Video Monitors Buyer's Guide

TVs have gotten pretty good lately: no glitches, no off colors, no video issues at all. Sounds great, doesn't it? That's just the stuff video producers don't want.

That's right. Glitches, bad color and video issues are exactly the things producers want to see, and TVs simply filter, correct and eliminate these issues as they enter the box. Producers use a video monitor to eliminate problems before the final version of their project hits the airwaves, by using the unchanged video images to correct these pesky issues as they come up, long before they ever get to a TV, so that the circuits, filters and processors don't change the desired picture too much.

A few years ago, monitors could be a bit pricey and limited in number and choices available to the video enthusiast. However, in recent years, there has been a huge increase in the variety of monitors available, and the prices have dropped a great deal as well.

As with most purchases in life, it's important to consider your wants and needs when buying a video monitor.

You may want a 42" LCD flatscreen monitor, but you may need only a 20" model on your editing desk. Write down your desires for a monitor, and see if they meet your true needs. It might be surprising to know you can realize more use out of a monitor of the correct size at the proper distance than one that's too large and too close. Most editors work with video monitors no more than a foot or so from the face. A too-large monitor can be overwhelming and give the viewer a front-row-of-the-theater feel. So, think carefully about your current and future uses for a video monitor, and address your criteria accordingly.

That oh-so-desirable 42" monitor may be ideal for display or for showing clients or family the end result of a project across a large room. The cost of such monitors can run deep into the thousands of dollars. For those of us of more modest means, smaller may be better. The big premiere can be saved for the home TV in the living room.

There's no set formula for determining the ideal distance of monitor to the eyeball. Simply set the monitor at the distance you want and, if it's comfortable for you, then that's the perfect distance.

But what makes a monitor a monitor and not just a fancy TV? The answer is more involved than it was a few years ago. Back then, a monitor was simply a precisely-manufactured TV without a channel tuner or speakers. No tuner meant no correction circuits or algorithms to "correct" video flaws. Sometimes, a TV may correct that flaw so that the resulting image is drastically different from the original, pristine version. Thus, with no tuner, the pure signal passes cleanly to the screen.

As the tastes of television buyers have grown more sophisticated, demands for a tighter, cleaner signal increased. And what the market wants, the market gets. Factories started building TVs with some of the same connections as video monitors, and the line between TV and video monitor began to blur. Today, it's common to see all but the most budget-priced TV sport some connectors other than the standard 75-ohm cable plug.

Monitors come in all sizes and range in screen size from 3" to more than 150" (the larger screens are generally LCD or plasma). Despite the surge of flat-panel monitors on the video production scene, quite a few people still prefer a glass tube to a plastic screen. Some feel a glass screen delivers a more precise picture with subtler gradations of color and line. Those with that opinion say the image difference is most obvious at some of the closer ranges an editor would use - about 12-24" from the eye of a sitting editor.

That difference of opinion doesn't mean that flat panels are inferior - far from it. Perception can often determine reality and, truth is, there are some pretty nice flat-panel monitors out there that are every bit as nice as any glass screen on the market. The best way to determine what kind is right for you is to sit down and place them at the same distance as you would at home, run video through them and compare the quality of each. Try a variety of video images. If possible, bring a DVD with a variety of your work to sample, including bright colors, quick action, dark scenes, pans and zooms, etc. A few minutes of viewing is all that's needed to determine which kind of screen is best for you.

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