Your LCD monitor-pros/cons/wishes at DVinfo.net

Scott Brickert · December 19th, 2007, 10:15 AM

I'm looking at moving from a 21" CRT to a 24" LCD in the next week or two.

What do you like about your LCD? What doesn't work to well? What do you wish you had that it doesn't?

Anyone got a feel for pre-Christmas vs post Christmas prices?

Bill Ravens · December 19th, 2007, 10:59 AM

LCD's come in several different designs, as you may suspect. The majority of LCD's are designed for gaming, with very fast refresh rates. These monitors contain what is called a "tn" panel in them, which is fairly inexpensive to manufacture. The "tn" panel does't have a display capable of colors in the millions, but rather, in the hundreds of thousands. IOW, the color gamut for "tn" panels is less than for other panels by a factor of 10.

The high quality LCD's are manufactured with S-PVA panels in them. S-PVA panels reproduce a color gamut in the millions. These are the panels you want to use for any work which is color sensitive, like color correcting. Unfortunately, LCD's with S-PVA panels are more expensive(is that surprising?)
In the low cost S-PVA panel category are models from Samsung, like the 215tw. At the higher end of the LCD's are panels made by Eizo, specifically for color photographers.

If your editting workstation has multiple displays, it makes economic sense to have one high quality LCD for CC work and a lower quality tn panel to save money.

Glenn Chan · December 20th, 2007, 03:14 PM

For use as a computer monitor, I like LCDs.
No eye strain (unless you run the CRT at low resolution + very high refresh rate).
No interference with other CRTs.
Nice contrast if your surroundings are very bright.

Colors not that accurate. If you line up the computer monitors side-by-side, I doubt you will see very good consistency in color.

2- To get accurate monitoring, your best bet is probably a broadcast monitor. This is assuming you are outputting for video formats like DVD, betaSP, digibeta, etc. If you are outputting for computer monitors then you don't need a broadcast monitor.

Jonathan Gentry · December 21st, 2007, 02:08 PM

Bill mentioned S-PVA panels as the best. I think there are better panel types now with the S-IPS type. 16million colors with the S-IPS LCD's.

What you are looking for is the NEC2490WUXi. This monitor covers 76% of AdobeRGB color space (huge gamut.) 1920x1200 resolution.

http://www.necdisplay.com/Products/S...7-14d146e8ada0

You may not want the NEC2490WUXi which is a 26 inch with similar resolution. Though it covers 93% of the AdobeRGB colorspace it will really screw up the colors in Windows non-profile aware applications. Meaning images on the web or viewed through Windows Explorer (maybe Vegas?) will look very different than they should because most windows apps are not aware of the color spaces attached to images.

This would be a great app for the MAC as I think it's color space aware when it comes to images.

Want more info on displays than you ever wanted to know? Check this place out...
http://www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=78

This brings up an interesting question with video. Is all video assumed to be sRBG?

Me? I'm sticking with my old 21 inch CRT for now.

-Jonathan

P.S. I'm not 100% sure on all of my comments regarding MAC/PC handling of color spaces so do your own research!

Michael Jouravlev · December 21st, 2007, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonathan Gentry

Bill mentioned S-PVA panels as the best. I think there are better panel types now with the S-IPS type. 16million colors with the S-IPS LCD's.

Anything except TN-film is ok (PVA, MVA, IPS). Sadly, non-TN monitors are increasingly hard to find, especially in smaller sizes.

Calibrating a modern computer monitor takes 10 minutes and is fully automated, just attach the colorimeter to the screen and run the calibrating application.

Glenn Chan · December 21st, 2007, 09:46 PM

Quote:

Is all video assumed to be sRBG?

sRGB and Rec. 709 have the same primaries (the exact shade of red, green, and blue; measured in chromaticity coordinates).

sRGB and Rec. 709 differ in the transfer function used.

2- Video is either intended for the SMPTE C, EBU, or Rec. 709 primaries.

SD:
NTSC countries (except Japan) uses SMPTE C
PAL countries use EBU

HD:
All countries use Rec. 709 primaries

Though in practice a lot of monitoring and QC and color grading is done on Sony BVM CRTs with SMPTE C primaries.

Stephen Armour · December 25th, 2007, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glenn Chan

sRGB and Rec. 709 have the same primaries (the exact shade of red, green, and blue; measured in chromaticity coordinates).

sRGB and Rec. 709 differ in the transfer function used.

2- Video is either intended for the SMPTE C, EBU, or Rec. 709 primaries.

SD:
NTSC countries (except Japan) uses SMPTE C
PAL countries use EBU

HD:
All countries use Rec. 709 primaries

Though in practice a lot of monitoring and QC and color grading is done on Sony BVM CRTs with SMPTE C primaries.

Glen, we're editing everything in Rec. 709 (HD-upconverted V1 input to CF codec for editing and mastering), mostly because of our desire to "future proof" our long productions.

