HDV Preview Monitoring
 

I've been looking for a small lcd tv for preview in final cut, but my search is dwindling away after realizing the complications. I'm wondering if there is something I can do in my specific situation though. I have an hv20 and hate watching my footage on a computer lcd, its just not rewarding. most work i do is for dvd, so I want a small, maybe 17-20" lcd to look at and see some realistic consumer-grade colours. no broadcast monitor, no crt's (can't stand the refresh). I've got a powermac g5 dual 2.0ghz with 2 gigs of ram and a 128mb ATI Radeon 9800 Pro vid card. I have a feeling the video card will be my drawback. Is there ANYTHING I can do, without breaking the bank? my budget is 500ish for an lcd tv and whatever else i may need, but I'm hoping its as simple as an hdmi cable. I know this applies to a lot of people on these boards, so help out!

9800 Pro is fine... Ram + Proc + HDD's are the biggest things for video editing I believe... I don't think they've started using the video card yet... Although it's essentially a CPU just focused for graphics... shaders and pipelines.

Regardless... No CRT's? They have better color reproduction than LCDs... Faster refresh rates? Higher resolutions? The only downside is size and weight. They are better for viewing video, I use an FW900 which is a Sony Trinitron 24" Widescreen 16:10 CRT and plan to buy another, I grabbed mine for $200 locally. It does weigh about 100lbs... and They are out of production (Went for $2400 when they came out) If you're talking about the flicker at low refresh rates... bump it up? I'm running at 85hz at 1920 x 1200 (which fits 1080 stuff 1:1 pixel scaling with letter boxing) I have a 19" LCD For preview at 1280 x 1024 (which fits 720 stuff 1:1 pixel scaling with letter boxing) and I got it for free, I'd rather have another FW900 :)

You can also get Direct-View 30"+ (CRT) HDTV's that do 1080 for $250-400 all day long... which would be pretty niec for a preview monitor, Although I don't think your 9800 will have HDTV outputs.

If you have the space, CRT's are cheaper and better... The only advantage LCD's have is space-saving, and that's what they ORIGINALLY were marketed as... Original LCD techology sucked and was expensive, The price difference between 2" is ridiculous... but it's the only way for companies to justify having a range of models, if they had 24" for $50 more (More realistic increase of costs for them) than 22" ... who would buy the 22" ? or the 20" or the 19" ... haha... :)

Not sure what you watched TV on for the past fifty years... :)

I've always heard that CRTs are better for video that LCDs in general. Would this be true comparing the FW900 with an Apple Cinema Display? Also, does this monitor have DVI inputs?

well the only thing i was worried about was having it so close, i've always watched tv from several feet away, and i was always told as a wee lad to keep a distance. I suppose I could set it father away. The toerh reason I would go with an lcd is for shipping, I wouldn't want to spend more on shipping than I would on the monitor itself. so if i did choose to do a cheap crt hdtv, how would i go about hooking it up?
I didn't mean it in terms of speed, but I figure I need something new to get the required ports. What exactly would i need?