viewsonic ips panels - cheap, easy to calibrate, and hold calibration for ages....

I'm very happy with my 27 WQHD ASUS monitor (purchased through Best Buy). $600 after taxes. Great color and clarity (2500x 1400 px)

Mike

Asus ProArt down here and very happy with it.
The overlays are more useful than I thought they would be.

If you're doing work for broadcast though one of the HP Dreamcolor Monitors might be more appropriate as they are 10 bit.

Bob.

There's been at least one rather lengthy thread regarding monitor pros and cons within the past year or two that might help out.

I've had a Dell 2412 (24") for over a year now and it is very usable. eIPS, 1920x1200, considerably under $300 so you can have a double or triple setup. Decent color calibration, LED backlight.

Q: What makes a Monitor suitable for Broadcast, hinted within Milto's request, over and above what has been suggested so far?

Kinda thought I'd ask.

Grazie

It's a question of fear.
If for any reason the color is bad when you go to tv, you want to be able to point to the monitors and say, "Hey, it's a broadcast monitor. "
So I want to match that w/o spending four grand.

unfortunately a 'broadcast' monitor DOES cost $4k>

however, a properly calibrated (good) ips panel comes as close as is possible for around $500, or even less.

1st stop should be scopes, 2nd eyeballing on above, 3rd guaranteeing that whatever it's watched on is also calibrated....

unfortunately 3 is impossible and usually negates everything else ;-(

[I]"Q: What makes a Monitor suitable for Broadcast, hinted within Milto's request, over and above what has been suggested so far? "[/I]

A: How it connects. In the SD days composite video was the standard interconnection. One could also connect various instruments that would independently validate the signals being fed to the monitor and those instruments in turn could be calibrated against known national standards which in turn were calibrated against known international standards.


Today with HD it's all digital so we don't have to worry about traceability. I would have thought that would make instruments such as waveform monitors cheaper but not so, a HD SDI waveform monitor is around $15K. I don't know if we really need all this or not. What does confound me is the number of devious ways in the digital world we can be led astray.

Bob.

So, Vic needs to compromise or review what "best" means. I trust Vic to get to the "look" he wants. He's got decades of professional activity. What he needs to do is to travel to a Broadcast station, by invitation, and make himself at ease with the range and value of the Media and content that comes to them and then gets broadcast. I'm betting that as soon as he sees that final link in the chain he's going to be in a better place to make his own judgements : "It's a question of fear. If for any reason the color is bad when you go to tv, you want to be able to point to the monitors and say, "Hey, it's a broadcast monitor. " So I want to match that w/o spending four grand. "

Vic, do it! If you were any nearer to me I'd come along with you too. So, go see for yourself. You've got many colleagues in the biz. Get some comfort and reduce that fear, and maybe you could say, turning it on its head, something along the lines of:- Well, I know what I am doing on my calibrated Monitor. And that isn't how I gave it to you!

Grazie

I'd suggest a different approach.
Have a couple of el cheapo TVs fed with the same signal for clients to preview footage on. The intention here is to avoid producing anything that looks too gross no matter how poor the TV.
This is quite similar to what the audio guys do, its got to sound great on both the big studio monitors and the car radio speakers.

Bob.

Do both.

G

B&H have the 24" Dreamcolor for $2249 and the ProArt for $468; both are 10bit displays. I have both. While I use the ProArt as a system monitor it looks very good. I haven't tried to demonstrate that the ProArt is as good as the Dreamcolor, but it is a high spec monitor with the required characteristics. Obviously I bought the Dreamcolor well before I bought the ProArt and it's not in my interest to prove that HP product is unnecessarily expensive.

"it is a high spec monitor with the required characteristics"

Which is/are what? Vic wants to be able to point to his new monitor and say: "Hey, it's a broadcast monitor." I understand Vic's concerns and wants a copper-bottomed (nautical specification/term there - to slow-down, stop the growth of barnacles?) assurance drawn from the specifications thereto described therein . . and notwithstanding the above aforementioned requests.

Q: So, what makes a monitor a Broadcast monitor?

