Hi Josh,
As you can see from the responses, this is a touchy subject around here. But in all honesty they are correct. Don't take it personally.
However.... If you are not doing broadcast work, which most on here are, you may be able to get along without the "full broadcast capable" monitoring solution and start with something that will at least be "close enough" for what you need. You did not mention what kind of i/o card you have and this should be the first thing on your list if you don't already have one. There are MANY to choose from ranging in prices from about $3000 on down to about $200. Feeding your color grading monitor from your computer graphics card is
NOT an option. You
must have a proper HD i/o card for this.
Here is my suggestion from the info you have provided. Get yourself a Black Magic Intensity I/O card ($199.00) It will give you proper Hi def HDMI ins and outs of your edit suite (unless you have only a Mac Book Pro or an iMac, then you really only have one option for i/o, The Matrox MXO line at about $900.00)
Then go and find yourself a 42" 1080 Panasonic Plasma ($649.00 at Best Buy) and then spend the $250 for their Geek Squad to calibrate it to REC 709 specs.
It wont be spot on but this will get you "close" and you will at least not be "grading in the dark" when it comes to color grading.
All in... you will be spending about $1100.00 and you will be quite surprised at the results. Then as you build clients and save some money, the next step is an AJA LHi i/o card (HD/SDI and HDMI ins and outs for $1200) and a Flanders LM-1760W ($2495.00) and you will have a truly professional color grading monitor set up for around $3700.00
Hope this helps.
Good Luck!
Richard Cooper
FrostLine Productions, LLC
Anchorage, Alaska
http://www.frostlineproductions.com
