Sorry for not having caught your post earlier.
The EDP100 is the only solution that:
- Drives the Apple HD Cinema Display
- Delivers a true pixel-for-pixel full HD resolution picture via that display
- Works at all input frame rates and resolutions with the supported displays
- Was designed to compete with Sony's US$35K and US$45K monitors, not to be a cheap converter (the latter necesitating all sorts of compromises in processing).
- Has an (optional) state of the art Graticule (Cage, Frame Line, Safe Action, depending on your region) generator.
- Has programmable LUT's for calibration, creative or engineering purposes.
- ...and more.
The products you listed are not in the same range. They are designed from a different perspective. The idea there is to put an image on an LCD as inexpensively as possible. Today you could do that for less than US$600 retail, if you really wanted to. But, you woudn't have a picture that would be QC quality, which is what the EDP100 delivers. In fact, I met the folks who have this very low cost solution (a home-theater vendor), so, Doremi and Miranda will have to compare to that offering, which is very good, and the guys are great. But, still, it's a full time scaler, with all the accompanying issues.
There are a few easy tests you can run on your own if evaluating any monitoring
solution:
First, run a geometry test. Having access to a system where you can create your own HD test frames is useful here. Say, Photoshop on a G5 with DecklinkHD. You need a frame with a single pixel line along the periphery of the active video area. In other words, a black frame with the outermost pixel painted white. Then draw the two diagonals and five circles (one in the center and one in each quadrant). You will be looking for the display system delivering the full image edge-to-edge and top-to-bottom as well as not introducing significant geometric distortion.
Second, run a frequency response test. I prefer a 30MHz sweep. Multiburst only gives you a few frequency samples. I find that some monitors do pretty well with traditional Multiburst but fail to pass the frequency sweep. Basicly, processing/technology artifacts are much more visible using a sweep.
Then you can look at other signals to inspect color response, motion, etc. Of particular interest might be an examination of how PsF material is treated. PsF, as you may know, is Progressive material that is simply transported as though it were interlaced. The cheapest way to make an HD to DVI converter is to treat it all like interlaced and use a cheap home-theater processing chip. You can see this effect very clearly because, if you park on an frame with very fine detail a solution that treats PsF like interlaced will flicker, very severely sometimes (BTW, this is what you get if you spend $45K and buy a 150lbs Sony CRT). The EDP100 is the only solution that treats progressive material as, well, progressive.
There are much more subtle issues, like, for example, applying motion-adaptive de-interlacing algorithms to PsF material (again, to build'em cheap you have to use substandard solutions) which is as wrong as you can go in the context of a professional product.
In general terms, I request that the EDP100 be evaluated against the most expensive and most capable monitor at a facility. That, generally speaking, often turns out to be a Sony BVM-D24, BVM-F24 or BVM-D32. That's the standard we go up against. The low cost converters don't last but 30 seconds in this comparison. Which, by the way will be prominently featured in our booth at NAB.
If you are attending NAB, please stop by the booth (SL2756). I'd be happy to show you.
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Martin Euredjian
eCinema Systems, Inc.
voice: 661-305-9320
fax: 661-775-4876
martin@ecinemasys.com
ecinema@ieee.org
http://www.ecinemasys.com
