Reasons why NOT using a LCD TV as monitor?

I see TVs cheaper than monitors and since I want something in the 27" range and over I am considering getting a TV instead...
I do NOT care about the true colors and color correction.

So I am a little confused why I shouldn't get an LCD display?

ANy reasons I am missing?

Thanks.

1) Why wouldn't you care about true colors and color correction?
2) My experience is the opposite, computer monitors are cheaper than TVs. Either way, you can't be talking more than $20-$30 on a $200-$300 purchase.
3) If nothing else, there is the energy star thing to be concerned with, saving $$s by turning the monitor off when the computer is unused... I don't believe TVs will do this.

There is a lot of talk in this forum about computer monitors that are in the $1k range, but there are a lot of monitors that are a *lot* cheaper that will do a yeoman's job. I personally prefer to use a computer monitor for my computer monitoring, and a TV for monitoring my output signal.

Monitors over 27"'are more expensive and hard to find in my experience.
I dont care about color because i cut movie trailers that are already color corrected and if correction is needed it happens after my cut by someone else

Well, if you don't want accurate colors, a TV would suffice. Why not computer monitors? They weren't built to display interlacing.



www.strypesinpost.com

Look at this HDTV: Toshiba - 24" Class / 1080p / 60Hz / LED-LCD HDTV DVD Combo

I saw it at Best Buy. The picture looked pretty good. It's $319.00, not bad for a 1080p.

Looking for over 27"...
Thx thoigh

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I see TVs cheaper than monitors...

You lost me right there. Money is obviously more important than visual quality to you so might as well get a TV. Monitors are more expensive for a reason. TVs are end user displays.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

"over 27" qualifies as everything from 28" to 40' movie screens. Can you narrow it down a bit? I think you're not talking about a computer monitor, you're talking about a TV display, in which case a TV would be fine.

grafixjoe Wrote:
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> I see TVs cheaper than monitors...
>
> You lost me right there. Money is obviously more
> important than visual quality to you so might as
> well get a TV. Monitors are more expensive for a
> reason. TVs are end user displays.


This is why i posted since tvs are cheaper i wanted to know if i was missing smthg.
Obviously since quality image isnt my concern i shoupd get a 32" tv.

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Obviously since quality image isnt my concern i shoupd get a 32" tv.

...exactly....because for me to explain what is you are missing, you are saying that is not a concern to you anyway so that would waste your time and mine.

So, Vizio monitors at Costco are awesome and they automatically double the one year manufacturer warranty.

Personally, don't use an LCD Display for my rig...I do care about color correction and color reproduction so I use the new Apple 27" LED Cinema Display (2550 x 1440 resolution) and it is crazy gorgeous: Sharp color / deep blacks / low heat / built-in iSight camera / microphone / 49-watt speaker system / Thunderbolt connection / charges my MBP via the on-board cable & more ($1000). I believe in spending extra for better, more dependable equipment.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

My understanding of the Apple LED Cinema Display (coming from wikipedia) is that it's actually an LCD display making use of a white LED backlight. (True LED displays have R,G,B LEDs at each pixel.) But if the white LED backlight is comprised of R,G,B LEDs then the Apple Display can have "crazy gorgeous" color. This is due to the three primaries being nearly on the chromaticity boundary, resulting in a very large gamut triangle.

The trouble is, these are not the BT.709 primaries. The BT.709 primaries are inboard and make a conservative gamut triangle, without "crazy gorgeous" colors. Any monitor producing "crazy gorgeous" colors is misrepresenting video.

I have that problem with a monitor overshooting BT.709 gamut. It should be possible to effectively tone down its primary saturations, as well as to shift its primary hues, to BT.709 display standard with an appropriate .icc profile. So far, I've not succeeded with this. A 3D LUT can shift everything to everything, but graphic cards don't accept .icc profiles containing 3D LUTs. (Blackmagic HDLink Pro DVI accepts them.) It's harder to construct a sufficient .icc profile without the 3D LUT, but maybe possible.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

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Any monitor producing "crazy gorgeous" colors is misrepresenting video.

dcouzin,

Thanks for quoting my "crazy gorgeous" quote in your post 3 times. I am flattered. "Crazy gorgeous" is not a color measurement standard to judge monitors by...just simply my opinion of Apple's best production computer monitor EVER (IMHO). I create Motion Graphic Design / VFX & Color Grading for Broadcast TV, Gaming Industry, Corporate, Web and theme parks using this monitor color reference so I guess my clients think my final renders are "crazy gorgeous" as well

FWIW, I use the standard LED Cinema Display color profile right out of the box and I use scopes (most people do not).

