WFM/Vectorscopes

[Bob Zelin]

It is truly amazing, in this day of such cheap pricing on everything, that professional Waveform Monitor/Vectorscopes do in fact cost as much as an entire edit system. At NAB2006, I am going to be looking at the Leader LV770, which at $9000, is the CHEAPEST HD scope on the market, but currently, the Videotek VTM-420, at round $12,000 is the cheapie. Even the SD only Videotek VTM-150 is about $4500. There’s always ebay. I have not been very impressed with Hamlet products, and Astro Systems is not so great, and also around $9000. Tektronix, of course, it as expensive as you can get.

I have not played around with the “built in” waveform display of the Panasonic BT-LH1700 HD/SD 17″ monitor, but at under $3000, it not only is a monitor, but gives quarter screen luminance only waveform displays. Again, I have not played with it, so I don’t know it accuracy – but as for price – nothing can beat that price.

If Blackmagic came out with a rastorizer HD scope like Videotek or Leader for $2000 – $3000, they would probably sell more of these than they do their FCP capture cards.

Bob Zelin

[Chris Paul]

Magni Systems keeps saying that they will have a rasterizing HD solution. Perhaps at this NAB… There are very nice folks to deal with and their products are comparatively affordable. If they finally come out with an HD model it would certainly be worth a look…

Chris Paul
POV

[Bob Zelin]

Magni products are excellent, and are not affordable. With the exception of the old MM-400 from Magni (which is composite only) , all of their HD and SDI products have always been above $4000.

bob Zelin

[Steven Bradford]

Actually I’m more amazed by the fact that HD edit systems cost as little as scopes.

But anyways, you might want to check out the new LCD 17″ monitors from Panasonic, which I believe have built in Scopes, and are under $3500.

https://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?displayTab=O&storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=94264&catGroupId=14625&modelNo=BT-LH1700W&surfModel=BT-LH1700W

Steven Bradford

[Nic Adlerton]

Take a look at Videoscope: https://macupdate.com/info.php/id/3262

It can take a feed directly from the Blackmagic card – I don’t know if it does HD and I’m away from the office at the moment, but I can check it out when I return. What would be extremely tasty would be if it did do HD and we all wrote to the developer to add bits and pieces that would make it complete.