Reference Monitor - Capture Card
 

Still in the process of our HD Editing System Build (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/attend-wo...tem-build.html) and had a question about the third monitor setup. The two reqular monitors are the Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP and the GPU is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295. Even though I am still a fan of for CRT's, the LCD's are getting better. Two of which, the Panasonic BT-LH1760 and the Sony LMD-2050W we have access to. We use PP CS4. For the Reference Monitor and HD-SDI, I assume we need a PCI-e card. I have been reading and have seen some thoughts on the Matrox cards with PP, wondering some thoughts on the following and any suggestions:

Blackmagic DeckLink HD Extreme
DeckLink Studio
Blackmagic Intensity Pro

Thanks all!

I have just purchased the Matrox mino mxo with harware encoder and can turn my Samsung HD LCD into a broadcast monitor. I also purchased the Spyder 3 Elite....that works grate to calibrate my monitors.
Will let you know when it arrives next week:
One thing though the drivers for Matrox Mxo for PC will be out in July.

The Matrox RT.X2 full card also can use any 1920x1200 DVI monitor as 1:1 pixel review in real time through Premiere.

I have this card for sale

L.A. Color Shop | Online Photo/Video Gear Shop

Thanks Taky...but I don't believe it is compatible with my:

-ASUS P6T7 WS Supercomputer LGA 1366 Intel X58
-Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366
-Nvidia GeForce GTX 295

I'll post over at Matrox and check it out but I'm guessing no-no since it's not on their site.

That is why I was looking at the Blackmagic cards - mainly for the reference monitor/capture. Our system system is pretty fast and I have read a lot of issues with the Matrox RT.X2 and CS4.

My experience with AJA products has been fantastic.

For your setup you may want to consider the Xena card. Also, if you ever plan to move to MAC hardware - just plug in the Xena card and it becomes a Kona card by installing the mac drivers. A nice engineer from AJA told me that at NAB.

I know have the matrox mini working fine on my i7.
It takes a lot of load of the processors.

The one thing though if you work with PAL as I do... the instructional manual is a load of rubbish when it comes to calibrating your Broadcast monitor.

All I need now is the drivers for the HD max compressor and I'm all set :-)

Thanks Devin...with the Matrox RT.X2, from what I have seen, either people love it with PP or hate it. Since our rig is pretty fast, the real-time benefits that the RT.X2 might provide maybe over kill (especially if we have compatibility issues with the mobo, etc.).

Which brings me back to the Blackmagic DeckLink HD Extreme & the AJA XENA. The XENA LH is around $250.00 more than the HD Extreme. Most of the posts regarding AJA have been positive. Both cards offer HD-SDI. I may have to run a comparison on both and more importantly how they preform with Premiere CS4. Most of our footage is shot using the Panny AG-HPX500.