Thanks

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I was talking to a colorist the other day. He was suspicious of LED monitors delivering colors that are too saturated. Personally, I won't judge a computer monitor, as the signal they receive are processed and clipped prior to displaying it (Rec 709 to an RGB profile). Broadcast gamut has reserved headroom to prevent clipping of the color signal (both beneath black point and above white point). This is why you cannot calibrate an LED display to bars and tone, since the pluge bars are useless (2 of the lines will merge and display at the same value).



www.strypesinpost.com

BT.709 says that the R, G, B primaries have (x,y) chromaticities (0.640, 0.300), (0.150, 0.330), (0.600, 0.060), respectively. The only "scope" that will say whether your monitor is making these colors is a colorimeter. The colorimeter must physically measure the light from the screen. One cheap and adequate colorimeter is DataColor's Spyder3Elite used with their OptiMeter software.

The BT.709 equations imply how (Y',CB, CR) in the video displays on the screen. Video with (62, 102, 240) displays at exactly the R primary; video with (172, 41, 26) displays at exactly the B primary; video with (31, 240, 117) displays at exactly the B primary. Play a video with these three color bars and check if your monitor shows the correct chomaticities of the BT.709 primaries.

Are these commonly available color bars? Homemade ones in 8-bit uncompressed 4:2:2 codec can be downloaded as bt709rgb.mov.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Onboard scopes show you what you are outputting. How that's interpreted by the monitor is a different beast. And since colour is so subjective, as long as you're within legal bounds, the rest is personal choice.

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Onboard scopes show you what you are outputting. How that's interpreted by the monitor is a different beast. And since colour is so subjective, as long as you're within legal bounds, the rest is personal choice.

Thank you Jude - could not have said it better myself. Not sure why dcouzin keeps "quoting" my buzz words. Yes...I use "scopes" (as in "Waveform / Vectorscope" to keep it legal. Never had an issue.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Color preference is certainly subjective, but the color that a video is supposed to produce, according to BT.709, is objective. Eyes can make good adjustments for brightness and tint deviations from the BT.709 specified color, but not so good for saturation error. So the rather low saturation of the BT.709 primaries should be taken seriously by the editor.

A too high saturation monitor, without profiling to tone it down, can show a video as having healthy saturation when its saturation is actually deficient. It is not always possible for the colorist, with her perfectly calibrated monitor, to salvage shots which should not have been chosen at all. Better to edit with a monitor not too far from BT.709 specification.

Calibrated monitoring serves a similar function as signal legality: they avoid bad surprises when the video is properly displayed or properly clipped, respectively. Signal legality is easy in digital video. BT.709 recommends Y' between 16 and 235 (or between 64 and 940) and CB and CR between 16 and 240 (or between 64 and 960) and that's it.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Saturation can easily be seen on a vectorscope. There is no 'correct' red. Only legal or illegal reds.

The original question included

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I do NOT care about the true colors and color correction.

So there is no reason not to buy a "Full HD TV" set, if it's a good one.

I've got a 40" with 3 HDMI, Scart, Composite, USB, 4 years warranty for 360 Euro.
It works great with the Matrox and the USB option is cool as well, as you can just connect a drive from a customer with files and quickly run thru them without using any app (as long the format fits) - or just listen music when not needed as display .
The good and bad with this monitor is that you really can see all the bad things about interlacing and formats with the different TV stations (if you use it as a TV). That means means if the signal is 720/50p (which is standard here in Germany for broadcasters) the monitor gets this info and tries to display at 720/50p with upscale to 1080. This works fine with most movies, but some of the broadcasters (especially 1 - who is second biggest broadcast company in the world) obviously do have a bad editing setup when it comes to ENG -- they broadcast at 50p, but every frame is interlaced means that it is 100i.

So all that said - if it's about color you should NOT use a TV. If it's for rough editing it's okay. If you want to preview how it might look on TV it's somehow a must.
But one should try the TV set before buying or have a return option.

My 2 cents (in Euro - about 2.84 in US currency)
Andreas

>some of the broadcasters ... obviously do have a bad editing setup when it comes to ENG -- they broadcast at 50p, but every frame is interlaced means that it is 100i.

Run that one by me again Andreas. Are you saying that this broadcaster shoots or by some means edits and/or encodes its news at 100 fields per second (720i100)?

Jude, saturation is a property of a color. What you see on the vectorscope are properties of the video signal. When the vectorscope assigns color properties to the video signal it is presuming how the signal will be displayed as colored light.

BT.709 specifies R, G, B primaries, like signal lights are specified, by their CIE coordinates. Makers of broadcast monitors go to pains to map the BT.709 color gamut into their unit's color gamut.

