Choice of monitor for editing

4 replies [Last post]
Marcus Wynn
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Joined: Feb 11 2011

I’m in the market for a monitor/DVD player for my set-up I am looking at the LOGIC22DVDB10 22” FULL HD and the same model but only HD READY which is about £30 cheaper. To be honest, I not sure what that means in actual practice especially as I only want to attach it to my editing system to view the output. Both models have a wide range of inputs which is very handy in my den. Any simple explanation and advice on this please. Pete.

stuart621
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Joined: Oct 24 2001

My understanding (and there seems to be some debate about this) is that Full HD and HD Ready sets are capable of displaying 1080i pictures but an HD Ready TV would need an HD source but a Full HD TV has Freeview HD built in.

If this is wrong, I'm sure somebody will put me right...

steve
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Joined: Apr 8 1999

'HD Ready' meets the industry spec. minimum for HD display, i.e. HDMI including HDCP, a minimum of 720 lines of pixels and a minimum of 1024 samples per line. The TV must accept and scale both 720p/50 and 1080i/25 to fit its full picture size from the HDMI input.

'Full HD' is a marketing department creation. It usually means a 1920x1080 panel is fitted, but unlike HD Ready, it has no formal meaning. The official label should show 'HD Ready 1080p' which means displaying inputs at 24, 50 & 60 frames per second.

Neither of the above require any tuner, let alone a HD capable one.

Equipment that does receive HD signals should carry a 'HD TV' label (for sub 'full HD' panel resolutions), and 'HD TV 1080p' for a 1920x1080 panel with a HD DVB tuner. Note that the European standard only requires the tuner to be able to receive and decode DVB MPEG4 broadcasts.

There is no specific requirement for the UK's DVB T2 receiving capability, so beware of bargains that are really intended for the European countiries that only use the plain DVB transmission standard for their HD broadcasts. It is a hardware difference, so no amount of firmware updates will bestow a T2 ability on the equipment.

Steve

Gavin Gration
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Joined: Jul 29 1999

You would think that a 1080P display would cope very well with a 1080P incoming signal via HDMI. You might also think that you are seeing all the pixels - since the panel and source footage resolution match perfectly.

Sadly the vast majority of panels will scale the image (overscan) by default. Most of the cheaper ones do not have an option to turn this off. Scaling degrades the image.

1:1 pixel mapping ensures that the display will show every pixel of the incoming image as-is.

I don't have a list of the TVs with 1:1 pixel mapping but I do know that all current LG 1080P TVs have the option to turn off scaling.

More info here (old but useful thread).

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=748074&page=6

Hope this helps a little.

Alan Roberts
Alan Roberts's picture
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Joined: May 3 1999

Spot on. Overscan is disastrous for editing, because you can't see what's going on at the edges of the picture. It's vital to be able to turn it off, permanently.

Get my test cards document, and cards for 625, 525, 720 and 1080. Thanks to Gavin Gration for hosting them.
Camera settings documents are held by Daniel Browning and at the EBU
My book, 'Circles of Confusion' is available here.
Also EBU Tech.3335 tells how to test cameras, and R.118 tells how to use the results.