CRT vs LCD monitors?

[Matthew Rogers]

One thing I am sure many of us have not thought about is monitoring in the edit bay. CRT has been king for a long time since on a good monitor it accurately displays colors. LCD is great and getting cheaper, but the color rang/accuracy is not even close to CRT. So how will you be monitoring?

There's not many offerings in the CRT market for HD.

There's the 17" JVC DT-V1710CGU for $2k-$2.5k + $3.6k for the HDSDI board = around $6k.

Sony has the 14" BVM-A14F5U for around $5.4k plus $? for input cards.

Ikegami has 4 HD models, but only 2 under $7k. The 10" HTM9-1D with HDSDI for $2.8k and the 15" HTM-1517R for $6.2k plus it looks like extra $$$ for HDSDI.

I've looked at monitors like this: http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=94264&catGroupId=14625&surfModel=BT-LH1700W&displayTab=F
and this: http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=97137&catGroupId=14625&surfModel=BT-LH2600W&displayTab=O
but I'm not sure that I can trust the colors/brightness on those for my final output.

What other options really are there? Just watch everything on a SD monitor?

Matthew

[Graeme Nattress]

CRTs are as deficient as LCD - in that neither has a good black level, the LCD via it's backlight, and CRT via reflection and bleeding. CRTs drop out of "tune" at the drop of a hat, have geometry issues and don't even display full HD rez.

So, what do you do? A projector is probably your best bet. Remember no body at home will ever watch HD on a CDT (well, some will, but their number is so small as not to count).

LCDs are also improving daily. I've heard good things about the new Sony one, but have not seen it personally.

Graeme

[Cail Young]

I've heard good things about the new Sony one, but have not seen it personally.

It did look pretty damn good at SMPTE Australia... but it was placed in a dark room; no idea how it looks with ambient lighting.

[Graeme Nattress]

LCD usually fairs worst in low light, and best in ambient where the anti-reflective coatings show their own. CRTs are generally oposite - best in low light, not so hot in ambient or with reflections.

Graeme

[Andrew Benz]

Nevermind...

[Kevin Halverson]

Even front projection has its limits in terms of achieving great black performance in real world conditions. There are some real trade offs in terms of the so called 'screen gain' versus the output capabilities of the projector. Quickly, you are balancing budget and performance issues.

All the current display technologies have their own characteristics, none are ideal in all viewing environments. Considering how and where you expect to use a display will give you the best chance at maximizing your ROI.

Personally, I don't think that either transmissive (back lit) nor reflective (front lit projection) approaches are ideal. What is needed is an photoemmissive approach that is fast, has a high dynamic range with a large color pallet and is affordable. I suspect that we will continue to see improvements in the existing approaches, but what I hope for is a breakthrough technology that is manufacturable and marketable.

[Mark L. Pederson]

THIS is the monitor technology of future - best image I have ever seen on a screen - and I've seen a few screens -


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrightSide_Technologies_Inc.

http://www.dolby.com/promo/hdr/technology.html

[Graeme Nattress]

Yes, that stuff is cool. Be interesting to see how it pans out.

Quite frankly, I don't personally want too much dynamic range in a viewing environment - I'd think that might be stressful on the eyes. What do you think on that?

Graeme

[Chris Kenny]

Quite frankly, I don't personally want too much dynamic range in a viewing environment - I'd think that might be stressful on the eyes. What do you think on that?


Would be fun to make a horror movie where dark scenes were actually dark, rather than just "movie dark". You could play games with the audience's night vision.

[Graeme Nattress]

It might be fun to do, but I doubt I'd enjoy watching it....

Graeme

[WesG]

Quite frankly, I don't personally want too much dynamic range in a viewing environment - I'd think that might be stressful on the eyes. What do you think on that?


I think I'd like to hear more Graeme. What are you talking about??
Is it that you think too much dynamic range provides too much information and takes more brain processing to absorb the image. Therefore more taxing on our eyes?? :glare:

The HDR stuff looks impressive - kinda looks like the RAW images out of RED that you then need to lift the highlights and crush the blacks to make look good. :blink:

Would be good to hear more on what people think the best optins are for HD monitoring. It's something I've been holding off on but keen to upgrade the suite soon for basic colour correction - without spending a fortune as I'll use a friend's suite for high end grading.

A projector would be nice! Particular if I could also take it home for movies!

[Graeme Nattress]

Well, if you display an image with a high dynamic range, the bright points in the scene are bright and the darks are very dark. Go from a dark scene to a bright scene and it will be like going from a cave to outdoors and your eyes will have to adapt. I think that would make for more stressful viewing.

