This article was published in the new monthly American magazine "Pro Video Review" March-April 99 issue. Th
e magazine describes itself as offering "in-depth, balanced subjective and objective analysis in its reviews of professional gears".The writer of this technical review is Geoffrey Riley, the News Managing Editor at KDRV in Medford, Oregon.
TRANSVIDEO 6" High-Brightness Modular Monitor
by Geoffrey Riley
The first word out of most of my co-workers’mouths when they saw it was "wow".
Summertime in southern Oregon: the sun beats down and makes it hard for you to see just about anything unless you’re outfitted with sunglasses. The TV station I work for recently began doing live remotes in our newscast. Our engineers rigged a system for remote reporters to hear the station’s audio, but the picture was another matter. No ordinary monitor could cope with the bright sunshine. Enter Transvideo. The French company makes a high-brightness color LCD monitor --- the 6" High-Brightness Modular Monitor. I road-tested the monitor on our live shots, with some very impressive results.
Features
The 6-inch High-Brightness Modular Monitor (hereinafter referred to as "the monitor") is small and unassuming. Its beige carrying case is barely larger than a briefcase. The monitor body itself is only 1-1/4 inches (3.2cm) thick and has a 6-inch (15.2cm) diagonal screen. Transvideo makes a variety of optional "backs" that allow a wide range of configurations. I had the monitor shipped with a back that would draw power from an Anton/Bauer camera battery. Any of the accessories are easily added to the basic monitor. Whether your power source is the AC adapter provided or a battery, powering up is easy… all I had to do was plug it in, and it turned itself on. Four buttons on the right side of the screen control monitor operations, from type of input (RGB, Y Cr Cb, composite or Y/C) to the language in which the menus appear (English, French, German, or Spanish).
In Use
We often send our meteorologist out to deliver his forecast live from the field, and he must be able to see the weather maps and graphics in order to refer to them. Not a problem. The monitor came equipped with an optional receiver, the Hermes, which runs off the same AC adapter as the screen. Inserting eight AA batteries into the Hermes makes the monitor portable.
In field use, I cranked up the brightness and contrast. With the unit’s Velcro hood on and the monitor on the ground tilted up at the meteorologist, the picture was easy to see, even with the sun beating down. Bear in mind this is just a 6-inch diagonal screen and LCD at that, so it had to be placed carefully. But even with the monitor on the ground and the reporter or meteorologist standing up, maps, graphics and everything else on the screen were clearly recognizable. The Anton/Bauer back proved a big plus. We run our field cameras with those batteries, so I just grabbed a spare. Monitor, receiver and battery all snapped and screwed together into a compact unit – total weight, about eight pounds (3.6 kg).
The Transvideo 6" High-Brightness Modular Monitor comes with mounting hardware, including a swiveling head to allow exact positioning. With the monitor running off the AC adapter, I clamped the mounting hardware onto a camera tripod for easy viewing. I decided against trying to use the clamping setup with the Anton/Bauer battery, as the added weight put some real strain on the monitor case. The Hermes receiver worked, but it seemed better at UHF frequencies than VHF. Since we broadcast on Channel 12, I needed a good VHF signal for our live shots. Usually some careful positioning of the monitor would give us a good signal. I suspect a longer antenna is what’s needed, but this is only significant if you use the monitor to receive a signal of-the-air.
Summary
The Transvideo 6-inch High-Brightness Modular Monitor packs some big features into a small body. And it looks great. The first word out of most of my co-workers’mouths when they saw it was "wow". In fact, the first time I used it in the field, the live shot photographer came after his business was done; he said "Hey, that’s beautiful." He took the words right out of my mouth.
Geoffrey Riley can be reached at griley@kdrv.com.
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