scopebox vs a rental vs cheap tv(V1U)

[Keith Johnston]

Here is where I am at.
Just got the SONY HVR-V1U
I have a shoot coming up the 5th of May, in the (now) old days, I would have a sony PVM series field monitor provided for me and I would direct the camera-person from "video land" watching his framing, iris, etc
Also, we would set up a wide shot and light the set according the monitor
Now we are in HDV time and I have abandoned the idea of shooting 24P right now for obvious compatibility reasons with Final Cut Pro.

SO, the V1U DOES let you spit out "normal" DV while letting you still record HDV to to tape.

I tried the trial version of scopebox and gave it a go, it worked fine, with my 17 inch mac book pro.

A couple of concerns, it crashed 2x, it happened when I was adding meters to the layout.
I tried to re-create the crash and it of course I couldn't.
so concern one is, what kinda fool would I be if I relied on a piece of crash-able software for a real shoot involving money and travel?

I mean, in a perfect work I was going to buy the SD version, then once HDV was supported move up to that version and be done with it.

But still, it crashed.

Just to run what I call a "moron" test, I plugged the camera into a cheap 13 inch color TV, and you know what? it was pretty accurate "looking" and I could judge focus better.

still with the Tv there was an issue of cropping, when I set the camera into OVERSCAN mode, there was stuff in the frame on the camera NOT being seen on the TV..

yet the target audience is going to be "home video"

is what I see in overscan what THEY are going to see on home TV?

or is it a split thing, like, "people on TV will not see the overscan image yet people that play the content on the computer WILL"?

and this is going to make alot of you mad but even though the TV is just aTV and not calibrated, blue gun, color bar etc etc, I could see focus and lighting pretty damn close to the LCD on the camera..scopebox looked "DULL" and HEY maybe it was correct and DULL , but my 17 inch screen no matter what anybody says, its very prone to your viewing angle

so, I am torn.

or if I am just running in circles anybody have an idea of what a 9 inch marshall or something like that would cost for 2 days?

oh yeah, and also, cable length is a factor, with scopebox, its firewire, and as far as I can find a 25 footer is the longest I can find (4 pin to 6 pin)

with the cheap TV option I can go as long as I want with RCA cables from AV from camera to AV in to TV

see where I am at?

Can anybody calm me down?

Thanks so much
Keith