BT-LH1700W too green?

J P

J P

Well-known member
I've been using the Panasonic BT-LH1700W 17" LCD production monitor a lot lately. I love the monitor, but I've noticed that the image is very green. Yes, it's calibrated with bars. I've seen this anomaly on a few different units.

Anyone else notice this?
Any workaround (other than just adjusting the phase until it looks good)?
Is Panny going to fix this problem and have an updated model?
 
i noticed this too. i dp'd a feature and everyone on set with an opinion worried i was making it too green.
 
If the monitor is calibrated then it's calibrated. You can't have a monitor that's calibrated but..... If you're having problems with chroma phase try using the component inputs. There is no phase to adjust in a component universe making your job easier. Good Luck.
 
Disco Robo said:
If the monitor is calibrated then it's calibrated. You can't have a monitor that's calibrated but..... If you're having problems with chroma phase try using the component inputs. There is no phase to adjust in a component universe making your job easier. Good Luck.
Click to expand...

Well, no, it's calibrated but it's green. If you compare it to another calibrated monitor, it's green. That's my point. Also, we were using component.
 
yep, component input here. straight from the HVX200. ran bars thru, properly calibrated, checked chroma and phase under 'blue only'. and the monitor displayed a green cast (that isn't actually on the footage. this was a rental unit, i should mention.
 
This is a well known problem.

I just went through this. Apparently it can be "properly calibrated" but still look green.
I haven't figured out if they are all the same degree of green, but i do suspect they are all green to some extent.

So far I have seen one that just seemed to have green blacks ( I suspect they all do) and another that just looked green altogether, but i didn't have them on the same set .
i am planning to buy one soon and hope to compare 3 o4.
You can go into the deeper menu's and bias it back toward magenta.
this is a crappy solution, but maybe the only one.

Adjusting the phase is a bad idea as it throws the monitor way off - better to go into the deeper menus. Just look around you'll find it. But its still not perfect.

The color is ultimately not reliable.
If you have an old SD Sony 8044 CRT or so it is very instructive to compare them.
it doesn't handle highlights well either and you can also see that comparing to the Sony CRT

My partner sent his back to panasonic for this problem and got a loner that was equally green. when it came back from panny it was the same.
Unfortunately its the only choice in the price range.
 
Zak, from previous threads, I understand you own a LH2600.

1. Do you use it on a set, or only in your studio?

2. Does it also have a green cast, and if so, have you tweaked it to compensate?

The LH2600 is a newer model to the LH1700, and I am curious if they have overcome what I am now learning from this thread. Glad I never ordered the LH1700 already, shipped from the US without seeing it. I don't know what to buy, in the coming few months.:undecided
 
Christopher Barry said:
Zak, from previous threads, I understand you own a LH2600.

1. Do you use it on a set, or only in your studio?

2. Does it also have a green cast, and if so, have you tweaked it to compensate?

The LH2600 is a newer model to the LH1700, and I am curious if they have overcome what I am now learning from this thread. Glad I never ordered the LH1700 already, shipped from the US without seeing it. I don't know what to buy, in the coming few months.:undecided
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it's in an online bay i own but i've never used it personally, only the editors i've hired have. suppose i could ask, but no one has mentioned it.
 
Just posted this on another thread.

The Pansonic 17" monitors tend to be very green. If yours looks green it is probably not your real picture. It's what you get for only a $3000 HD monitor (facitious am I?). Also they are not all the same. Mine is much less green than my buddies, but they are both green. I have compared a few now.

The consensus from smarter people than me is that you can tweak the interior color gains and get a much better looking picture but it will never be perfect, what might look great for flesh tones may not be ideal for say product work.

I don't have my monitor in front of me so i can't recall the exact menu path, but you need to get into the menu that allows you to adjust the color balance settings. You will find items called Var 1, Var 2 etc. Open that item. Leave the basic setting on 6500K but adjust your high red almost or all the way up and your high green a similar amount down.
Do the same with your Low Red & green.

These are very approximate settings and they will be different for each monitor so its a crap shoot, but this will help a great deal. Maybe yours will only need t half the correction. There is no technically correct setting as far as I can see. My friend sent his back to Pannasonic and 3 months later it came back unchanged. I would not bother if I were you.

My suggestion would be to set the Panny against a monitor you know is good ( SD from composite out is fine like a decent 8045). Play with your settings till it looks close. That should give a pretty reliable image though you may never get rid of all the green in the blacks.
 