That brings up a very important question for you and anyone in the know reading this. Sorry if it's off post, but maybe we can move it later:

If our primary target is HD (709) for Bluray/HD-DVD and possibly broadcast TV (wherever), yet our secondary targets are DVD (NTSC), and web content (wmv and flv), how well does the 709 color spec convert to those standards?

So far, it seems that the colors are lovely and downres' are coming out quite well, but we're trying to avoid any "gotchas" here.

Any light you can shed on this would be quite illuminating (sorry 'bout that...).

Glenn Chan · December 25th, 2007, 08:30 PM

It will translate fine even if you pretend that the systems use the same primaries and transfer function. In fact a lot of SD<-->HD conversion is done that way. In other words, if you don't do a proper conversion it will look ok.
If you do perform a 'proper' conversion, you might have some issues where the color gamuts don't match. But generally speaking no one really notices the difference.... and it's generally much more practical to not do a proper conversion.

The only thing to watch out for is conversion bugs... e.g. FCP has one if you have a HD timeline but choose a SD easy preset to monitor SD... FCP doesn't do that HD-->SD downconversion correctly. (This bug might be fixed now... I wouldn't know.)

December 19th, 2007, 10:15 AM	#1
Scott Brickert Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Crested Butte, CO Posts: 576	Your LCD monitor-pros/cons/wishes I'm looking at moving from a 21" CRT to a 24" LCD in the next week or two. What do you like about your LCD? What doesn't work to well? What do you wish you had that it doesn't? Anyone got a feel for pre-Christmas vs post Christmas prices? __________________ Scott Shot-By-Scott

December 19th, 2007, 10:59 AM	#2
Bill Ravens Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: santa fe, nm Posts: 3,264 Images: 10	LCD's come in several different designs, as you may suspect. The majority of LCD's are designed for gaming, with very fast refresh rates. These monitors contain what is called a "tn" panel in them, which is fairly inexpensive to manufacture. The "tn" panel does't have a display capable of colors in the millions, but rather, in the hundreds of thousands. IOW, the color gamut for "tn" panels is less than for other panels by a factor of 10. The high quality LCD's are manufactured with S-PVA panels in them. S-PVA panels reproduce a color gamut in the millions. These are the panels you want to use for any work which is color sensitive, like color correcting. Unfortunately, LCD's with S-PVA panels are more expensive(is that surprising?) In the low cost S-PVA panel category are models from Samsung, like the 215tw. At the higher end of the LCD's are panels made by Eizo, specifically for color photographers. If your editting workstation has multiple displays, it makes economic sense to have one high quality LCD for CC work and a lower quality tn panel to save money.

December 20th, 2007, 03:14 PM	#3
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	For use as a computer monitor, I like LCDs. No eye strain (unless you run the CRT at low resolution + very high refresh rate). No interference with other CRTs. Nice contrast if your surroundings are very bright. Colors not that accurate. If you line up the computer monitors side-by-side, I doubt you will see very good consistency in color. 2- To get accurate monitoring, your best bet is probably a broadcast monitor. This is assuming you are outputting for video formats like DVD, betaSP, digibeta, etc. If you are outputting for computer monitors then you don't need a broadcast monitor.

December 21st, 2007, 02:08 PM	#4
Jonathan Gentry Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 183	Bill mentioned S-PVA panels as the best. I think there are better panel types now with the S-IPS type. 16million colors with the S-IPS LCD's. What you are looking for is the NEC2490WUXi. This monitor covers 76% of AdobeRGB color space (huge gamut.) 1920x1200 resolution. http://www.necdisplay.com/Products/S...7-14d146e8ada0 You may not want the NEC2490WUXi which is a 26 inch with similar resolution. Though it covers 93% of the AdobeRGB colorspace it will really screw up the colors in Windows non-profile aware applications. Meaning images on the web or viewed through Windows Explorer (maybe Vegas?) will look very different than they should because most windows apps are not aware of the color spaces attached to images. This would be a great app for the MAC as I think it's color space aware when it comes to images. Want more info on displays than you ever wanted to know? Check this place out... http://www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=78 This brings up an interesting question with video. Is all video assumed to be sRBG? Me? I'm sticking with my old 21 inch CRT for now. -Jonathan P.S. I'm not 100% sure on all of my comments regarding MAC/PC handling of color spaces so do your own research!

December 25th, 2007, 08:30 PM	#8
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	It will translate fine even if you pretend that the systems use the same primaries and transfer function. In fact a lot of SD<-->HD conversion is done that way. In other words, if you don't do a proper conversion it will look ok. If you do perform a 'proper' conversion, you might have some issues where the color gamuts don't match. But generally speaking no one really notices the difference.... and it's generally much more practical to not do a proper conversion. The only thing to watch out for is conversion bugs... e.g. FCP has one if you have a HD timeline but choose a SD easy preset to monitor SD... FCP doesn't do that HD-->SD downconversion correctly. (This bug might be fixed now... I wouldn't know.)