More than 30 exhibitors introduced new LCD professional displays last week at the NAB Conference in Las Vegas. While the professional use of small monitors has grown slowly in the past several years, there is mounting evidence that the stringent requirements of Grade 1 monitors are starting to become met by more offerings. An exhaustive report of many of these products will be available in an upcoming issue of Large Display Report. A small sampling of the unveilings:

Aldo Cugnini
Analyst

Sony is now offering a 42-inch professional display, the new BVM-L420. The new monitor is aimed at program and preview monitoring in broadcast master control rooms or in OB trucks. By using a new LED backlight technology to remove motion blur, the new 10-bit LCD panel has been designed to produce better picture contrast and more accurate black details. Among the other new features are a pixel zoom function, a gamut error display mode that dynamically shows picture areas that are subject to color remapping errors, and EIA-608/708 closed-caption decoding capability.

Panasonic introduced the BT-LH1760 17" LCD high definition production monitor that utilizes a 120 Hz double speed drive and an advanced LCD panel. Equipped with a new vectorscope function as well as built-in waveform monitor, the panel’s performance is enhanced by a 120Hz drive, which enables it to handle fast motion content and reduce image blur. This is combined with a new In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel with wider viewing angles (176°) and 10-bit image processing. The panel’s image processing engine has a three-dimensional look up table (LUT) that calibrates the monitor to reproduce content according to the specific color standard selected.

Ikegami unveiled the HLM-1711WR, a 17-inch HD/SD multi-format color monitor that integrates a new LCD panel featuring a significantly improved critical viewing angle. Tucked away at one corner of their exhibit, however, was a more interesting flat screen display - a field emission device built by Japanese firm Field Emission Technologies Inc. The nano-Spindt FED is said by the manufacturer to meet the requirements for Master Monitor designation specified by EBU-Tech 3320 and ARIB TR-B28, possibly setting it apart from all other flat-screen displays.

The FED device manufacturer also exhibited separately on the floor, displaying side-by-side with a reference CRT–a demonstration reminiscent of Sony’s last year at NAB. However, while there were slight observable differences in the original Sony demo, there was no difference discernable between the FED and CRT monitors. Of course, this is to be expected, as the FED display utilizes phosphor-based light generation from the emission devices. Pricing and availability are still unclear at this time, although Ikegami reps told us that they are planning to introduce an FED product in about 2 years’ time–most of it needed to start up a large-scale manufacturing facility.

We’ve reported on FED/SED technology before, complete with its ups and downs; at last notice, it seemed that there was little hope of viability, following business troubles at FED backers Canon and Toshiba. But while LED-backplanes seem to be offering color and contrast performance approaching CRTs, there may still be a slight edge to the FED technology in terms of contrast and image lag, the latter promising 240fps performance. And the professional equipment market may be better able to subsidize the development and startup costs of the technology; with higher margins, the return on investment–even on a lower volume–may come sooner than with CE products. The question is whether LCD can reach the same performance in that time. For FED, there’s still a chance that, as Mark Twain said, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

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