Some of the Dell 24" LCDs are good, but check carefully on the exact model designation and version letter to make sure you don't get a dud.

Still, I am 100% happy with my two 24" Westinghouse LCDs, now $350 each at Newegg.

Phenomenal picture from any angle, HDCP and HDMI (as well as analog), no dead pixels, they look nice, separate black level and white level adjustments (this is not common at any reasonable price) make calibration easier.

1920x1200 is just so vastly better to work with than the 1680x1050 that I had before, on my tiny 20 and 22" LCDs...

There is no going back after 24".

A 1680x1050 screen feels like working on a Palm Pilot now :O).

Coursedesign, how do you set them up with Vegas? One for the timeline etc. and one for the preview? Where do you put browser etc. if you're running that at the same time?

I preview on a Sony PVM monitor via a BMD Extreme card ( ideal, since I don't work in HD at this time), and most of the time I leave one 24" LCD on my Mac and the other 24" on my PC workstation with Vegas.

I'm still experimenting to see what works best for layout, including backgrounds (where I feel like I need sunglasses sometimes, due to the high light output of the Westinghouse monitors).

> A 1680x1050 screen feels like working on a Palm Pilot now :O).

LOL, I don't think I could fit two 24" monitors on my desk. I guess I need to actually leave the house and go down to the local BestBuy and see how big these things really are. (damn the Internet makes us lazy) ;-)

I'm thinking maybe I'll mount the 3rd monitor on the wall above the other two so I just need to make sure that the PC monitors fit on the desk.

How about anyone who uses a Spyder3 or HueyPro? What monitor are you calibrating and how well do they calibrate?

~jr

Johnnyroy...

Funny how no one ever mentions the color depth produced by most inexpensive LCD monitors. Seems to me this is a critical issue for people doing CC work. LCD manufacturers really aim their products at video gamers, who want very fast refresh times. The problem is that monitors with fast refresh times fall into a category that reproduce colors in a very "virtual" way. These monitors reproduce colors with a very small gamut. Typical color gamuts for these LCD's are in the hundreds of thousands and are expressed as a percent NTSC, like 75% NTSC. Don't get a TN panel monitor for this reason. The color accurate LCD's are specced for colors in the millions and rate about 92% NTSC. The appropriate panel type is called SPVA. Here's a link to a website that will list all manufactured models by a search criteria. Enter the panel type, i.e., S-PVA to find out what brand/model has the appropriate panel type.

http://www.flatpanels.dk/panels.php

Don't pay much attention to the contrast ratio once you get over about 700:1. When you setup your monitor calibration, you'll end up turning down contrast much higher than this.

So, the bottom line is this....don't go for fast refresh time specs, don't go for an inexpensive 'tn' panel. As a video editor, long refresh times are not a concern. Look at the specs for the number of colors reproduced. Don't buy a monitor that doesn't spec the number of colors reproduced. Dell offers many monitors that won't cut the mustard. Very few, these days will. Eizo monitors are excellent, but, also expensive. Be prepared to spend ~500$ or higher for a 20 inch monitor. I ended up with a Samsung 215tw as a second to my Sony, and have been pretty haPPY.

Edit: more info- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD

Good points, Bill!

Personally, I think Sony's new since last month Luma LCD is the way to go, it is made to their BVM (Broadcast Video Monitor) specs.

While waiting for people to call back in response to your ad in the "Cars For Sale" classifieds :O), the Westinghouse L2410NM 24" LCD uses an MVA panel. It is the only 24" LCD in the "affordable" segment to not use TN.

> the Westinghouse L2410NM 24" LCD uses an MVA panel. It is the only 24" LCD in the "affordable" segment to not use TN.

I just realized that if I buy something like this Westinghouse to do CC on, then it doesn't matter how good the other two PC monitors are because I'm not going to need to trust them to be color accurate anyway. So all three don't need to be the best quality, just the one I trust for CC. (Duh!)

Which brings up another point. I'm also planning to get a Blu-ray burner and read that you can't playback Blu-ray movies unless the entire chain to your monitor is HDCP compliant. That means you need to buy a burner, video card, and monitor if you expect to watch Blu-ray on your PC. That's a tall order for most people just to watch a movie.

The nVidia GeForce 8600GTS card I plan to buy has HDMI out and says it's HDCP Ready so I'm hoping this means it will be compatible with Blu-ray. All this is getting way, way, too complicated.

~jr

Costco has the best price I can find anywhere for a Samsung 245BW model @ $450 without having to do a bunch of mail-in rebates.
Specs look real good for this 24" monitor....

