Can anyone recommend an editing reference monitor that has both analog component inputs AND HD-SDI inputs?

We presently use Final Cut Pro for our editing system, and shoot 99.9% of everything on Betacam SP. We are about about to take the plunge into HD, probably starting with a Sony HVR-V1 camera, and a HVR-M25U deck.

We will NOT be able to make a clean break and simply stop using Betacam once we get the HDV gear, so we need our edit system to handle both analog component and HD.

I've looked at the Panasonic BH-2600W monitor. It has all of the connectivity we need, but I recently discovered that this monitor will not display the entire 1080i picture. You can "shift" the picture around to see the entire picture, but you can never see the full 1080 resolution at the same time.

Welcome to DVinfo Tim! Have a look at this thread. I believe the MXO will let you accurately monitor what you edit, and also give you SDI outputs.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=83917

...the hardware real estate we're starting to use. We already have a dual monitor set-up for the Final Cut system, plus a Sony CRT to serve as our reference monitor for our Betcam editing. Will we now need to add another Apple monitor to serve as our HD reference monitor? If I understand these set-ups correctly, we will need one monitor for our SD (Betacam) projects, and another for our HDV projects.

Am I understanding you correctly on this?

Slight change of subject here....I just noticed that AJA has come out with their version of the Matrox MXO. It is the AJA H15, priced at $490 about half that of the MXO.

Unfortunately I don't think there is anyway to not have your suite look like the inside of a Best Buy w/o making sacrifices you may not want to make. I know some people use an HDTV/monitor to judge HD playback and still use a Sony CRT for color work. At least most HD monitors can be wall mounted so that can help out w/desktop real estate.


-A

I just noticed that AJA has come out with their version of the Matrox MXO. It is the AJA H15, priced at $490 about half that of the MXO.

Is this what you're talking about? http://www.aja.com/html/products_converters_HI5.html

That's the "Hi5", not the "H15".... I can't find an H15 on their site, sorry if this isn't what you were talking about. That product converts SDI to HDMI, which is something completely different from the MXO which converts the DVI output of your graphics card to SDI and gives you an accurate DVI monitor output.