Bram Desmet
Forum Replies Created
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To avoid confusion it is generally a really good idea to list both the native resolution and native frame rate. You would not want to refer to 1280x720p60 as just 60p because there is also a 1920x1080p60 broadcast format, albeit at almost 3Gbps bandwidth. You also have the less common 480p60 (flavor of EDTV) formats so 60p could be misleading as it does not necessarily imply 1280x720p60.
Bram Desmet
FSI (Flanders Scientific, Inc.)
http://www.FlandersScientific.com -
Not necessarily, but it is an option. There are limits to using the audio out from the monitor:
1. It adds an unbalanced line-out on a mini-phono connector in your audio chain and this is a significant limit worth keeping in mind.
2. You can only monitor a maximum of 2 channels of audio at a time using the monitor’s audio line-out.However, on the plus side using the monitor’s audio out as you suggest takes the guess work out of the audio offset value so audio sync is always perfect, down to the very millisecond (unless of course the audio is not in sync in the native source material).
What the majority of people not routing audio out of the monitor tend to to do is add the offset in the editing (or I/O card) settings. Most of the editing systems I’ve seen do this in terms of a specified number of frames/fields of delay. This is not quite as accurate as getting it down to the very millisecond, but you can get it dialed in this way within what is a perceptible limit. Getting this dialed in this way isn’t all that difficult, but the thing to remember is that on virtually all LCD displays this delay will change depending on the resolution/framerate of the source. All that this means is that you may have to have different offset values for different formats (SD, 720P, 1080i, etc.). Also, there is not a universal delay between LCD manufacturers so it will vary from brand to brand and many times even model to model depending on video processing chip being used, panel technology type, processing mode the monitor is in, etc.
Bram Desmet
FSI (Flanders Scientific, Inc.)
http://www.FlandersScientific.com -
Hi Shawn, see here: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1054376 for a related post. The audio on our internal speakers (and audio out) is automatically kept in sync, down to the millisecond, with the video regardless of what processing mode the monitor is in and what format is being fed to the monitor. With virtually all LCD based displays there will be some sort of delay and this delay is variable depending on source and monitor processing mode.
Bram Desmet
FSI (Flanders Scientific, Inc.)
http://www.FlandersScientific.com -
Yes, but the LM-1770W, like all FSI monitors, is equipped with a DVI-I input. A simple HDMI to DVI cable would work in this scenario. You could also use component (HD/SD), which would be my choice in this situation.
Bram Desmet
FSI (Flanders Scientific, Inc.)
http://www.FlandersScientific.com -
I think that would only confuse people even more because we are talking about a 800×480 resolution monitor, which is a widescreen aspect ratio, and not 720×480 or 704×480 (assuming NTSC here) resolution (closer to 4:3) so the monitor is in fact not SD resolution. I think in the interest of addressing the primary concern potential customers would have, namely does the monitor support HD or not, it does make a lot of sense to refer to the monitor as HD if it supports HD formats. If you refer to a 800×480 panel as SD resolution the majority of people will assume the unit is 4:3 aspect ratio and that would certainly be an incorrect assumption. However, along your same line of reasoning I do agree that it is very important for manufacturers to explicitly list the native resolution of their monitors and I think that most, though certainly not all, manufacturers do make this information readily available.
Bram Desmet
FSI (Flanders Scientific, Inc.)
http://www.FlandersScientific.com -
Well, I could spend days answering this question because there is so much that goes into the question of monitor resolution, but let’s just cover some of the basics…
The first thing to take note of is that while these resolutions may seem strange with respect to video standards they are not at all strange with respect to LCD panel resolution…but that is not what you were asking.
The short answer is simple: The vast majority of LCD panels used in professional broadcast monitors were NOT built specifically for that purpose. The capital investment needed to build a new LCD panel manufacturing plant is astronomical (think 500 Million+ dollar range). The broadcast market is simply not large enough for any of the big panel manufacturers (and there are only really a handful) to justify building a dedicated plant to building panels just for this industry. What virtually all broadcast monitor manufacturers do (even the big guys) is try to find the best available panel from the handful of large panel manufacturers to best suite their application. This means that panel resolutions are driven in large part by the consumer market or other large (much larger than broadcast) market segments.
This all leads to some common trends in panel resolutions at various sizes. If you look at professional broadcast monitors in the 23″ to 26″ size range you will see that the vast majority are 1920×1200. Why? Well, because that is a computer graphics standard (WUXGA) resolution and the computer monitor market is exponentially larger than the broadcast market. This means your aspect ratio on these monitors is 16:10, which is why you get the black bars top and bottom on many professional monitors when viewing 16:9 footage. You can find native 1920×1080 resolution panels in this size (mostly made for small format HD TVs), but overall the best balance between reasonable prices and high performance are with the 1920×1200 resolution displays.
At the 40″ plus size range you find a lot of 1920×1080 panels and virtually no 1920×1200 resolution screens. Why? Well, because at this size range in the consumer market most panels are going into HD televisions and not computer applications. So while many professional broadcast monitor manufacturers find that the 1920×1200 panels are the best suited (best performing) panels for their 24″ units they opt of 1920×1080 panels for their larger monitors, because that is what is available.