I compared it to the Westinghouse L2410NM 24" model but was surprised it has a lot of inputs
"D-Sub, HDMI-HDCP, Composite, S-Video, YPbPr"
but does not show DVI-D which is what I would be using.....

I compared specs on Newegg but if I want the Samsung I'd go straight to Costco to pick it up.

Eileen

all the samsung 'bw' model designations are "tn" panels. I'd avoid that panel, it's not color accurate.

HDMI has the DVI-D signals as a subset.

Just use a small adapter available in Best Buy stores for $20-$50, or at Newegg for about $7.00. I'm using both of these, only went to BB for a rush need. They sell both male HDMI-female DVI and female HDMI -male DVI adapters, make sure you get the one you need. Newegg also has very good DVI and HDMI cables at a fraction of the price you'd pay in stores if you were desperate enough.

My last six LCD monitors were Samsung (before buying Westinghouse LCDs based on 2 years of solid user reviews), imho they haven't kept up lately.

The ideal color gamut for a broadcast monitor would be exactly Rec. 709, or larger than that.

For video work, the color gamuts you are concerned with are:
Rec. 709 - this is the standard for all non-obsolete HD
SMPTE C - For SD, North America (except Japan)
EBU - For SD PAL

The (small) differences between these gamuts is commonly glossed over (including the high-end)... so it's not a big deal if you are slightly off.

1b- The original NTSC gamut is obsolete and no video systems use it. It's irrelevant, and it's kind of bizarre that marketeers would use it.

2- If the monitor's color gamut exceeds Rec. 709, then the monitor needs to implement color management to bring the colors back in. And if that doesn't happen, then you get inaccurate colors.
This approach also tends to make banding issues worse.

Which brings up another point. I'm also planning to get a Blu-ray burner and read that you can't playback Blu-ray movies unless the entire chain to your monitor is HDCP compliant. That means you need to buy a burner, video card, and monitor if you expect to watch Blu-ray on your PC. That's a tall order for most people just to watch a movie.

I just built a new system and I didn't have playing Blu-ray movies in mind when I first started to look for parts but when I saw a Blu-Ray playing (not burning) drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827129015 I went for it. The video card I had already picked (also a GeForce8600GT) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121076 was HDCP compliant even though it doesn't have HDMI out. I use DVI to the monitor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824014124 which is also HDCP and Blu-Ray DVDs play fine and look great.

What you are saying applies, most asuredly, for video work. If your interest extends to stilll photography, as mine does, color mapping is extremely critical. A 'tn' monitor will lead to chronic misreading CCing in Photoshop. You can plot the color gamuts on top of one another with Microsoft's color managment tool. Prophoto, for example, is hugely different from the colors a tn monitor will display. Even sRGB is bigger than 'tn' mapping by a noticeable amount.

I will take issue with your statement that NTSC is obsolete. It may be an outdated standard for technicians like yourself, however, most of America is still deeply embedded in the NTSC standards. Using a percent of NTSC as some indication of the color depth a monitor can reproduce is a very valid and understandable presentation. Not a marketting ploy at all.


Secondly, there's only so much one can do with a spectrophotometer. It can't produce color mapping that the monitor isn't capable of reproducing. I'm afraid all the 'tn' monitors are good for is :
1-a paperweight
2-gamers
3-text editting

Now, I suppose one could validly argue that most NTSC monitors are so far off calibration that it doesn't matter if coloring errors are made during editing. Nevertheless, precision and practicality are strange bedfellows.

Even sRGB is bigger than 'tn' mapping by a noticeable amount.
If that is true (and I don't see why not), then that monitor is not very suitable at all for video work.

I will take issue with your statement that NTSC is obsolete. It may be an outdated standard for technicians like yourself, however, most of America is still deeply embedded in the NTSC standards.
By NTSC gamut, I'm referring to a subset of the overall NTSC standards (not all of which are use today... e.g. Y'IQ encoding is obsolete). The original NTSC gamut/primaries calls for a very large color gamut. This was abandoned for a smaller gamut since that makes monitors brighter. The standard primaries are now standardized as SMPTE C.

Most video work being done for NTSC countries (except Japan) is QCed on Sony BVM monitors. They have SMPTE C primaries, not (the original, obsolete) NTSC primaries.

