Flanders Scientific Inc (FSI) Grade A Broadcast Monitors LCD

[panzeroceania]

.

A company started by a man and his son who used to work for Barco.

Interview in September 2012 with the co-founder -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HByM9lm9yi8

Input overview -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbWExN8X9gE

Pixel Mapping -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBmPTO2uZk0

Overview of their flagship monitor (24") -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fox4pm5q1U8

Processing Mode overview -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRJ1o-hcbWk

Company Website -- http://www.flandersscientific.com/index/index.php

You can buy directly from them, and they provide free re calibration of their monitors if you pay the shipping. They are located near Atlanda Georgia, USA, and also are working on doing calibration and distribution out of Belgium soon. Their monitors can take RGB, YPbPr, Composite, SDI, 3G SDI, DVI, and also HDMI and VGA via the DVI port. They're pricey but offer an array of features. I'm also interested in cinema production so it caught my eye. Seems to be a very cool company

[Fudoh]

I don't see the point. Might be an affordable all-in-one alternative to Sony's displays (PVM = LCD and BVM = OLED), but for anything else - and this includes and semi professional movie production - you're much better off by buying a monitor with color calibration features (let's say a Dell 2413) and pair it with BMD Ultrastudio or Teranex at HALF the price of Flanders monitor. If you chose a 2nd hand BMD (maybe a Multibridge), you get off a quarter off the Flanders price.

[panzeroceania]

The Dell, or even an Asus would be adequate if you're relying mostly on scopes for video editing yes, and they'd be fine for photo editing, they display Adobe RGB and sRGB for critical photo viewing, but they lack a Rec. 709 and DCI-P3 color space viewing mode so that's where the Flanders or an HP Dreamcolor would be better for critical video/cinema viewing.

I also don't know how much truth there is in this, but he claims the regular calibration tools used for most photography workflows aren't as precise as the calibration tools they use to make sure the Flanders monitors meet standards.

I think you're right though, for actual editing for even low budget professional work, you rely on vectorscopes, etc. for editing, you don't just edit by eye anyways, so you wouldn't need a tool like this to produce a professional image, it's more of a luxury, and not one I can afford as of now. Still, it's a pretty sweet piece of tech.

I know some directors use HP Dreamcolors, or Flanders on set as a critical viewing monitor to make sure they are getting usable material, but that's the guys with big budgets. Being able to view something natively in DCI-P3 color space and being able to press a button to get 1:1 pixel on a 2K video is pretty sweet though.

[Fudoh]

I don't think so. If you take one of the better monitors with 100%+ NTSC coverage (like the Dell 2413), the external video processor will do the rec.709 to RGB conversion and it should be pretty perfect. You must not forget that even on on a Flanders (or a Sony BVM OLED for that matter) the PANEL itself is running in RGB mode and all the other color spaces and handled and converted by the built-in decoder board.

[panzeroceania]

you're right about that, I suppose the blackmagic cards should be able to handle the color space processing as long as the monitor is wide gamut then, eh?

[Fudoh]

When Lumagen updated their color management and calibration system about 1.5 years ago, I remember a review where a color grading artist (davinci) mentioned that he liked his full-gamut (but standard) LCD along with Lumagen's CMS better than a $30,000 Sony BVM OLED.

I give the professional equipment manufacturers full credit, but don't underestimate the underdogs. Only because Teranex asked $100,000 for the deinterling/scaling solution doesn't mean that it was automatically better than all consumer processors (which it indeed never was).

[Fudoh]

Being able to view something natively in DCI-P3 color space and being able to press a button to get 1:1 pixel on a 2K video is pretty sweet though.

P3 is some digital cinema manifesto, right ? Enhanced greens and such which many consumer displays can't show. I think even the Dream Color monitors by HP have to cut off some green in order to get the P3 color space right... (indeed: http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaig ... lation.pdf )

1:1 or 2:1 pixel mapping is available on a number of video processors as well

[panzeroceania]

yeah the dreamcolor is cheaper than the flanders but yeah, it gets about 97% of the P3 color space and calls it "DCI-P3 'emulation'"

The flanders on the other hand can handle 100% of the color space and even accepts video signals formatted in XYZ, but now that you mention that, I'm sure some blackmagic hardware is also capable of this, I'll have to look into it.

DCI-P3 is just the standard color space for digital cinema delivery and projection, just like Rec. 709 is the standard for HD broadcast

[Fudoh]

hell, all discussion aside, if I had 25k EUR to spend I would get a BVM OLED just for the fun of it.

[panzeroceania]

heh, wouldn't we all, or that insanely expensive Dolby monitor that you need sunglasses to view at full brightness.

I wonder when hardware manufacturers are going to start implementing Rec 2020 UHD standards, probably in a year or two. That said it's probably difficult to discern any visual difference, and I'd have to be out of my head if I thought I'd ever make anything that would be shown on a big silver screen. I just like learning about this stuff, I'm a tech geek at heart.

[Ed Oscuro]

hell, all discussion aside, if I had 25k EUR to spend I would get a BVM OLED just for the fun of it.

Indeed, although I'm afraid they won't hold up as well as the classic CRT BVMs by the time they become affordable on the second hand market. Maybe eventually, though, since OLED seems to be doing better over the years. And who knows, maybe they'll just become "obsoleted" by 4K displays. Man, those would be fun to game on

[Fudoh]

4K is on my shopping list for later this year. 65" Sony X9

[zeroroute]

I misread ''flanders'' as ''flandres''. That's what I get for being on here half asleep...

[Ed Oscuro]

4K is on my shopping list for later this year. 65" Sony X9

Going to watch the Olympics again?

[ryu]

Man, those would be fun to game on

why? it's just upscaled.

[panzeroceania]

well yeah, the next xbox and PS4 will be 1080p only for gaming (although they'll support 4K video playback) but I think he just meant, when games actually render at 4K, that'll be awesome, and I'm sure that'll be possible soon with PC games.

[Ed Oscuro]

I was actually talking about using Sony's OLED broadcast monitors to game with 1080p sources (assuming they have low lag, of course). And for 4K yeah, you need a 4K source for it to be worthwhile.

[panzeroceania]

Fudoh, if you don't mind me asking, what are some other monitors that you know of that allow both 1:1 and 2:1 pixel mapping that are wide gamut and good overall monitors, cheaper than the Flanders unit (the CM-170W is $3,295)

The HP Dreamcolor appears to have 1:1 pixel mapping via it's HDMI and DisplayPort I/O and HP sells it for $2,249

I also just noticed your comment about the color grader talking up the Lumagen CMS, that's an excellent point.