July 22, 2010
New technologies, 3D push displays thinner, wider, brighter.
By Bob Kovacs
As content creators find new ways to tell stories, video monitors
have moved out of the sterile confines of the studio and into the real
world. They now go where the production staff goes, and that means
monitors come in shapes, sizes and configurations demanded by video
producers. 
Marshall
V-MD151, Sony BVM-L231 and TV Logic LEM-150. Some of
the new requirements from content creators include the need to
critically monitor 3D, as well as ultra-high resolution for monitoring
2K and 4K digital cinematography. Monitors may also be used by shifting
groups of viewers, so wide viewing angles become increasingly important.
flexibility is also necessary, such as novel ways to connect signals to
monitors.
Several manufacturers have released professional monitors using
organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology, which has several
advantages over typi- cal liquid crystal display (LCD) designs. With an
OLED display, the viewing surface is actually creating the light that
forms the image, instead of using a backlight that LCD requires. This
means that OLED monitors can be really thin and they usually have a very
wide viewing angle. Being thin also means that OLED moni- tors are
lightweight.
On the downside, OLED displays are more expensive to manufacture
than LCDs, particularly at larger sizes, and the current technology for
OLED generally has a shorter life than LCD monitors. OLED can also be
susceptible to burn-in, so manufacturers use an “orbiting” technology
similar to that on plasma displays.
Marshall Electronics has a
wide variety of monitors in its Modular Design (MD) series, all of which
have the ability to connect to a range of input signals depending on
the supplied I/O modules. This includes composite, component, SDI, HDMI,
DVI and even fiber-optic modules. for example, the Marshall
V-MD151-OLED is 15" desktop OLED monitor that can support any of the
company’s input modules.
“It’s definitely a future-proof solution,” said Mark fisher,
marketing manager for Marshall Electronics.
TVLogic is pushing monitor
technology in a couple different directions simultaneously, with the
announcement of a 3D 15" OLED field-production monitor, the TDM-150W.
The company also unveiled a 56" 4K high-reso- lution cinema
post-production monitor, the LuM-560W, which has a screen reso- lution
of 3840 x 2160 pixels. Their LEM-150 offers a 15" 1366 x 768
high-contrast (100,000:1) OLED screen and has an ultra-wide 180-degree
viewing angle.
As content creators find new ways to tell stories, video monitors
have moved out of the sterile confines of the studio and into the real
world. They now go where the production staff goes, and that means
monitors come in shapes, sizes and configurations demanded by video
producers.
Some of the new requirements from content creators include the need
to criti- cally monitor 3D, as well as ultra-high resolution for
monitoring 2K and 4K digital cinematography. Monitors may also be used
by shifting groups of viewers, so wide viewing angles become
increasingly important. flexibility is also necessary, such as novel
ways to connect signals to monitors.
“The LEM-150 is ideal for critical field/camera monitoring and
on-set color grading,” said Wes Donahue, Regional Sales Manager for
TVLogic USA, “and the LUM-560W is designed for broadcast and
postproduction applications requiring a full-featured color-calibrated
4K display.”
A precision evaluation monitor can seem like a luxury when you have
so many monitors with great pictures, but a precision model can show you
at a glance what other monitors may hide.
The BVM-L231 23" critical evaluation LCD monitor from Sony
has new optics and 3G input capability, and it is calibrated to SMPTE
C, EBU and ITU-R.BT709 standards. It even has the ability to grab a
still image in TIFF format from the displayed video, so that the image
can be evaluated elsewhere. For less-critical production
applications, Sony’s line includes the PVM-740, a 7.4" OLED monitor for
rugged field use. Typical of OLED monitors, its picture contrast is
greater than a CRT display, and is less affected by ambient light—a
special coating provides protection from scratches and enables a high
transmission rate of the internal light source to keep the picture as
bright as possible.
“Customers have been asking for the next great display technology,
and for color correction and criti- cal picture evaluation, OLED
delivers everything they need and much more,” said Gary Mandle, senior
product manager for professional displays at Sony Electronics.
There’s a lot to see in monitors today and many choices to make. One
thing is certain: Monitors have never been as capable as those available
today.
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