Graeme

[WesG]

a ha
now I get ya - very true

So what's your monitoring recommendations in the present market - for those on limited $$$$$???

[Matthew Rogers]

Basically, what I need is something that is going to get me within 80% of being "correct" in brightness and color. I am just afraid to use "consumer" gear (aka, go buy a $2k 1080p LCD TV) to color stuff for people. True, most of what I am shooting is going out to SD DVD, but I know in the near future I am going to be having much more stuff stay in HD, and I want to make sure it looks GOOD in HD. I'm saying that I'm not sure how much I really trust "professional" LCD/Plasma panels because I know some deep flaws about black levels and brightness.

I wish I could get a projector, but my edit suit is way too small for that.

What's a guy to do? There doesn't seem to be many good options.

Matthew

[GlennChan]

CRTs are as deficient as LCD - in that neither has a good black level, the LCD via it's backlight, and CRT via reflection and bleeding. CRTs drop out of "tune" at the drop of a hat, have geometry issues and don't even display full HD rez.
The high-end BVM has a lot of control over geometry (it can manipulate a grid of multiple points). If you get it professionally serviced, the tech can stick magnets onto the tube to get the geometry in the corners very good.

As far as Sony's monitors go, their BVM CRT has a slight edge in black level over their high-end LCD (to my eyes). On bright scenes, the CRT will flare and its black level will go up. On dark scenes, the CRT has a better black level / the LCD sort of has a slight glow to it.

If your target format is TV, then IMO you don't need an extremely low black level as most people watching HD will be watching LCDs with raised black level.

The CRT's inability to show full HD resolution nicely and tendency to hide noise will likely be issues for it. But for critical monitoring, there hasn't been very good alternatives (until recently?). So most QC work is still being done on the Sony BVMs.

For HD work, I probably wouldn't buy a CRT since it's a dying technology. In the future, you'll need to deal with the quirks of LCDs (e.g. de-interlacing, response time, black level, color reproduction, possible deficiencies in bit depth after calibration).

I'd probably look at the 1920x1080/1200 broadcast-grade LCDs from JVC, eCinemasys. You could also consider the higher-priced LCDs (Sony BVM-L, ecinemasys DPX), but I'd expect their prices to come down fairly quickly so you'd better pay it off quickly.

2- For SD, I'd still get a broadcast-grade CRT like a new or lightly-used Sony PVM. There will still be a lot of people watching SD on CRTs... and a CRT for SD resolution has very good price/performance.

3- Consumer TVs sometimes do some really wacky stuff... I'd avoid 'em unless you know of a specific model that doesn't do that / you can turn it all off.

[M Most]

Quite frankly, I don't personally want too much dynamic range in a viewing environment - I'd think that might be stressful on the eyes. What do you think on that?


Which is exactly why environment is critical in color correction. If you're doing a DI, with the intent of producing an image that appears correct in a dark theater, you need to be color correcting in a dark theater, with light levels on the screen that are appropriate for theatrical projection. If you're color correcting for a video presentation, you need to be in a room with a bit of ambient light and some neutral backlighting surrounding the monitor image. If you're creating multiple deliverables - and one of them is for theatrical projection - you set up a pipeline in which the theatrical correction is your base, a LUT converts for the video deliverable, and a tweaking pass is done on the video output for final delivery of video elements, if necessary.

[Kevin Halverson]

Frankly, I wish we were at a point where we had to worry about too much dynamic range, but sadly, we are far from that point yet. I still advocate that a display that can achieve something close to real black would be very useful. That isn't to say that all scenes would need to utilize the entire dynamic range, but having the capability (without abusing it) would be very useful in some situations.

[Graeme Nattress]

Oh yes black as black would be lovely but having that with high brightness too is something that could be abused. One of the nice things about cinema to me is that dynamic range has to be artistically controlled.

[Rob Lohman]

Just give me that holodeck already ;)

[Fergus Anderson]

I use a Sony Fw900 24 inch CRT - it goes up to 2560 x1600 but I normally keep it at 1920x1200. I like the 16:10 aspect ratio and ability to specify the refresh rate - 72hz and 75hz options are useful. It can also display as an interlaced monitor or progressive. Mine hasnt gone blurry yet....

[Kevin Halverson]

Just give me that holodeck already ;)

Can you imagine what would happen to the human race? No one would ever leave. People would cease to interact, to even reproduce! Would be a hell of a ride though.

