In Broadcast - March 2012 - 54

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 6 - MARCH 2012

InTEST
Video Monitoring & Quality Assurance
By David Kirk
The following is a summary of new developments in video monitoring and quality assurance. It follows on from the Test & Measurement article published in InBroadcast Issue 02.It is a fast-developing area. The entire broadcast business has become increasingly costeﬃcient over the years, not least in presentation monitoring. Many playout centres now monitor incoming and outgoing video on ﬂat-screen panels identical to those used by television viewers at home. LCD development is progressing in various directions. The key competing technologies are: • CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) where a number of ﬂat ﬂuorescent lamps (FFLs) make up the complete backlight array to drive the LCD ﬁlter panel. With appropriate diﬀusers, this produces a moderately high light level and relatively even illumination over the ﬁeld. CCFLbacklit displays are more energyeﬃcient than a plasma panel but each lamp (there are typically four) needs an inverter to drive it. • EEFL (External Electrode Fluorescent Lamp). This produces an even illumination and is as power eﬃcient as CCFL. In a multi-lamp conﬁguration only one inverter is needed to drive many lamps uniformly which means greater electrical eﬃciency and reduced component count. • LED-backlit-LCD. Commonly uses edge illumination but higher quality is gained from LED matrix backlighting where enhanced gamut, more controllable light output, and eﬃciency performance factors are considered worth paying for. • OLED (Organic-LED). This uses an array of electroluminescent pixels rather than an LCD ﬁlter. The array is added as a ﬁlm of semiconducting material between two electrodes, the front electrode (and in some versions also the rear) being transparent. 10 times faster video image response time than current Sony models. Sony envisages applications ranging from professional to consumer use. Development and commercialisation of OLEDs will also continue. Most of the companies showing consumer video displays at CES were promoting the integration of computer processors to allow simple switchover from television viewing to internet browsing. This is a logical progression and one which will soon result in a complete fusion of the TV and the PC. That could make life very interesting for the growing population of companies oﬀering software for the various links in the broadcast production chain, not least in quality assurance.
David Kirk

Prototype Displays

PHABRIX® Rx 2000

The most innovative modular rack mount test and measurement platform available today

PHABRIX® SxE
The world’s only hand held eye and jitter combined analyser, generator and monitor

Most OLED monitors oﬀered to date are very limited in size. Samsung showed a prototype 55 inch screen potentially for the consumer market. Panasonic exhibited at CES 2012 (Las Vegas, January) what it claims is the world’s smallest 4 x 2 kilopixel LCD panel. The 20-inch 3,840 x 2,160 resolution IPS Alpha LCD has an imaging density of 216 pixels per inch and is only 3.5 mm thick. Sony exhibited at the same event a 55 inch ‘Crystal LED’ self-emitting display. This uses six million red, green and blue LEDs to form the two million triads required in a 1920 x 1080 panel. The RGB LED light source is mounted directly on the front of the display. The 55-inch prototype is claimed to give approximately 3.5 times higher contrast in an illuminated environment, approximately 1.4 times wider colour gamut, and approximately

Available Monitors

Cooltouch’s new RX-702HD, designed for use wherever space is at a premium, incorporates dual 7 inch 16:9 LCD screens and delivers high image quality even when viewed in bright ambient light. Each of the RX-702HD’s two screens is a high-brightness active matrix TFT LCD with 800 RGB triads x 480 pixels resolution. Aspect ratio is switchable between 16:9 and 4:3. Both displays are complemented by their own audio monitoring channels which can be sourced from analogue inputs or extracted from SDI streams. The RX-702HD occupies 3 U
CONTINUED ON PAGE 55

For an exclusive pre-NAB look at the latest technology from PHABRIX please click here

Click here

Cooltouch RX-702HD

HALL N3 N5015

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpzEatLsHdE&feature=youtube_gdata_player http://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=hb_tab_home_top http://www.twitter.com/inbroadcast http://www.facebook.com/pages/InBroadcast-e-zine/226166444076212 http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/inbroadcast/id468652679?mt=8 http://WWW.INBROADCAST.COM http://www.cooltouchmonitors.com/ http://www.phabrix.com/phabrix-nab-2012-2537-0.html http://expo.nabshow.com/mynabshow2012/Public/Booth.aspx?BoothID=128431

In Broadcast - March 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of In Broadcast - March 2012