Press release from Sony Australia
Sony has continued to roll out its professional OLED monitors with placements across the country including the latest installation at Gearhouse Broadcast Australia, a leader in HD Outside Broadcast technology.
With Seven Network, Fremantle Media and Fox Sports as principle clients, Gearhouse Broadcast Australia is keen to keep its 18 month old fleet of OB units updated with the latest equipment. As part of this process the company has taken delivery of 16 PVM-1741 17-inch Professional OLED Picture Monitors and installed them in the largest four trucks of its outside broadcast fleet.
“I’ve been waiting for years for LCD to be superseded and was right on Sony’s door when OLED’s were released,” said Ray Martin, General Manager, Gearhouse Broadcast Australia. “I believe OLEDs are the first true grading monitors since CRTs and they have matched the hype – they haven’t disappointed and have met all our expectations.
“I first saw Sony’s 7 inch OLED monitors at NAB 2010 and the larger production models in 2011. I also saw them during a roadshow where OLEDs were show in a side-by-side test with LCDs and CRTs – you could definitely see the quality of the OLED monitor.”
The PVM-1741’s have been installed in CCU/grading and monitoring positions of Gearhouse’s HD-1 and HD-2 double-expanding semi-trailers and into TD/grading positions for the HD-3 and HD-4 single-expanding trucks.
Improved image quality
The quality of images provided by Sony’s OLEDs was the obvious choice for Martin when he needed to match client requests for improved technical monitoring. Their existing LCDs could not provide a full HD pixel count and operators were having to guess at black levels.
“Some of our clients felt the LCD monitors were not giving their images a just representation and I knew Sony was about to release its OLEDs, so I managed to hold off upgrading until then,” said Martin.
“In the future we plan to install the OLEDs into all the technical positions throughout the additional fleet as well. If there is any requirement for the LMD-1751 LCDs we will install PVM-1741’s instead into the grading positions and deploy the LCDs elsewhere. I still feel the LMD-1751 and 24” LCDs are very good monitors for production galleries but when you are in CCU or grading positions the OLEDs are far superior. Eventually in 5-6 years OLEDs take over from LEDs and we’ll see them throughout our trucks, including 24” OLED monitors in use in the production gallery.”
The installation of the PVM-1741 OLED monitors also provided Gearhouse Broadcast Australia with the benefit of having HD-SDI inputs as standard. Martin explained, “Monitors have always been a problem for us in the past because we had to pick the input card to match what the monitor was going to be used for. In our business we move them around a lot and require different inputs so having the HD-SDI input as standard on the PVM-1741s is a huge bonus.”