The color absoluteness in BT.709 is buried in its numbers and equations. The color absoluteness in the DCI (digital cinema) specification is obvious. This is the way specification is progressing, and it's a good thing for the makers of videos. The growing interest in 3D LUTs for achieving color "looks" is in many cases based on the wish for this red versus that red, etc. The 3D LUT can lock the look into the video only if the display color is under control.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

100 fields per second would be some serious super slo mo broadcasts! I know a few shows I'd LOVE to see in 100 fields.......

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Andy,

They don't record at 100, but they take a frame (interlaced) from 50i to put it into a 50p stream. That finally means you get duplicate fields/frames somehow or 50i ond 50p.
I have tested that using my Matrox to capture the program stream directly from the HD cable receiver via HDMI to Prores. I used 2 versions to interpret. One interlaced, one progressive. The interlaced looked fine, the progressive one looked wrong - regardless which kind of monitoring.
It's the format flag they broadcast without taking care of the source(s). So in the news the studio stuff comes over fine, a reportage might or will come over bad. This mostly happens with news gathering.
So it's not a bad idea to test your program with a full HD TV connected.

If you want to do color correction it's a totally different thing and I agree with the posts about color on TV, but that hasn't been the question.

Andreas

>I do NOT care about the true colors and color correction.

TV. For reasons that I stated earlier- they are built to display from a broadcast signal. Computer monitors require a different signal, as it was built for a different purpose, so the signal needs to be converted to display on a computer monitor. And as a result, you will be unable to notice many artifacts related to a broadcast signal, and it may also add additional artifacts due to the conversion of the signal.


>Saturation can easily be seen on a vectorscope. There is no 'correct' red. Only legal or illegal reds.

Nope. There are specs for color accuracy, and all high end post houses use LUTs for finishing for this purpose. Stu Maschwitz wrote a blog post on color accuracy, and you can add any non-calibrated and non-qualified monitors to the mix.

[prolost.com]

Apple monitors and Dell monitors do look pretty good for computer monitors, but I would still avoid it for critical color work because they were not built for video monitoring.



www.strypesinpost.com

...which is why for critical color work, there are Broadcast Monitors (which the OP is not interested in).

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

strypes Wrote:
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> Apple monitors and Dell monitors do look pretty
> good for computer monitors, but I would still
> avoid it for critical color work because they were
> not built for video monitoring.

In theory, any monitor having a good black and a color gamut enclosing the BT.709 color gamut can be profiled for critical color work. The problems are: (1) developing the profiles and (2) finding hosts for them. Blackmagic's HDLink Pro DVI solves the second problem for $470 (if you already have SDI).

A February post showed how the Samsung 305T monitor's color gamut did not quite enclose the BT.709 color gamut. It will be interesting to see how the Apple and Dell monitors do.

The profiling must not only correct for the monitor but also for deviations from the BT.709 specifications in whatever software is used to play the video. There are debates about whether BT.709 implies 2.22 for the display gamma. After recommending display gamma 2.35, EBU Tech 3320 makes the forceful statement that "the monitor gamma is not, and never has been, the inverse of the camera gamma."

There are interpretational problems concerning ITU-R BT.709. For example, if the display gamma need not be the inverse of the camera gamma (specified in BT.709) then why should the matrix governing Y',CB,CR -> R',G',B' for display be the inverse of the matrix governing R',G',B -> Y',CB,CR (specified in BT.709)? The key to interpretation is that BT.709 colorimetrically specifies exact R,G,B primaries, and an exact white point, and these can only pertain to display.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

> "the monitor gamma is not, and never has been, the inverse of the camera gamma."

Isn't it under compensated for a dark monitoring environment?


>In theory, any monitor having a good black and a color gamut enclosing the BT.709 color gamut
>can be profiled for critical color work.

Accurate color is one aspect, the next is latency, as well as accurate temporal rendition of the video. That is something which broadcast monitors are designed to do, TVs to some degree (with the exception of color, which has veered off course since the early days).



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes, the EBU statement is recognizing that while a typical CRT had gamma approximately 2.5 (value per Poynton 1996), gamma precorrection was established at around 0.45 (= 1/2.2). So the precorrection was indeed an undercorrection for the monitor and the reason could only have been visual preference.

The end-to-end system gamma was 0.45 * 2.5 = 1.125. EBU exaggerates when they say it was 1.2. According to Hunt (1987) "dim surrounds" require end-to-end system gamma 1.25 and "dark surrounds" require end-to-end system gamma 1.5.

1.5 sounds preposterously high. It implies a monitor gamma of 1.5 / 0.45 = 3.33. But Ektachrome slide films, intended for projection in dark surrounds, do have gamma around 1.5.

The EBU recommended monitor gamma of 2.35, though boldly stated, is numerically timid. It gives end-to-end system gamma 0.45 * 2.35 = 1.06. It's just a nudge in the right direction for a dim monitoring environment.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

[Note added 5 October 2012: this study from July 2011 might resolve this mystery.]