I am using a BenQ 37" "HD ready" with a resolution of 1366. Make sure your resolution is at least 1366 to show broadcast HD 1280x720 footage comfortably. If you can, go "Full HD" 1920x1080, lots of space to view everything in Vegas. Of course, your graphics card must be able to drive that resolution.

What I would like to know is, what "Color Profile" should one use when using an LCD or plasma monitor to match true color spacing? I have Adobe & RGB available.

I'm using a 50" full HD plasma, hung above the system monitor - works really well. Seeing the 1920x1080 output from some 1.5m can help a lot in choosing how far you can go with levels, CC, etc. before the picture starts degrading.

As to the color spacing - well, in my Secondary Monitor settings I have "Use Studio RGB" enabled using sRGB Color Space profile.icm

I'm using two Sharp 1080P 32" jobs set to 1920 x 1080P on 2 computers and 1366 x 768 on one computer with a dual KVM switch. The KVM will only switch 1366 x 768 so I use that on the online computer. The movie and still picture computers are set to 1920 x 1080P with the HDMI conversions and I have to swirch to them with the KVM (keyboard, mouse, printer, 7.1 sound, etc,) and remote for the monitors. After tweeking the monitors to the proper settings the still pictures appear on the monitor with more contrast than they actually have (much more than you think) so you have to allow for that when printing high quality stuff. You will note that when the resolution on the monitor is set to 1920 x 1080P that the very light gray text in the Windows menus is difficult to read because it is so small. If it was set to bold it would be a piece of cake but some of the Windows menus cannot be set to bold. If you reset the video card to larger settings from default it gets worse. I don't worry about the lack of deep blacks as my Sony LCD Bravia 2 has the same black performance so you can't tell the difference. And with the prolific existance of LCD panels in the field nobody else can either. Just think about "stretchovision" and "zoomed 4 x 3 to fill the screen" and the black problem is miniscule compared to that in my opinion. The newer Sony 1080P 32" LCD's have all the proper adjustments for white balance, red, blue, green drives, etc. Once you get used to the big monitors you will never go back to anything smaller.
JJK

If my main family TV is a Samsung 55" led LCD, should I be using the same brand/ smaller size as a monitor. Also there was a suggestion that the monitor should be at least 42". Any comments?

OT Answer:

I just picked up a 24" Dell Computer monitor at Best Buy for $249. After years of dual 17" monitors, the 24" is amazing. I still use the 17 for previews and the mixer, everything else goes on the 24. These 62 year old eyes do fine with font sizes and the like. Since I need papers and books on the desk while I am working, I just don't see going bigger. The colors on the Dell S2409W are very good.

I'm using an Acer X223W widescreen and a Princeton LCD-19D 4:3 for a secondary, both going through a 2-head Matrox parahelia.

Recently while I was trying to capture video in VV 8, I started with the Vidcap's preview window in the secondary monitor, but it came up with a message about the monitor not having the right settings. The computer crashed before I could even read the whole message.

I went through several crashes before figuring out that if I put the preview window on the primary, then closed the app before the machine crashed, it would work.

I can use it this way, but i'd hoped I could learn what is wrong with Monitor 2. I noticed that megabit referred to setting the Color Space. The only place I know where there's a setting for this is in Windows' XP display settings, but this didn't list the "Use Studio RGB" setting that he mentioned.

Can anyone tell me how to set my monitors correctly, or if there are other settings I should address?

I've also found that using a widescreen TV to look at some video I edited using a Sony CRT monitor, displays the video as being horribly blocky with a nasty effect on simple block text that looks kind of like a distorted drop shadow. I was looking around for an answer when I ran across this thread.

Thanks.

Only using an HDTV for external monitoring.

Have dual 19" LCD monitors for computer and Vegas t/line, but use a Sharp Aquos LED LCD HDTV for external monitoring via Black Magic Design Decklink Studio 2.
BMD DS also simultaneously downconverts HD to SD (letterboxes) to an external SONY professional monitor.

Looks great.

Tom

That sounds like the setup I'd like. The Black Magic card doesn't work with my mobo.

I use a 42" monitor. It's 1080p, but I changed the resolution to 1440 by 9xx something. The full 1920 X 1080 gave lots of screen space, Oh Boy, but I am too far away, so I made it bigger. incidentally, I have an RGB computer input on the monitor that looks pretty much identical to using DVI to HDMI, so I just use that and save the HDMI inputs for my decks and (hopefully) future video interface

just a heads-up. Many of the new hdtvs have a ton of advance features, motion smoothing, colorspace enhancements,etc..... some of features will hide problems of the media you are working on, so, remember to disable them when editing! ;-)