[Clint Johnson]

So, what do you do? A projector is probably your best bet. Remember no body at home will ever watch HD on a CDT (well, some will, but their number is so small as not to count).

Graeme

Graeme, while we're waiting for the Red projectors to get to market, are there any sub $10k projectors that you would recommend?

I've been leaning towards the JVC DLA-RS2 simply on specs and reviews alone- has anyone had the chance to give it a really good looking over at one of the latest trade shows?

With the DLA-RS2 projector for some $8000 and the DT-V24L1DU 24" LCD for about $3000, it looks like JVC is the starting point for folks who're serious about the picture but don't have deep pockets. They wouldn't be great but they would be a step up from a the consumer displays like the Apple or Dell 24" LCDs no matter how well calibrated.

In all likelihood, the material that I will be finishing would be direct to DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray or for HDTV broadcast - if it is going out to theatrical release then it can be handed off to the big boys with the expensive toys who are set up to handle that. If they can't afford the high end finish... well then they'll just have to accept that I don't have the tools to get that last 10% of the way to "perfect".

[Rob Lohman]

Clint: I know there are a couple of great HD projectors available for under $10K, a couple even under $5K. I don't know how good they would be for grading, but the home-theater enthusiasts are going gaga over some of them.

To start I would check out the AVS forum and look at some testing they've done or linked to.

If you do end up buying one of these, do let us know your experience with it!

[Mr. Paul White]

This has been posted over there:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5120&page=6


You know, I'm really not sure I understand this notion that one absolutely has to have a studio-quality reference monitor to get useful color grading done. Would it be nice? Of course. But color in the desktop publishing world (which is actually more challenging, because print and on-screen display use completely different color models) is very often done entirely with low-cost commodity hardware.

At the very least I suspect one could put in the vast majority of hours required on a grade using commodity hardware, and then just rent a more serious monitor for a day for final checks and tweaks.


«Color calibration doesn’t have to be an expensive add-on for a monitor. Pantone’s hueyPRO ($129) includes an ambient light sensor to deliver a consistent reading under most lighting conditions. The company’s Eye-One Display 2 ($249) is designed to calibrate color over a mix of displays, including CRT, desktop LCD and laptop LCD. Datacolor’s Spyder2PRO ($249) includes calibration profiles for front projectors, as well as CRT and LCD displays. The Spyder2PRO’s Ambient Precise»

But you can find out other less or more expensive solutions exploring this link here:

http://www.studiodaily.com/studiomonthly/tools/ultimatekit/8158.html


I have a Spyder2Pro. The calibration software comes with a Rec. 709 calibration target. In other words, for $250, you can take any computer screen and calibrate so it's as close as it's physically capable of getting to Rec. 709. And if you verify your profile, you can see exactly how close you got. Which is usually pretty close. (Black levels are the largest problem area on commodity LCD screens.)


Here's the idea already posted there, BTW:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=95856#post95856

«Laptops can have the performance, the disk space, the disk speed if configured correctly. Yes, an external calibrated display is highly recommended, maybe even required.» ~ David Newman

Can this be more than necessary?... There's the question.

www.xrite.com/documents/literature/en/985629_i1_Monitor_Solutions_en.pdf

It does include calibration on laptops.

LINK to overview page (http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=788)

Besides the Spyder2PRO already mentioned, for instance:

http://www.colorvision.com/product-mc-s2p.php

And here is the whole thread:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5120



What do you guys think?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I've been leaning towards the JVC DLA-RS2 simply on specs and reviews alone- has anyone had the chance to give it a really good looking over at one of the latest trade shows?

Awesome projector. My only complaint is that the colors are a bit "muddy" compared to some of the better DLP offerings on the market. But this is somewhat inherent of the LCOS imaging approach, the colors don't always pop on the bright end... Like it needs a brighter bulb, but yet pure white on screen is almost too bright. I will say that in its price range (<$10K) it looks like the current champ. And it has double the contrast of the previous model (RS1) and this is very visible. For use in a color grading suite, the only real hurdles I see is a good way to consistently calibrate this setup, although there may be a solution out there I'm not aware of. And while it has dual HDMI inputs, an HD-SDI interface option would be nice too.

I've only played with this projector briefly a couple weeks ago. I spent about 3~4 hours with it and was working with output from a Macbook Pro and a Toshiba HD-XA2 HD-DVD player. I was very pleased with it, I would definitely consider this one if I were buying right now. I'm going to hold out until NAB before I sink money into a projector. Hopefully RED will have more to say about 4K displays and projector systems.