External monitors - any recommendations?

I need to get an HD capable external monitor & my thread-searching skills are coming up short today. All I'm finding are threads on computer monitors.

What is the group consensus for a good & reliable external monitor? I'm not making a living doing advanced color-correction, just the good ol' editing basics.

Can I get by with a consumer grade LCD HDTV? I know there are some very good reasons why not, but I can't remember them at the moment. I've found a refurbished Sony HDM 20E1U, but that's an 80 pound monster that feels like overkill for my needs.

Is there a discussion thread on this somewhere that I'm missing? Any input appreciated. Thanks!

Jeff

Jeff-

Do you have a capture card that outputs HDSDI? If so a solution that I like is to get a good quality computer monitor and a signal convertor that will turn your HD signal into DVI or HDMI. As you already stated this is far from an ideal solution for color correction because you have limited control of the colors that display on the monitor.

Many of the members here like the Dell Ultra Sharp series monitors. As for the convertor I use an AJA convertor, but Black Magic also makes one, and I am sure there are others. They run in the $500 to $1K range.

[www.aja.com]


If you do not already own a capture card others here have reported good results with the Matrox MXO. It offers an additional advantage by having controls that give you some control of the colors it sends to the display.

[www.matrox.com]

-Vance

You absolutely can get by with a consumer-grade television. In my experience (which isn't everybody's experience) it's common practice even in online suites to have a nice, big Sony Bravia or something in front of the couch for the clients, while the editor watches his God monitor ? a Sony BVM or a Cinetal or something. Not only are large, high-quality consumer televisions a hell of a lot more reasonably priced than a huge grade-one monitor, there's something intangible about seeing the work on an actual television in a sort of simulated living room that helps clients decide what they do and don't like.

If your I/O board is currently giving you SDI, you'll want to get an Aja Hi5 to convert that to HDMI. If you've got one of the Blackmagic boards that output HDMI directly, then you're already set.

Do not buy a computer monitor for this, though. The whole idea of watching on a typical television is so you can see what your work will look like on, well, a typical television. Computer monitors come out-of-the-box set very differently from consumer TVs, which defeats the whole point.

If the TV you buy supports it, consider setting up two different color presets. Leave one set to whatever the TV was set to when you first turned it on, but for the other one do a very basic brightness-contrast-saturation calibration against SMTPE color bars. A consumer TV will never be a God monitor, but having one hooked up and left set to the factory defaults is really helpful for making an educated guess about how your stuff will look when Ma and Pa Kettle see it in their living room.

Thanks for the advice. I'm looking into capture cards at the moment, and leaning toward the Blackmagic over the AJA coverter, mostly on the strength of the HDMI output.

Glad to know I can get by with a consumer-grade TV. I'll definitely check out the Dell Ultra Sharp line.

Thanks!

Jeff

Vizio LCDs ROCK (I have a 47" and a 22" and they are affordable:

[www.walmart.com]

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Think MATROX MXO2 or MXO2 mini. The ability to calibrate a monitor to bars over HDMI puts it heads above other cards...when it comes to HDMI monitoring.

The MXO2 rocks...upconvert, cross convert, downconvert...laptop or tower....$1700...

Avoid the COMPUTER monitor...no DELL for monitoring. Even via HDMI. That is COMPUTER LCD. You want TV LCD or Plasma.


www.shanerosseditor.com

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