Sony PVM monitors

Looking at Sony's PVM20M4U monitor it appears to have the basics for a good online monitor: SMPTE phospors, 800 lines of resolution, blue gun, h/v delay to show blanking and overscan/underscan; and at $2,000 is about as much as I can spend to keep within my budget. I'd like to hear from others about the pros and cons of the PVM series. FWIW at the moment I don't plan to do any color correction.

Thanks

The PVM20M2U is $1699 at B+H Photo, and is excellent. The 20M4U has the smpte phosphors, but is around $2200. Move quick, sony is discontinuing this series.

bobZelin

If budget is a concern, then the 20M4U is a great moitor. You might need to add an SDI card unless you have an external D to A for the Kona. I've been using a 20M4U with SDI on my main workstation for the past three years, and it still looks great. The PVM series are not Sony's broadcast line (BVM), but rather "production" monitors. According to my engineer, the tube in the PVM-M4U is the same as the BVM series, but the rest of the parts aren't as durable. But when you compare the price (BVM's are about $8k and up), the PVM-M4U is a great deal. Another downside is that the BVM's have floppy drives to store settings for multiple users, and has a port for a calibration probe... my engineer has a high-end Sony probe which doesn't need this input, so my PVM is calibrated correctly to match our other BVM monitors. I picked up a bunch of BVM-1910/11's at auctions last year, so now my main setup is using a 1910, and my intern has the 20M4U.

[Marco Solorio] "So Sony is going to drop the PVM series without replacement and only have the high dollar BVM series? There has to be a middle ground... "

No, no. If I read Bob's post correctly, just that particular model of monitor.

I'm using the PVM-20L5. Terrific monitor. Also SMPTE phosphors, blue gun, underscan, H/V Delay, 2 composite inputs, 1 Component, SDI-Ready, HD-Ready. With the SDI card I think the price came in around the mid to upper $2,000 range.

Terrific monitor. I'm very comfortable color-correcting on it.

--
Patrick Inhofer
editor, compositor, nice guy
applePi Editorial, nyc
Cow forum leader: Kona

You HD guys make me sick with your fancy-shmancy high resolution quality! But I guess it goes hand in hand with high resolution render times too ;-)

Which model did you get, Leo? Sounds nice.

Marco Solorio  |  OneRiver Media

Bwwaaahhaahaahahaaa!!! That's a good one.

Hey, where can I get a set of NTSC cables, anyway? :p

hee hee

Marco Solorio  |  OneRiver Media

Hi -
I have been told that the PVM20M2U and PVM20M4U (and the correspoding 14M2U and 14M4U) are going to be dropped, and the only monitor that will be available in the "industrial" PVM series will be the new PVM20L5 (and 14L4) which is $2599 at
B+H Photo. There will be no "cheaper" 20M2U line (and the 20L5 is more money than the 20M4U anyway). There are 2 slots behind these monitors, where you put in optional plug in cards for SDI input, etc (which of course adds more money). This makes it difficult for me to do "budget" installations.

Hey, at least the Stealth port is still only $49 !

Bob Zelin