Sony 232 widescreen arrived
 

Hi Folks - Our second Hi Def Sony monitor arrived yesterday (first one was the superb portable 8.4" LMD9050) - the Hi Def LMD 232 widescreen (23") which we are using for editing... this replaces our SD high res JVC monitor. We were expecting to purchase the Hi Def JVC 17" monitor but this is still not available in the UK. We got a good deal on the 232 and I'm glad we got this instead. Stunning picture quality... all the usual pro controls on the seperate control unit... hooked up via JVC BR50 Deck. It's very reasuring working with these 2 monitors and if you are in the business for a quality hi def field and studio monitor set-up these units really are excellent.

Stu...
www.studioscotland.co.uk

Thanks for the review Stewart! A question: How does it perform with SD material? I presume it's gonna uprez it so it won't look that nice.

I'm interested, as well, about the SD. The Dell 2405fp through HDLink just isn't working out as well as I had hoped...strange issues.

Thanks.

Kevin

Vincent / kevin: The issue of how SD material would look was something I was keen to see...

With the JVC HD101E attached to the monitor in DV mode the picture was very good. When in HDV mode the picture was just knock out! and focusing was a breeze! - I would love to carry this monitor around shoots if we could, although having used the 8.4" LMD9050 in the field a few days ago running of an IDX battery was just a joy to use.

With the Monitor hooked up to the Mac G5 (via BR50 Deck) we played some DV footage shot on the HD101 and it looked very good indeed.... in fact we played a number of short commercials we had made with this camera and they really did look great... far better than I would have thought. Another point - we knocked up a greenscreen movie for our website (you can see it under "chroma" in the video section) and I thought this would fall apart on the big monitor - but it really looks very good for what it is.

I thought we would still keep our SD JVC hi res monitor connected so we could show clients SD editing on that... but that will not be needed now as I have no worries about showing SD footage on the Sony 232.

I know these are expensive solutions guys but I am glad we bought them for many reasons. Hope this helps...

Regards: Stu...
www.studioscotland.co.uk

Thanks for the info! How do you connect? Via the Component or the extra SDI board?

The JVC HD101 is conected via component... the Sony monitors handle HD through the component inputs. (They had an error in the way they had this described on the Sony website, this will be getting changed)

The Sony 232 is conected via component to the JVC BR50 deck and then by Firewire to the G5 Mac.

Regards: Stu...
www.studioscotland.co.uk

Kevin - Could you elaborate on your problems with the Dell 2405? Thanks.

I have it hooked up via the HDLink. First of all, the Dell monitor is extremely bright. It looks very sharp, but it's very hard to judge colors with it given how bright it is. I tried to adjust via the utility BlackMagic gives you, but it doesn't have a Setup, black or white levels. I've been unable to get any questions answered from them about getting a "lookup table" for the Dell, either.

The picture using this method does not quite fill the screen. That's fine, and the black letterbox on the top and bottom is not that distracting. However, when using my setup and playing Canon's H1-shot footage, there is a flicker that is often happening in this letterbox. Again, it's sleight, but there.

Finally, one other annoyance with this method is that when SD footage plays back on the 2405, it won't scale up. It is pixel for pixel, so it plays in a small box in the center of the screen.

Not all of these are 2405 problems only. Some are related to the whole system. But either way, I may soon switch to a dedicated HD monitor rather than this hacked setup. Afterall, the 2405 is really made to be a computer monitor...

Hope this helps.

Kevin