Grazie

Typical Broadcast Monitor

There's no hard and fast definition of what makes a monitor "broadcast" but this one is typical of what you'd expect.
Most importantly is it can be calibrated and the calibration tables stored internally. It has to accurately display the full gamut of colours.

Most of us probably have no need for such an instrument as we're not going to be connecting the monitor to different unknown signal sources. If your day to day job is say the "video village" guy on shoots then this is what you'd have in the van.

Bob.

So....and again . . . What does Vic need to do to reduce his "fear"?

G

An HP Dreamcolor LP2480zx

"replace your outdated CRTs and mainstream LCDs with a color-critical LCD that exceeds CRT performance standards? Developed in close collaboration with DreamWorks Animation, the HP DreamColor LP2480zx Professional LCD Display is the world’s only color-critical LCD based on HP DreamColor Engine technology.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/connecting/ds_ws_lp2480z.pdfHP description[/link]

http://provideocoalition.com/atepper/story/dreamcolor_from_hp_an_ideal_tool_for_critical_image_evaluation/review ProVideo Coalition[/link]

So, what'll it be, Vic, a tad more than what you wanted to spend? All you now need to do is confirm that this is a monitor that your broadcasters would accept as a Q&A test monitor for Broadcast.

Grazie

I have two cheap monitors
(Belinea O display and Asus)
I calibrated both with dispcal gui. From black to white, geyscales and colors look similar on my samsung TV.
So, I would say, if you know how to calibrate your screens, any large monitor could be OK. You will save money but probably need 1 day calibrating all the stuff.

it's easy to do a wrong calibration. How did I succeed ?

1 I calibrated the TV with a DVD (iso dowloaded on the internet)
- brightness (blacks to 17 - 16)
- contrast (white levels to 240)
and other settings (blue, etc)

2 I calibrated my monitors with this Dvd to see what contrast / brightness to use.
- Calibration and profiling the two monitors with dispcal GUI (spyder4 color sensor.

If you fail getting the same result on your TV, consider:
- you have as many "cinema " modes on your Tv as entries (HDMI1,2,3, 4 etc)
So once youv'e calibrated one entry, calibrate all the others.
The 3D cinema mode also use another setting. This means once you've calibrated the 2D mode, you must calibrate all entries in 3D mode (HDMI1,2,3,4, etc)
this means you have to calibrate all entrys in 2D + 3D for all modes (cinema, standard, dynamic TV presets = 80 settings on my TV !!! - but I only use cinema and standard modes...)

Another point concerning your monitors : you can use a cinema mode with
B90 C35 setting to match your luminance
B35 C63 setting to match same luminance
And many settings in between to match same luminance
B = brightness, C = Contrast
... and do a calibration.
Problem is it will not match your TV.
How to find the monitors Brigthness / Contrast that will match your tv ???
1 A home solution : connect a PC to your tv, use dispcal gui to calibrate your tv.
It's not necessary to profile your TV, because you cannot enter the generated icc profile in your tv.
But probably, you wil not match all other TV's
2 a long solution : experiment B /C values. You can save time to see what one setting gives, compare with other settings, do a "middle" setting.
After 2 or 3 attempts - half a day - you will find those values, do your calibration, burn a dvd, or blueray with grayscales, color scales.. and your film : everything should look like the same... and you save a lot of money.
I used this long method.

Of course, I do know a broadcast monitor would be better, specially concerning
- day after day use deviation
-temperature deviations
But if you have time to experiement...

Now, you are ready to calibrate your printer and scanner, but this is another subject, and you need some more devices.

Thank you one and all.
Being a cheap sob, I'm going with Serena's Hp solution.
I'll let you know if I run into issues.
And then i will drop in at local tv station, as per Grazie.
Again my thanks to this incredible support group.

Go Vic! Make a day, and I'll fly over for a morning?

G

Dell UltraSharp U2913WM

Calibrating the Dreamcolor monitor : http://h30094.www3.hp.com/product/sku/10443594/mfg_partno/B1F63AAcolour calibration[/link]