Looking for a decent, small tv monitor?

[Hulk]

I'm looking for a monitor to put on my desk to preview TV out. I'd like something small, but it seems consumer tv's only go do 13" with composite input. I'd like a 9". I'm primarily checking overscan, frame order, and color balance among clips.

I'm tired of dragging my wife's TV out of her bathroom!

Thanks,

Mark

[mmp121]

Better, Faster, Cheaper?

Does decent and small go hand in hand? I mean generally the smaller you go the crappier you get. I know this doesn't help you in any way, but I'm a tad bit bored today at work being that its friday and all.

[wkulecz]

If you find a 9" TV you like, you can always get an RF modulator to add an A/V input. Radio Shack and most anyplace that sells DVD players have them so you can watch DVDs on older TVs without A/V inputs. Should be less that $30.

"Real" studio monitors like made by Panasonic or Ikegami are probably priced beyond what you are willing to spend. We have some of the 9" Panasonics here that have held up very well.

In my editing setup at home I use a 13" TV with A/V input, I made space for it rather than get something smaller which would have actually cost more.

--wally.

[Ray Austin]

Re: Looking for a decent, small tv monitor?

Originally posted by Hulk
I'm tired of dragging my wife's TV out of her bathroom!

Mark

Your wife has a TV in her very own bathroom???

Wow, you must be loaded!


I've been looking for one of these too, so if you find a good deal please share.

[Hulk]

Ray,

I wish! We live in a townhouse with two bathrooms upstairs. Since we don't have any kids (yet), we each took a bathroom.

I'll let you know if I find anything.


Wally,

The 9" with the RF modulator is a good idea. I'm going to explore it. I find I'm wasting a lot of time burning DVD RW's, going downstairs, testing, finding out the field order is reversed or some other stupid oversight, etc...


Mark

[Dr Mordrid]

Go to a computer or HAM radio swap meet and see if you can find an old Commodore 1702 monitor for the C= 64.

These were made by JVC, take both composite (front) and S-Video (rear with a hacked cable you can often buy on the net), have just great image quality and and a decent set of controls (tint, color, bright, cont, hpos, vhold, volume up front).

You need a hacked cable because the connectors on the back are separate luma/chroma instead of having a standard S-Video jack.

Most have mono RCA audio inputs both front and rear, though you might find one here and there with stereo RCA connectors.

What you look for is their two-tone grey box.

Downside: they weigh a TON.

I have 4 of 'em I picked up at a meet a few years ago for ~$20 each.

Dr. Mordrid

[gt40]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
Go to a computer or HAM radio swap meet and see if you can find an old Commodore 1702 monitor for the C= 64.

These were made by JVC, take both composite and S-Video (with a hacked cable you can often buy on the net), have just great image quality and and a decent set of controls (tint, color, bright, cont, hpos, vhold, volume).

What you look for is their two-tone grey box.

Downside: they weigh a TON.

I have 4 of 'em I picked up at a meet a few years ago for ~$20 each.

Dr. Mordrid

Exactly what I'm using - infact got mine for nothing.
a little bulky and heavy though.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup...but you know that weight is maybe an upside in that it indicates something built "the old way"....which means heavy duty components mounted to a chassis made of metal originally intended for a 1980 Volvo's front fender

Uppance: I've had these 4 plus 2 from my C= 64 days and all of 'em still work. All but two systems in my lab have 'em as preview monitors.

Dr. Mordrid

[Hulk]

Thanks for the tip.

Wow, I remember my friend across the street had one of those on his Commodore 64, that was 1982! I remember being so jealous because he could do 16 colors at 320x192 resolution, and my Atari 800 could only do 2 colors at that resolution. Well, unless you did the old odd/even scan line thing, then you could fake 4 colors, and you could also use the vertical blank interupt to get more colors but only 2 on one horizontal section of the screen. Oh, the good old days!

-Mark

[Patrick]

Great, now the price for replacements will be going up!

Heh-heh, the Commodore 1702 monitor sitting two feet away from me has the date January 1984 on the back. I have three of them which I use for video editing and I love 'em.

By the way Doc, all three of mine have Hitachi innards.

[Dr Mordrid]

Ahhh.....Hitachi got into the mix too then.

I'd presumed all 1702's had been made by JVC because I noticed the first one (an early model) had those guts when a front/back swtich repair was done ~10 years ago. The others I haven't needed to open.

I just wish most hardware held up near as well. I'm beginning to think the only way I'll be able to justify replacing them is when HDTV editing cards arrive for beta or if they get "accidently" struck with a sledgehammer, which will be kinda tough since they're all 5' off the floor on pivoting wall mounts

Dr. Mordrid

[Technoid]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
.......... made of metal originally intended for a 1980 Volvo's front fender
Dr. Mordrid

Those cars was like tanks

[funky-d-munky]

Is the rez on those ol'bastards high enough? I would have thought they would be to low?

Hulk- c=64 res was 320x200 and could display only 4 or 8 colours @ its max resolution from a palette of 16.

[gt40]

This was an analog monitor so it conformed to ntsc standards.

[Hulk]

Originally posted by funky-d-munky
Is the rez on those ol'bastards high enough? I would have thought they would be to low?

Hulk- c=64 res was 320x200 and could display only 4 or 8 colours @ its max resolution from a palette of 16.

Yes, you are right about the res. My Atari 800 was320x192.

I thought the C64 was 4 bits per pixel. So long ago, might have been 2.

I do remember the old Apple II did 8 colors at the "hi" res. I remember because it was weird that it was 3 bits per pixel

Whenever a game for the home computer came out back then I always used to look at how the programmer allocated the colors, things were so restrictive back then. I remember 640x480 being unbeliveably high resolution when the IBM PC appeared.

I actually still have my Atari 800, can't seem to part with it.

-Mark