Dell 24″ or any other computer monitor. It’s essentially the same process that the high-end Panasonic LCD pro monitors use (although those have been calibrated to display accurate NTSC colors).

The issue is whether or not you want it to look good. The broadcast monitor is supposed to be “What You See Is What You Get”.

Sean

[Peter Brauner]

If you want to use a LCD as a productionmonitor for SD material, make sure you dont uprez in tha monitor. Let your Kona/Decklink/MXO do that and you will be better off.

This solution is not as good as CRT but better than push in a SD component into a Dell LCD.

Peter Brauner
VFX Artist
Effektfabriken
http://www.effektfabriken.se