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When budgetarily feasible, I will get a SONY monitor. In the meantime, this works... (and amazingly impressive):

INSIGNIA
32" LCD HDTV
DVI, Component, HDMI, Composite, S-Video, RF and Audio Inputs
720p/1080i Display
Resolution: 1366 x 766 (Not the 1920x1080p SONY's but....the 720p's really look visually comparable with 1080i's)
Contrast Ratio: 1500:1

The picture is superb for small screen monitoring (I consider anything 32" and lower small ). It's a compatible user-friendly companion for the S4K Pro...and because it's an HDTV, you can watch your fav HD shows while waiting for the snail-paced HD rendering and never have to leave your studio.

Believe it or not: $299 at Best Buy!

Eric...I just checked BB and the 22 inch is $299. The 32 inch is $559 and $579. I was ready to drop everything and run over there at $299.

I better go and get me another one then . I paid @299 for mine unless it was a pricing error. (Knew it was too good to be true).

You really payed $299 for it You got one hell of a deal then. Maybe you should go buy a lotto ticket....FAST The only thing I can think of is that they put a 32inch tv in a 22inch tv box and then scannded the UPC on that box.

Hi Paul.

I did go back to Best Buy and was ready to get another one but confirmed the pricing info you mentioned. It was a stroke of freak luck I guess to pay that low for the model I got. I did fail to mention that it didn't have a box, took the monitor to the counter (was a display model but had $299 on the shelf) and paid the price I thought it listed. The sales clerk requested a price check and did get the same info back. I truly believed it was what was listed as on the shelf.

Play the lotto quick? No such luck. Back in January I won an X Box at the CES from Vegas and thought I could carry my luck at the slots. I lost enough money more than enough to pay as if I just bought the X-Box from Frye's new.

Anyway, I am quite pleased with the INSIGNIA's performance with the S4K Pro. Just my thoughts on it. I noticed Jorg used another inexpensive monitor back at NAB too. It's an OLEVIA brand. I bought one for my daughter a few months back, and that too had an impressive picture. I have a SONY 46" 1080p Bravia in the lving room but I don't think my wife will let me take that down to my studio.

Be expecting to see more posts from you and others...especially Chet's. My eyes perk when I see his red name light up. He's always the bearer of good news...which I would expect no less from the S-4000 Pro in the days ahaead.

I was thinking the only way you got it for that price was if it were a display model. It's probably been on 12 hours a day for months but hey at least ya knew it was going to turn on when ya got it home....it was still warm You were in the right place at the right time. Now go make some money with your Pro.

Eric,
You mentioned the snail paced HDV Rendering... I just finished a Blue Ray Disk of 45 minutes of HDV from a FX-1 (The message I had earlier) and your right, snail paced...wow..That took over an hour to copy/render...I thought this 4k Pro would be lightening fast for the $?!!

How do you like it otherwise?

Doug Sjoerdsma.

Doug,

I was checking how long HDV rendering/burning to Blu Ray on a PC or Mac takes and it's hard to nail anything down, but from surfing on the subject it appears some of the latest, most powerful machines take a bit over real time all the way to multiple days for lesser machines and depend on the codecs, passes, processors and ram combinations used.

So I'd say the S4P appears to be on the bleeding edge of efficiency in this department.

I personally have not begun to edit in HDV yet (outside of some testing), but expect to begin next year which is why I invested in the S4P.

Brave new world.

We bought a cheap Sony HDV camera from the their broadcast line to shoot golf courses. It's a shoulder mounted camera that I can just give to my brother and tell him to go to the course.

So far, I've just down converted into the AVIO and matched it with my DVX. Gotta tell you guys, the color is just not the same. I've had to do so much to it to even make it look anywhere close to the DVX on color.

I suppose the HDV is less noisy as they say, but when edge-cropped and down-converted, I'd rather use my old Panasonic 3-CCD camera as a second to my DVX on color.

Of course, the HDV camera I'm using is a single CMOS, but the lighting was good in the shots, so, one would think that it would compare.

I used the HDV camera on an interview we did in Mobile a couple weeks ago and the color was okay with the DVX. But it has been hit or miss.

Looks like come November or December, I'm picking up an HVX200 with my S4000. Anybody know whether I'm right about the color comparison issues? My experiences are just anecdotal.

Jonathan:

The choice between CCD cameras or CMOS cameras depends on your acquisition applications.

The CMOS chip cameras are seemingly more sensitive to low light as claimed but for wedding work, I have stayed away from CMOS chip cameras because of the innert shutter issues.

CCD: Uses Global shutters meaning it registers a full image each time on the chip as you'd imagine in a film projector when the shutter blade blocks out the image as the frame is pulled down into place.

CMOS: Has rolling shutters where it takes nano second scans of an image from top to bottom and reamins exposed until the frame is completed.

CONSEQUENCE: In wedding work, which is the majority of my clientele, we are inundiated with unavoidable photographer and guest flashes 90 per cent of the time. Translating this to video imagery, the picture breaks or shows incomplete frames on playback on CMOS chips, which is not true with CCDs. However, the CMOS cameras look great with very good lighting or daylight work.

I love my SONY Z1. I use a Canon too as a second camera and wished I purchased the less expensive consumer grade FX1 instead for that purpose. The Canon is very hard to match with the SONY's vibrant colors and appears very noisy in low light.

Like I said, no matter what camera you use, its all dependent upon the majority of your usage. In the end, it's the picture quality that matters. After editing HDV with the S4KPro, its hard to go back to SD again. It's a blessing that it's an easy process in selecting the mode format for the intended delivery (SD or HD) with this unit. When the Media Manager becomes available, the choice will be even wider....and that's all good news for the business.