Monitoring and HD-Link advice needed

[Jordi J recort]

taking the advantage of this post I would like to know if someone have experience with the HD link and the EIZO displays.

In particular with the Coloredge CE240W..

it’s a good choice?

any personal experience it’s wellcomed!

tanks!

[Geir Ove thorsveen]

For those interested to know, although it’s probably pretty redundant information, consumer grade LCD-TVs do not seem suitable for any level of SD video monitoring. I guess I knew this one in advance, but thought I’d give it a shot and do some measurements on a Sony Bravia 20″, using the component and composit inputs, hooking it up to my BMD Extreme card.

Comparing it to a Tamuz 14″ LCD SDI monitor, the subjective viewing quality at 4H viewing distance was very poor, with really bad scaling artefacts and color banding. Viewing a colorbar was practically like watching a gradient in composite PAL, but a bit better on the component inputs. When trying to find a suitable viewing distance, I found it best to leave the room and close the door.

More dissapointment came when I started doing some measurements. Even in it’s warmest setting, I got 7200K color temperature at 96% White with 120 Cd/m3. Pushing the screen to 140 Cd/m3 brought this down to about 7100K. This could be somewhat acceptable in a non-critical editing environment, but looking at the grey tones, the color temerature rose gradually to a staggering 9600K at a video level of 5%.

My Tamuz “reference” performed remarkably well in this respect, maintaining a color temperature of 6500K +/- 3% throughout the greyscale. I guess that’s why it’s five times more expensive.

Watching the same test material using Digital Desktop Preview – Full Screen on an Apple 20″ Cinema Display, the Sony was beat hands down on subjective viewing quality. I’m going to try to get my hands on an HD Link and an Eizo now, to see what kind of quality that might offer for SD material.

Disclaimer: This was not done as a clinical test. The test subjects consisted of only me and a couple of my co-workers (all experienced in color correction and/or color management research). The three monitors were not tested on the same signal chain, but rather on their relevant practical signal chains (Tamuz on BMD SDI out, Sony on BMD analog outs, and the Apple display on DVI out from the G5).