List Price: $695.00
Sale Price: $660.25
Today's Bonus: 5% Off
I had been eying the Blackmagic Smartview Duo for awhile and finally saw a few in use at another facility. It swayed me enough to get three of my own. First of all, each screen is not HD resolution. The actual resolution is probably much closer to SD, but you wouldn't be monitoring critical content on an 8" screen. Having said that, the video looks great and generally accurate. The PC/MAC software control panel lets you adjust the image coloring and brightness per screen or you can link them both together if you want both screens to be the same. The screens can get VERY bright. I ended up dialing mine back to 30%. If you have more than one of these on the same ethernet network, you can even adjust them all at the same time, nice. The monitor has a DB9 GPI triggered tally system where you can get RGB or any combination of colors using simultaneous triggering of the GPI tally. I used red to indicate that a graphics operator is on-air when a video switcher is on that source (requires use of GPO or Tally outs on your video switcher and appropriate cabling). The monitor supports all currently used SDI and HD-SDI resolutions and frame rates with loop-through. Also nice is the Ethernet loop-through, so you can daisy chain all your Smartview monitors without the use of multiple runs of ethernet to a switch. This is very helpful from a wiring standpoint as you will save a ton of cabling by only using one ethernet drop to your monitor. You can even loop it back out to a computer.
The only real drawback I can think of is the lack of a power switch or power control. You have to physically disconnect it from power to power it down. I have been leaving mine on 24/7, but plan on putting them on a power timer or IP controlled power switch (Ubiquity mPower). I wish Blackmagic would add a firmware update allowing either Ethernet power control and/or power down upon loss of source.
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