HDMI Field Monitor Review

by Sebastian WöberFebruary 25^th, 2010

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Controls

A quick and easy navigation is obviously an important thing when it comes to a device you wanna use on a video shoot. The more professional it gets the less time you have to fiddle around with your setup. When you have 10 minutes on a picture, you wanna spend as little as possible on ill mannered gear.

Controls smallHD DP-1
The controls on the DP-1 are situated on the back of the unit. There are 5 non labeled buttons, every second of those has a dot sticking out so it’s easier to feel which button you’re touching. You control the buttons by putting your fingers underneath the unit. This way there is no space wasted at the front.

On The DP-1 there are a lot of valuable features. It has blue only, it has cropping, color adjustments, image swap, etc. (see images). Unfortunately some of those features like swap are unavailable in hdmi mode.

The best for dslr users is the feature to scale the screen so it fits up to the corners. That way you can use the full resolution of the screen. The setting is saved, you only have to make this adjustment once. Sometimes the picture would suddenly be off when I tested the unit, but would return to preset later. Probably has to do with the order of turning the device on and plugging the hdmi cable in.

The control itself was really hard at first. I needed like 15 minutes to really learn to use these buttons. Once I found out how it worked it was easier but I’m still making mistakes at times. It takes a lot of concentration and isn’t intuitive.

Opinion:
It works, it just takes more time and is a little annoying. It is something smallHD could improve.

Controls ikan V8000

The controls of the V8000 are on the front. There are 3 clearly marked buttons with a single function and 4 more for menu, directions and an on/off button.

This device is very easy to use and navigation is very quick.
It has the same functionality as the V5600 with the difference that you can change the aspect ration on this one to 4:3.
The left and right buttons will flip the image in all four directions. The menu button gives you access to brightness, contrast, saturation, langage and blue/red/green color values. There is no blue only as on professional broadcast monitors for calibration with a standard color chart.

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