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Video Production Monitor?
Greetings all,
We are in the midst of setting up a FCP suite for commercial prodution and are a little stuck on what to do about our main production video monitor. We are definitely doing some HD work but mainly are delivering on SD.
My main question is should we go with a HD LCD option or a Tube option? My experience with professional LCDS (like the SONY for example) is that they are a little flat looking color-wise.. but I am seeing them almost everywhere I work (I am freelance). But we also love the space saving factor of the LCD.
What do you all think/ do?
Thanks!
Liam Lawyer
-editor-
Wee Beastie -
7 Replies
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Sony PVM CRT’s are still the standard though very difficult to find now that they are out of production.
The best LCD’s I’m seeing are the Panasonic BT-1700W and 2600W monitors. To get better than these would require stepping up to a $16,000+ LCD monitor.
I actually prefer Plasma over LCD if I have to flat screen. Our Panasonic Pro 50″ Plasma HDTV screen almost perfectly matches our Sony CRT. Plasma can display black better than just about anything out there.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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It’s a tough time to be buying an HD monitor… Sony and Panasonic make the leading (affordable) LCD contenders, and neither company recommends them for “critical color correction”… only the CRT’s get this nod, and only from Sony….and I’m afraid they are very expensive.
That said, I don’t see a real problem for every day color correction… (the colorists out there will disagree of course) shoot, have you looked at a non video pro’s home TV set lately? YIKES… talk about tweaking the signal all to poop… sort of makes a colorists job futile… LOL…
The Panasonic 26” is in a bay I’m around, and I find it OK for color, etc…. But also hear that Sony is revamping the LCD line to improve the performance and accuracy of their displays. Stay tuned.
If you bought a Kona card, you could still view externally HD material in SD because the LH and Kona 3 and 2’s all downconvert HD to SD in real time…
Another solution is to buy a Cinema Display for the job and AJA or Decklink’s converters for them.. but you can’t set them up (no blue only display button I’ve found on them ;-)…. Matrox’s MXO will accomplish the same thing and give you an SD down convert at the same time… I reviewed one of these recently, and was impressed with it… All these boxes fix the problem of viewing full screen interlaced material on a progressive scan monitor just fine.
Jerry
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Thanks so much for your help..
I am looking online at those options right now at B&H. They are looking good!
Is this plasma in the same family as yours?
Also, is the burn-in factor a reason to not go with plasma vs LCD? The price point on the plasma is definitely nice…
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Thanks! Wish I could see into the future to see what SONY has got up it’s sleeve…
What are your thoughts on Plasmas?
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Wally’s been doing great with his I think. Another thing to consider is that if you’re delivering HD, then viewing it on a monitor that is close to what the end user will be looking at isn’t a bad idea at all.
Jerry
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The awful truth is that the monitor manufacturers have phased out affordable production CRTs, which are superior to LCD and plasmas for accurate color reproduction. This is partly due to international environmental regulations/restrictions, but I think that the exploding popularity of flat screens for ergonomic reasons has been a big factor as well. Basically, we’re being fed a big shit sandwich by the monitor manufacturers and told that it’s filet mingon. The only technology to show promise in approaching CRT’s color accuracy and black levels is SED, and we’re probably a good 5 years from seeing SED displays become commercially available. In the meantime, we’re stuck with inferior LCD and plasma screens, with Sony and company conveniently ignoring the elephant in the corner – the fact that a 5-year old PVM CRT has a better picture than a brand-new Luma LCD. You won’t find that in any of their marketing literature…
I just missed being able to buy the last available stock of new Sony PVM-20L5/1 monitors by about three months, so I had to settle for its smaller sibling, the PVM-14L5/1. Apart from image size, it stomps all over any “professional” LCD or plasma I’ve ever seen. Aside from two JVC CRTs, Sony’s PVM-L series was the only relatively affordable model of CRT that could display both SD and HD at a variety of progressive and interlaced frame rates. The killer is, the PVM-20L5/1 is now selling USED on eBay for several thousand dollars more than it sold for NEW when it was still available. There is clearly a demand for these CRTs, and it’s criminal that Sony has discontinued them and left us without an adequate replacement. There’s currently nothing in their product offering that’s remotely close in quality or in price to the discontinued PVMs. I’d love one of those 24″ 16:9 BVM CRTs, but I can’t afford $24,000. Thanks, Sony.
As far as client monitors go, the Panasonic professional plasmas are excellent. However, I wouldn’t ever trust them for accurate color grading. If you want my PVM, you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.
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Last year, have an editor friend at the most respective “post house” in Louisville. The owners had just put a 24″ LCD in to their FCP suite to act as
the main video output monitor. The editors all hated it and said it should articfacts and all around WAS NOT acceptable for the final
“viewing” especially for a client sitting behind them. Now this was about 1 year ago, so maybe the LCD’s have improved a lot.
I have a 20 and 23″ cinema displays for my home FCP system, BUT I DON”T use them to view my final product on. It really doesnt’ work.
I’m planning on getting a small monitor or even a decent tube tv. I’m not into HD yet.
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