Yes. If you hooked the composite up to a 4:3 TV, it will be squished. If you hook it up to a 16:9 TV, it will be 16:9 (as long as you are shooting in widescreen...)

Looks like that may be a good candidate... would love to see these 2 side by side.

Jerome, I believe you mentioned in another post in this thread how you use a mini plug to BNC cable. I've searched high & low for one online & can't find a thing. Do you have any suggestions where I could check?

Right now I'm using a RCA to BNC adapter.

Aside from having one custom made (of course I could do it myself, but seems the older I get, the less solder savvy I've become... no patience), finding a source I could purchase from would be great.

Bill, I finally found the source! I used these guys a long time ago for something else...

http://www.pacificcable.com/Picture_...ataName=BNC35C

They're relatively cheap and you can choose your length. I just ordered 2 and requested for right angle plugs. Hope they come through with it.

Thanks for that.

There are many choices, including the Coby, at BestBuy.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....&type=category

The AudioVox costs twice as much but has an interesting zoom feature. I would really have liked to see Sony adopt a focus zoom feature that would toggle on/off with a switch instead of a timer. Also, I wish Sony would allow a smaller auto focus zone or at the very least, a smaller focus rectangle that could be positioned by joystick control. It would be so much nicer to have that joystick button that's in the EX1 remote control on the the EX1 itself.

Unfortunately, both the Coby mentioned above and the AudioVox are available on-line only at BestBuy.com . There is also a Toshiba for $300 with a 10" display. Careful. A number of these models do not have the composite video input.

Q: Would this work/be adequate for pulling focus with a 35mm adapter on the hv20?
A: Yes.

EDIT. Missed answer in middle of thread. Thanks so much for pointing this out. I'm going to best buy tomorrow. Once again, DVI saves me money. Almost too good to be true.

Thanks to Jerome for starting this thread. The Sony portable DVD player with the 8" 800x480 LCD he suggested works marvelously for focusing. Even though we are quick to laugh at composite SD out, the 8" 800x480 screen easily matches the resolution on my Sony EX1. A +1 tweak of the Sony Hue was all that was needed to match the DVD LCD to my EX1. I turned the color all the way down on the LCD for Black&White monitoring while retaining color on the EX1 LCD. It is much easier to focus this way, and this blows away the internal B&W viewfinder feature. Fantastic.

A few notes on my EX1 with this DVD player. The menu display can be turned off on the video out (p. 103 of manual, Display Out=Off). A minor downside is that peaking stripes (and zebra stripes) aren't passed to the composite out regardless of the Display Out setting. A major downside is that the Expanded Focus function which doubles the size of the image is not passed to the composite out. Darn it.

I'll do some more searching for portable DVD players with larger LCDs. The largest I've seen is a 10.2" .

Gints, no problem! I just wanted to pass on the info to a solution to an "everlasting hunt". I'm glad you tried it and glad it works for you. Check out that link for the cables a couple posts up... I should be getting mine in first of the week.... no adapters needed!

Thanks for the cable link. My Sony's don't use a BNC connector, so I just use the provided A/V breakout cables and connect the female connectors on the camcorder and DVD player cables with an RCA gender changer plug.

Here is another candidate for about $280 : Toshiba SD-P2900, although its specs read the same as Toshiba SD-P101S Portable DVD Player . The former is 4 lbs while the latter is 2.8 lbs.

http://www.beachaudio.com/Toshiba/Sdp2900-p-100176.html

Not to rain on any parade, but I got a good look at this unit at best buy and thought the screen looked terrible. There was 5-6 different brands on display and they had the same DVD sampler playing in all of them and when it would go to the menu the text was barely legible the res was so low. I couldn't fathom trying to focus with this.

I trust all of your opinions and figure that maybe there are different batches of this thing floating around or something as there is no way you could mistake this for a "good" focusing unit?

I ended up buying an LG model that was on clearance. It stood out from all the rest and had the clearest picture. The text was clearly legible and it just seemed "hi-res" in comparison. It turns out (from online research) that this one model of LG is listed on their site as being a VGA screen. Every other model is not listed this way and it is obvious as they look very low quality.

In the store, the Sony that you are all raving about, is not even remotely high -res, especially in relation to the LG with a true VGA screen that looks amazing.

What gives? As I said earlier, this cannot be simply difference of opinion but maybe a different lot?

Thanks.

I never did buy one of these things, so I can't speak with authority, but the research I did revealed that the earlier model, the DVP-FX810, had a much lower resolution screen, as well as a nasty glare problem (the screen "looks like a mirror when the unit is turned off" according to one person). Both problems were addressed with the 820, supposedly, but the two models are cosmetically identical, could you guys be looking at the wrong one? I know a few places, Wal-Mart for one, are just getting these in stock now, and only had the 810 before.

I'm glad Jerome started this thread. My initial reaction to the FX820 Sony unit (note: there are two that are out there: FX810 and FX820), but after using it for a night, it does aid in focusing. I haven't walked into any stores other than Sony, so more research is in order. Thanks for the tip on the LG display. I mentioned a 10.2" Toshiba in an earlier thread that received excellent picture quality reviews.

I bet they are looking at the 810 and not the 820. The 810 IS much worse than the 820. The 810 was on display and I made the kid take the 820 out of the box so I could check it out... he did and even he saw the difference.

When all the people mention how bad the screen is, I thought they were just being too picky. But as it turns out, I just assumed that they checked the 820 because that is what I posted originally.

It would be great to see if the naysayers could in deed confirm if they saw the 810 or 820.

best buy is closed but I will try to get in and verify this week.
Thanks.