Comments on: JVC either desperately or cleverly targets dSLR owners with new display

Is JVC's 42-inch Xiview LT-42WX70 a clever display for photographers and videographers or an overpriced wide-gamut doorstop?

[ooprus]

I'm puzzled, HDMI is a superset of DVI. The electrical signals are identical and you can easy buy DVI to HDMI cables or connector adapters. I plug my DVI based video cards into a Samsung HDMI HDTV and it works perfectly. Some DVI cards and minitors even supports HDCP (high definition copy protection), which is the thing you need to let your DVI video card play BlueRay movies. HDCP is required to get the HDMI logo. HDMI also tends to put sound over the same cable, which DVI doesn't. HDMI is an upward compatable superset.

[illegallydead]

@ ooprus: From my understanding, HDMI lacks the ability to send monitor data back to the computer. That is, yes, it outputs all the same video in the same way, but it's interface is a "dumb" interface, as it were. For serious, high-end color reproduction for photo and video folks, the monitor needs to be able to "talk" with the computer and software in order to get all the color profiles matched up just right.

In other words, this unit does seem like a bit of a sham. It is marketed at a market segment that (should) know exactly what they want/need, and judging from the specs, it is just not quite there. Anyone super serious about "photo-grade" displays won't go for a JVC TV. They will go for a MONITOR, and one with a more trusted track record.

In other other words, JVC is just using the "SLR" name as another acronym to throw at people. The more fancy words most people don't understand, the better, right?

[ooprus]

Both HDMI and DVI support DDC to read the EDID from the monitor. HDMI is a "smarter" interface than DVI, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI for all the details. If you read the DVI and HDMI details on Wikipedia, then current versions of HDMI is the clear winner

I looked on the JVC website at the technical specs, and see the color space is adjustable to sRGB or Adobe RGB (or a couple of others). It also does internal wide color pixel processing. Offhand, this is much MORE oriented toward digital imaging uses than many other 42" HTDV's. From the DVI specs, it says you need dual-link DVI to get more than 24-bits/pixel, although HDMI 1.3 supports 48-bits/pixel over a single link. This suggests matching an older DVI video card (dual-link) with the new HDMI monitor (single-link) might not get you 48-bit color. MANY DVI cables aren't dual-link anyway, so you will ONLY get wide color on DVI if the video card, cable, and monitor all are coordinated. From what I read, you don't get wide color video output from Windows until Windows 7 anyway, so all this talk of 48-bit color may be bogus on current Windows versions (see http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-7-High-Color-Support-98741.shtml).

I'd like to know WHY somebody is labeling this as bogus for digital photography use. I offhand see no evidence in the tech specs to support this, and see lots of things in the tech specs to support that it is oriented toward wide gamut color use. The $2000 24? monitors designed for critical color use offhand have technical features, like HP?s tri-color LCD backlight, that may give them an edge over the JVC, but the twice as large, and not much more expensive, JVC looks like it comes very close (for example Adobe RGB coverage on the JVC is listed as 96% and as 97% on the Eizo).

It?s VERY interesting that the HP manual states you don?t get 30 bits/pixel over the DVI interface. This also points out the difference between ?wide gamut? and ?wide pixel depth?. You can have 24-bit wide gamut color, or 48-bit color depth without a wide gamut. I also found wide gamut CRT monitors using analog RGB connectors, so that kind of shoots the ?must be DVI? argument (although DVI/HDMI can display many more pixels sharply). Analog RGB has DDC also to read the monitor EDID info.
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I have no affiliation with JVC, and am a highly experience software developer (and have been a serious photographer for 40 years), with a nose for bogus claims. The only bogosity I smell is claiming this display, because it lacks DVI, is inherently not capable of wide color. Only careful testing will determine how accurate its color is compared to other displays intended for digital image editing. All of those displays are not 42".

The wide gamut claims of each monitor listed in the article are:
JVC LT-42WX70 - Adobe RGB 96%
NEC MultiSync LCD2690WUXi2 - Adobe RGB 97.5% (read the fine print on the specs)
Eizo CG242W ? Adobe RGB 97%
HP DreamColor LP2480zx - Adobe RGB 100%
From HP manual "True 10-bit drivers in the LCD panel itself, and the ability to support true 10 bits/color (30 bits/pixel) video through the DisplayPort 1.1 and HDMI 1.3 inputs?, notice NOT from the DVI input
Samsung XL24 ? didn?t seem to say
Older Mitsubishi RDF225WG Wide Gamut CRT ? Adobe RGB 97.6% over analog DB-15 connector

This was all research I did from the comfort of my computer, with no hands on testing with sophisticated color measurement equipment. Offhand, I uncovered more about the truth than the article writer did, they are supposed to do this kind of research for a living.

[amadensor]

VGA is only 8 bit?!?!?!? VGA is an analog signal. My video card uses a 24 bit color (23 bits of color plus one bit of gamma) to pick what to send, but ultimately, this is not dependent on it being VGA at all.