I have been holding off purchasing a BT-LH1700 based on comments in this thread (good to know), and considering a BT-LH2600 instead. Glad to hear you can use one calibrated broadcast monitor to eyeball calibrate another broadcast monitor.:D

We were testing some VFX equipment last week and had a DigiBetacam mounted in a flying rig, monitoring via SDI to BT-LH1700, no greenish cast was apparent in the display. Makes me wonder if this is an HVX component to BT-LH1700 issue?
 
its entirely possible. the component feed from the HVX200 is suspect. for example, on a feature shoot last september, the monitor displayed rolling interference (beyond the normal green cast) whenever the camera was hooked up with a reference audio feed from the sound crew.
 
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Zak, I have the intermittent component output rolling/flicker at various times. Strange, seems to come and go, and no matter how much you try to ensure the D4 connector has proper contact and not being moved during a camera move, roll/flicker and drop outs occur when performing certain tilt moves, particularly when using the motor pan/tilt head, cables are secured properly.
 
I haven't noticed a big difference between the color of component and composite inputs on these monitors. But they really are each different from what I can see. Some are very green while one I use only seems to have some green in the shadows that's not immediately apparent. I don't know if the latter one was tweaked or not though.

I would not assume haht the 26" is any better - somehow I think i was told the colorimetry is the same but i have never seen one.

Re using composite monitor. I have read here that the HD color space is different, but from what my own tests tell me the 8045 looks good and looks more accurate than the 1700. Who knows what a truly accurate color space would like. My guess is you need a very expensive monitor and it will not differ much. Just my guess though.

The 1700 also does a p--- poor job of handling highlights (esp bright skin areas which burn out on a 1700), so that's another place your trusty old 8045 will give you a more accurate picture. Of course maybe the 1700 is typical of LCD's and there's a good chance your HD picture will end up on an LCD.

I've figured that all the monitor can do is get me close. But it is important to know that your picture is not horribly green. If you start compensating you can run into trouble. On one shoot someone started turning the phase to compensate for the green on the monitor and that really put us into know man's land. Don't do that.

In the end though, my monitor looks very good now and I have gotten rid of the green by adjusting the internal color controls. I assume its pretty close to accurate, and the picture looks great, I can see my focus, its easy to turn upside down for the Redrock, and I love having the waveform. I'm happy I bought it - in fact I love the damn thing.

- Lenny Levy
 
Thanks for your help, Lenny.

A couple other issues I have noticed with this monitor that maybe you can shed some light on:

1) The brightness of the screen is noticeably different with the internal fan on than with it off.

2) When you pass through with component to another BT-LH1700, or a downconverter, or any other monitor, the image becomes significantly darker.

The only workaround that I see is to calibrate with bars after you have set the fan the way you want it and after you have plugged in any pass through items. Annoying and concerning. Is there a better solution?
 
I haven't noticed either of those things JP, but i will look when I get a chance. The main thing I don't like is the absence of A/B inputs. Makes it ahrd to match or compare 2 cameras.
I just bought a cheap switcher, not even component - mines 3 RCA's :1 video with 2 audio - but it allows me to switch between two pictures for comparison.

Lenny Levy
 
OT Question:

Anyone tried the JVC DT-V24L1DU? 1080 pixel resolution, but no waveform, from what I can see.

Technical Description say can display 1080psF24, however not 1080p24 when input Y-Pb-Pr. Does this mean that it can not display/monitor the component output of the HVX when shooting 1080pA24 mode? (See the table at the bottom of the page of the above link for display options and details)

Edit: The JVC does display 1080 60i. Does the HVX 1080pA24 output component over 1080 60i, thus this monitor would work?
 
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Christopher Barry said:
OT Question:

Anyone tried the JVC DT-V24L1DU? 1080 pixel resolution, but no waveform, from what I can see.

Technical Description say can display 1080psF24, however not 1080p24 when input Y-Pb-Pr. Does this mean that it can not display/monitor the component output of the HVX when shooting 1080pA24 mode? (See the table at the bottom of the page of the above link for display options and details)

Edit: The JVC does display 1080 60i. Does the HVX 1080pA24 output component over 1080 60i, thus this monitor would work?
Click to expand...

Just saw the JVC in an ad....I'll have to take a look at it at NAB.
 
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