2- Anyways, the point should be:
A- Wider gamut is not necessarily a good thing. This depends on application and on the implementation of the monitor.
B- Cheap LCDs tend to have some aspects to them that are whacked. e.g. they effectively have a s-shaped transfer curve, similar to doing the same thing with color curves in Vegas. That is not something you really want in your monitor.
De-interlacing is also an issue.

wow,,, as usual ...I'm amazed,dazed and confused...
crt still lookin good to me

sorry, double post

Yes, it is , most assuredly, confusing. ;o)
I think, what's most important for anyone doing color correction work, is for the display medium they're using to match the display medium the end user will view on. It's an understatement to say this is problemattic. In the case of fine art photography, the goal is to get the editing workstation to display colors that represent what the final print will look like when hard copy printed. At least, that's my goal. Thru the use of a monitor with as large a gamut as I can find, monitor calibration with an Eye-1, ICC color maps to go from one color map to another, i can get my monitor to, fairly closely, match my final print. Luminance remains a problem, chroma is fairly easy to duplicate.

Now, fortunately, for those concerned with video display, the problems still exist, altho' they're not as bad. If you're eventually going out to celluloid, well, that's a different ballgame. If you're going out to web, no problem, it's a no brainer. If you're going to "TV", be it SD or HD, your guess is probably as good as mine. DVD players are not anywhere near standardized, and TV monitors are so far out of cal in most users homes(saturation turned way up, brightness and contrast way off, and maybe even hue is grossly misadjusted) that fine tuning color correction by an editor is futile.

Nevertheless, the standards should be stuck to at the professional level...that being the technicians, the editors. Simply MHO.

Here's a couple of links to some jpeg's comparing color spaces to RGB to demonstrate my point.

Prophoto vs RGB
tn panel vs RGB
Color spaces are really three dimensional, so, I've only showm a 2-D view of each for simplicity.

I compared it to the Westinghouse L2410NM 24" model but was surprised it has a lot of inputs
"D-Sub, HDMI-HDCP, Composite, S-Video, YPbPr"
but does not show DVI-D which is what I would be using.....
===============
Eileen,

The HDMI to DVI cables or the adapters all work very well. I have several and all of them work. If you don't want to mail order them you can get them at stores like Wallmart.

John

Thanks John for the adapter suggetion...

I'm totally confused! What is a "tn" monitor?

And I'm simple minded enough to ask that if it looks good on a monitor and it looks good on an 'external" tv is there anything else I should be concerned about?

The above images are amazingly different thats for sure....
I've calibrated my hdtv using a dvd and special glasses to wear while adjusting the different colors, brightness, contrast, etc. I'm no hot shot techie thats for sure, but in the end it looks fine as far as I can tell.

So I guess I'm confused on whether I would benefit all that much from one kind of monitor over another if I'm NOT doing photos?

Eileen

Here's the deal, Eileen...

The human eye is incredibly adaptive when it comes to looking at color. If it looks good on your editting workstation and it looks good on a TV monitor...and you don't know how one got to the other on a technical level...you just got very lucky. If you CC'ed for a nice blue sky on your workstation, and it came out looking turquoise on the TV, you just got bitten. That's what can(and it will happen eventually) happen when you use a monitor that doesn't display the same color gamut as your final distribution display.

Quite honestly, this is moot if you're using an NTSC monitor to preview on. This whole discussion is oriented around those who want to use an LCD for a preview monitor. The colors you're looking at on the LCD monitor will NOT be the colors you get on a TV, unless you have a quality monitor that has been calibrated. If these kinds of variations in your output are acceptable to you, you can ignore the info in this thread. If you're producing ENG content, you don't have the time or the need to care. If you're producing a film for Sundance Film Festival, color sets mood...and mood is everything! It won't do for a romantic drama to look like a sci-fi thriller.

BTW, a 'tn' panel is defined earlier in this very thread.

Bill:

You are pretty much right on with your monitor observations.

Im also a photographer and use Adobe CS and know the constant pain of calibrating the editing monitor for my computer.

Your last statement about most NTSC monitors (not computer monitors, thats worse) being way off is sadly only too true. I believe most people don't really even like to see true colors and black levels. On the other hand, who (consumerwise) is going to spend $500 to get a pro calibrator to come out and set up their video monitor. The first time I did, I didn't even think it was right, I had been so far off using Avia myself.

JohnnyRoy:

I suggest also looking at the pctalk forum at dpreview.com. They usually have very detailed threads and link to reviews about the best current monitors for color management.

I find two 19" CRTs help to keep my editing room toasty warm as the winds or winter threaten.
But may be tempted to run across the border and snag a couple of LCDs on Black Friday.
We'll see.
But for now, and maybe until after Christimas, when the prices of all things electonic drop, two CRTs and an NTSC monitor are still doing their jobs.
If I need to see how things look on an LCD, just hook up the laptop.