Okay, so "the company" can't spring for nice HD monitors for our FCP suites. I have researched the AJA & HDlink converters that take a SDI signal and convert them to HDMI for a standard LCD monitor. But what are the pros & cons other than the price point? The suites will be finishing a cable series. Concerns? ANy info much appreciated.
Re: HD Monitors?? by Bryan Banks on May 9, 2008 at 3:14:38 am
I'm finding that the JVC DT-V20L1U is very reasonably priced ($1k at B&H). My concern about this monitor is that it does not have a native resolution of 1920x1080. While most of the material that I'll be working with is 720p (and could use the 1:1 mode), would grading 1080p material with this display be inaccurate because of the scaling?
I've seen a number of HD broadcast LCDs that have smaller native resolutions than 1920x1080, so I'm guessing they'd still be accurate enough for the picture as a whole. What do you guys think?
I'm tempted to go the JVC 20"+BM Intensity card (with DVI-HDMI cable) route rather than an MXO/MXO2 route with a consumer display.
Re: HD Monitors?? by Tim Kolb on May 9, 2008 at 1:38:58 pm
The JVC monitors are awfully good values from what I've seen...I plan on buying the DT-V24L1DU 24" for myself fairly soon.
While they ARE LCD monitors, JVC has done a very good job with these monitors for the price. The resolution differential on the 20" may lack something for checking focus, but the color should be as good as a higher res monitor of the same type. I personally think that having HDSDI in is as, or more important to achieving reasonable color accuracy than screen resolution.
Of course you do have the E-Cinema units and Cine-Tal's LCD monitors, which are very, very good devices, but you move into another pricing class, which is financially out of reach for many smaller enterprises.
Re: HD Monitors?? by Bryan Banks on May 9, 2008 at 4:58:44 pm
While HD-SDI would be nice, being able to run HDMI out of a BM Intensity card to the DVI port on the JVC should yield the same all-digital signal. Also, the JVC's 1:1 mode would allow you to view the source unscaled, allowing you to check for focus. It would crop the sides of 1080p a little bit, but should be sufficient enough to check sharpness (I wouldn't use it in the field, just for post).
Re: HD Monitors?? by Tim Kolb on May 9, 2008 at 3:36:30 am
Well...while the AJA converters are pretty darn good, LCDs are 8 bit...and RGB.
Tough to color correct on without a fairly effective look up table...and even then...
Do you have any decent SD BVM CRTs? It wouldn't be ideal as HD is rec 709 colorspace and SD is 601, but it might be helpful to have a downconverted image on the CRT as an alternative to the LCD...
AND OF COURSE you need test displays...even more critically if you end up with an LCD as your video display.
Re: HD Monitors?? by Bryan Banks on May 10, 2008 at 5:51:08 am
As far as the converters for HDMI, the only problem is with the televisions since they cannot be properly calibrated. Your options are really an MXO+23" ACD, MXO2+HDMI television (if you can wait til July), or the JVC v20l1u (actual broadcast monitor)+BM Intensity (or an HDMI converter if you have an HD-SDI card already).
There are pros/cons of each of these options. How tight is your actual budget?
