Silly or not silly? Used CRT field monitor.
 

Hello.

I'd like a monitor I can take into the field, big enough to make framing decisions from say, ten feet away, detailed enough for critical focus. I'd want to be able to power it from batteries now and again, though I recognise that I can always get an inverter.

All the budget LCD options I've seen mentioned here seem to be questionable in terms of resolution, and therefore no good for focus. But obviously very portable.

Then I saw a couple of CRT monitors offered as used.

Ex-Demo JVC TM-H150PN Colour Monitors - 750 Lines Resolution, 16:9/ 4:3 Switchable £279.99 plus VAT

or

Used JVC TM-22 Field Monitor with Battery £100.00

I can't find specs for the latter, JVC mention a similar model number, but uncertain how close it is. The latter might be a bit small to see at distance, but is clearly meant to be portable. The prior makes no mention of accepting DC power, but sounds like a very sharp image, but might be less rugged and certainly heavier.

Obviously used is a risk, but that aside, what do people think? I'm only shooting SD for now and the next few years unless I suddenly find a big budget in my lap. I don't need to mount it on the camera. I am often outdoors, away from power.

Thanks chaps.

Have you looked into the Ikan V8000HD 8" TFT LCD Monitor?

The Ikan V8000HD is an 8-inch diagonal High Definition video monitor with a widescreen LCD panel. This is a high quality unit capable of displaying images in 1080i, 720p, and 480p. It includes BNC component, S-Video, and BNC composite inputs. It is compact enough for camera mounting or attaching to a jib-arm. It's large enough to be seen on a desk-top even from a distance. All of this and for under a grand.

http://www.videoguys.com/ikanlcd.html

Gary

Not silly at all. Seems like only recently am I seeing LCD monitors on my shoots, and those are for HD. For SD, most folks have the 8/9 inch field monitors. Do an ebay search for Sony PVM or Sony PVM monitor, and see what comes up. There are a couple of very commonly found models on there that should be pretty cheap. Some take the NP1 type batteries. Watch out, cause some monitors like these are 250 lines of resolution while some are 500. Don't know what the NTSC/PAL situation is with these, either. . .are there PAL versions? Look for a blue gun as one of the features---makes it easier to calibrate to color bars. You can always stick a blue gel in front of the screen if the monitor doesn't have the blue gun, though.

As for sketchiness of the used gear, just be wary like you would with anything else from the 'bay.

The Ikan...I went to their website after checking out the specs, thinking it was a mistake, but it really is 800x480. Shame it can't display full SD, let alone any variety of HD. And it seems quite dim for outdoor use, even with the optional hood. And one review said something about the auto-off being oversensitive and turning off if it saw too-dark scenes.

What's baffling is the next step down in the range, the V7000. Which can't accept HD signals, but has the bizarre resolution of 1440x234, which is about 6.5:1!

And it is a shame that they didn't see fit to make it easier to calibrate, especially if it is capable of good colour reproduction. The same review referenced above mentions that in the menu, it has a "blue-only" option, which is greyed out, unavailable to select. But when asked, Ikan said they had no intention of making that available in the future...

But it is light enough to mount on the camera, that's in its favour. Hmmm.

Phil, for what it's worth... for example, even Marshall's small HD LCD monitors are 800x480 & that rez is usually tack sharp with regards to focusing for such small LCD monitors. What do you call "full SD" anyway?

Still say you can't go wrong with something like this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/SONY-PVM8044Q-Hi...=1218516473179

Why, 720x576, of course!

480 lines beats what my EVF displays though, so I'm sure it would be an improvement when it comes to focus/sharpness, though it would have to scale my signal down, assuming it can, or displays just the central portion...I'm not sure.

I *think* you will find that spec refers to the individual RGB dots, so you need to divide it by 3 (1440/3 = 480) which would mean a true resolution of 480x234. There's a real problem with consistency in the specs which different companies use. It's especially odd that the same company uses different standards to describe their products.

Also, it seems that many (if not most) of the widescreen panels are actually 16:10 instead of 16:9 which either means the image gets distorted or needs to be letterboxed, wasting additional pixels.

If you're shooting widescreen SD, also consider that the monitor needs to be at least 480x854 NTSC (or 576x1024 PAL) in order to show full resolution, unless the individual pixels are rectangular instead of square.

This will sound like the epitome of laziness, but does anyone know a good source of sufficiently detailed spec sheets (covering inputs, options such as blue-only, powering, and lines of resolution) for older Sony models? Sony's own site don't seem to admit to having every produced some of these models I'm seeing coming up on eBay.

JVC are a little better, but again, don't cover the whole range.

Any other good manufacturers, particular those merely unfashionable and therefore cheaper?

Many of your finest, cheapest thanks, loving wrapped in brightly coloured cellophane,
Phil

I saw a Sony PVM 9044QM on eBay, and have purchased that, along with a Petrol bag specifically for 9" monitors. All in, £411, so that's hopefully going to do the job, and big enough it can sit on my desk for editing, at least, to provide another "opinion".

Thanks all.

I hope you're happy with the monitor. However, for post production, here's what I've heard (from someone on here, no less)

For color corrections/super accurate color reproduction, your CRT monitor should have one of two kinds of phosphors:

SEMPTE-C is the best, which of course usually means the monitor is more expensive
P-22 are good, and are what my monitor (Sony PVM 14m2u) has.

That's not to say your monitor is useless in post, but for super accurate color reproduction, supposedly the stuff I mentioned above applies.