Below 21.5″ you find a very limited selection of native HD (1920×1080) panels because their is very limited demand for those on the consumer side. This is changing as more consumers buy into the 1080p marketing push from the large television manufacturers and start to want/expect that same resolution/performance on smaller scale screens found on their laptops and small desktop monitors. However, for professional applications we still have not found a native 1920×1080 resolution 17″ LCD panel that has acceptable pixel response time, off-axis viewing, color gamut, and price point. That is why we, and many other manufacturers, use a 1366×768 17″ panel because it does meet all of these benchmark criteria for use within a professional monitor. I understand what you are saying about ‘more resolution is better’, but I assure you that is only true if all other characteristics are equal. I think even an untrained eye can tell you he likes the monitor with better off-axis viewing, wider color gamut, and better white uniformity…he may not be able to tell you exactly why, but even this ‘Joe Consumer’ will say “it just looks better.” Resolution IMHO is secondary to these other characteristics and the untrained eye is much more likely to NOT notice the lower resolution, especially when dealing with smaller monitors. With such fine pixel pitch at 17″ the lower resolution is much less apparent than most people would assume. It has happened more than once that we show a 17″ unit in a room with a higher resolution 40″ or larger display and the clients comment that the smaller, lower resolution, 17″ looks much sharper…all things being equal I attribute this to the dot pitch/pixel pitch of the various displays. On a side note, I do prefer 1366×768 to 1280×768 resolution 17″ units because 1366×768 is native 16:9 aspect ratio so your HD sources will fill the entire screen. There are a good deal of monitors using 1280×768 screens and with those units you will get black bars top and bottom, so your actual image size is slightly smaller than 17″. 1280×768 stems again from the computer world as this is the WXGA video standard. 1366×768 is gaining in popularity, again primarily b/c even though it is not native 1920×1080, it is native 16:9 aspect ratio.
The story of course continues with the smaller screens. Again because of the computer world one of the dominant resolutions at the 7″ size is becoming 800×480 (this is the WVGA standard). The consumer market (PDAs, Netbooks, portable DVD players,etc.) again drives the availability and resolution standard of these smaller panels.
Hope you’re still awake at this point and that it helps put this into perspective.
Bram Desmet
FSI (Flanders Scientific, Inc.)
http://www.FlandersScientific.com -
1 U (or RU) is 1.75 inches. RU stands for Rack Unit and it is a fairly ubiquitous term in broadcast engineering circles used to describe what height a piece of equipment will occupy within a standard 19″ rack. Our 17″ monitor is slightly less than 7RU and I only used this industry jargon in the previous post because if you are looking for the cases I was describing they will almost all be referred to by RU size/capacity. These cases are typically found in even RU measurements. A 6RU case would be too small, a 7RU cases would be just perfect (but hard to find), and 8RU cases is probably the easiest case to find that would do precisely what you described. Type in “8 U Roto-Rack” in google and you will find links to the several products the basically do what you were inquiring about in your previous posts.
The LM-0750W was built primarily as a field monitor and has all of the features found on the larger FSI monitors. This unit is actually 800×480 resolution, not 800×600. 800×480 is a pretty common resolution on the nicer 7″ 16:9 aspect LCD monitors on the market. Some of the lower end 7″ units will have half the vertical resolution or be 6 bit(only reproducing 262K colors as opposed to 16.77M colors) so that is something to look for when comparing various options on the market. Our unit, as well as many other higher-end 7″ broadcast monitors, have a 1:1 zoom capability that can be effectively used to help establish critical focus in HD so this helps to address one of the primary concerns when dealing with smaller, lower resolution monitors.
You won’t find much in the way of reviews on the LM-0750W because it is brand new unit. I am obviously biased as I work for FSI, but it may be helpful to point out that this unit shares all of the features of the larger FSI monitors. If you like the LM-1760W, you’ll most likely be quite pleased with the LM-0750W as it essentially a more compact version of that unit. The only main differences you’ll find are:
1. That you do not have the analog loop throughs on the 7″(still have SDI out, just not analog b/c of space restrictions, analog in is still included).
2. The unit comes with your choice of V-Mount or AB mount battery plate.
3. The unit has an image flip option that allows you to turn the image upside for certain camera mounting (steadicam) type operations.Hope this helps.
Bram Desmet
FSI (Flanders Scientific, Inc.)
http://www.FlandersScientific.com -
The LM-1760W is slightly less than 7RU and comes with a set of static rack mount ears, so any 7RU or larger 19″ portable rack mount style case would work. A quick search on google pulls up a good deal of 8RU portable molded plastic rack cases. Of course the depth of these cases adds a good deal of bulk, but perhaps that could be used for storage of additional equipment.
Bram Desmet
FSI (Flanders Scientific, Inc.)
http://www.FlandersScientific.com -
Hi Steve,
Just FYI, the sale on the LM-2130W is over. The last 5 available at the sale price were sold earlier today. While we will continue to offer support and have full access to spare parts for these units we have no intention of continuing to stock them. The LM-1760W ($2,495) is $500 less expensive than an LM-2130W ($2,995) and is a vastly superior monitor for any color critical applications.
Bram Desmet
FSI (Flanders Scientific, Inc.)
http://www.FlandersScientific.com -
No, the LM-2130W will look worse overall. Color Fidelity, Off-Axis Viewing, and White Uniformity (all of which the 17″ does Much, Much better) are drastically more important than native resolution. Unlike scaling up (SD to fit HD screen) scaling 1920×1080 to fit 1366×768 produces near flawless results and is easy, especially when you are talking about something in the 17″ size range that has such fine dot pitch anyway. Lower panel resolution is much more noticeable in larger units with larger dot pitch.
I honestly think that if we didn’t list the resolution in our specifications as 1366×768 few, if any, people would ever think the resolution was lower than our larger units. There are some specific test patterns that can help you discern differences in native resolution, but in real world use you’d be hard pressed to notice a difference. Keep in mind that if you ever run into a situation where you feel the resolution may be an issue that the monitor has native 1:1 pixel mapping mode you can use to double check whatever issue you feel may exist at the 1:1 pixel level.
Bram Desmet
FSI (Flanders Scientific, Inc.)
http://www.FlandersScientific.com