Dp7pro high bright

[Afton Grant]

I never said anyone had to upgrade to fix faults. As for the monitor losing value, considering the gen2 will be shortly discontinued, the value will go up. Do you complain to red that the red one is pretty much worthless? Or complain to arri that a 435 that cost 120k is pretty worthless now as well.

 

As for moving to a new screen, this is natural progression. The screens we currently use now have been discontinued. The screens that Smallhd use have also been discontinued. So it's only natural to find new alternatives to support things in the long term.

 

Afton, we know you have your own separate agenda, but enough is enough. With over 130 monitors in the field, I would say for the most part it works as intended.

 

If you never said you had to upgrade, then answer Brian's question - is there a way for people to get their regular Gen 2's fixed without shelling out money for the upgrade? That's basically the question I was asking as well.

 

As for the RED, when they came out with the Epic, they offered a full value buy back for any Red One owners. Arri's 435's may be worthless today, but they had a good decade or more of holding most of their value, allowing anyone that owned one to make their money back and more. I don't know what the exact time period was, but it was certainly well over a year. And by what math do you figure the value of a piece of technology will go up once it's discontinued? ...unless we're going to wait 30 years for historical purposes, but it's not exactly the first generation Nintendo, is it?

 

Call it an agenda, call it a disgruntled former customer, call it whatever you want. I'm not asking anything outrageous here. I'm simply asking questions that any current or potential customer might want to know. I'm glad you've got 130 monitors in the field. Believe it or not, I want you to succeed. What's unfortunate is how many more monitors you could possibly have out there. And it's not due to competition. It's not due to the software bugs. It's 100% because of your attitude and the way you've handled your customers - current and potential. When I put my monitor up for sale, it was like opening a flood of messages and calls from people telling me about how they'd either been put off by you directly or indirectly via what they'd read here. How they'd either never buy again, or won't buy in the first place. And if you believe in the science of population sample sizing, for every one person I heard from, there are probably 10 others that feel the same. I hope that hits the right nerve because it's a pretty substantial fact. All those sales lost purely because of your behavior toward your customers.

 

Your last sentence to me sums it up perfectly. You're basically saying you've got sales so it doesn't matter what I say. When I owned your Gen 2 and was trying to work out an issue with you, you gave me a similar line saying there are plenty of other happy owners out there so maybe the monitor isn't the problem. That was the tipping point for me. That made me want to get out. Again, nothing to do with the actual problems with the monitor. Entirely to do with your attitude. I know it's cliche, but the old saying about the customer always being right is still true today.

[chris bangma]

We will have upgraded touch boards for the Gen2 monitors.

[Victor Lazaro]

Just to be sure, we are now talking about the Cinetronic Gen 2 on a SmallHD DP7 thread, right?

[chris bangma]

And as far as value, products go down in value. We don't have to offer an upgrade, we could just come out with a new model and that is it, sell your old one and buy a new one. Instead we offer to upgrade the monitor to FullHD for a reasonable price. For many customers, the upgrade price and their original price still ends up being less than buying a new Gen2+.

 

By upgrading, it brings the monitor up to full value, since you will now have the current model, and not the previous generation. The warranty is also extended by a year, so pretty much you get a new monitor for less than 1/3 the cost.

[Jens Piotrowski SOC]

If anybody is in the market for a new monitor, wait for the cinegear / stabilizer gear expo. There will be some more options.

[William Demeritt]

What is everyone using as a yoke for the DP7PRO-HB? I know Matthias' yoke will work on it, but does anyone else have a solution?

[Nils Valkenborgh]

William,

 

Curt from artemis makes a yoke mount for the smallhd monitors now, also for cinetronic and transvideo, check it out at www.artemis-hd.com

 

They're probably only compatible with the artemis monitor bracket, which is awesome as well, so in a sense not really a downside.

[Nicholas Davidoff]

On the subject of protective anti-glare films for the DP7, I've been using anti-glare films for years for all my monitors from a company called Photodon.com

I own the DP7-Pro HB and I love it, but the anti-glare protective film they offer is garbage. I could tell the moment I put it on, there was nothing anti-glare about it. Photodon offers a few different options for glare reduction films. The higher the glare reduction, the more sharpness you lose. Personally I prefer the MXT, it's a medium glare reduction with minimal sharpness loss. The MXG version is a bit stronger against the glare but results in a slightly softer image. It acts as a hard diffusion filter for direct sun hitting the screen and makes it much more tolerable, although doesn't eliminate it completely. Photodon also custom cuts the films to your exact specs and for only about $12 you get two custom cut films and a cleaning kit. Great product, great company. I've been very happy with them.

[William Demeritt]

Thank you for that, Nick! Gonna check them out ASAP.

[Chris Van Campen]

Thanks Nicholas!

 

Their site is a bit confusing but if you search for "2180-01" it brings them right up.

[William Demeritt]

I ordered two, got them, already got one on my dp7 in time for an all day exterior spot. Worked great! I did find some angles still required a change of monitor degree, but the protector worked great at cutting glare while keeping brightness. I was happy with it.

[Nicholas Davidoff]

Now that I've had a chance to put the DP7HB through some field testing, I'm happy with the monitor. I'm happy with the daylight viewability, size, shape and functionality. One thing that really sucks about this monitor though is the horizon indicator. It is pretty much worthless. If you do even a medium speed pan it totally loses calibration. Then you have to hit three menu functions to re-zero it. That's way too many steps. I was very excited about this horizon indicator when I saw it on a demo. Loved the positioning and the graphic layout of it. Love the color changing bar when you lose level. For some applications this would be a handy tool, but for steadicam use it's not just sub-par, it's really worthless. It only holds calibration through slow, fluid moves. Beyond that it's a dead stick. I still like the monitor and use my good ol' trusty bubble level which never fails or goes out of wack.

 

Dear SmallHD, if you read any of these threads, and I hope you do. And if you want a serious market share of steadicam operators, you'll make some improvements on your horizon indicator.

#1 would be the ability to quick pan without losing calibration. I understand if this happens momentarily through a fast move, but it really needs to recover instantly and hold it's zero calibration.

#2 would be a smart key function to directly re-zero the level. Meaning I press a smart key once (maybe twice) and it executes the re-zero, no scrolling through menus on the wheel. Way too cumbersome and time consuming in a fast moving production environment. Hopefully this can all be done within the software and firmware? Maybe a hardware upgrade on the accelerometer?

 

On a related note, has anybody heard any more on this rumor that Small HD is working on an external level interface with Tiffen?

[Brett Manyluk]

Hey Nicholas, what was the exact measurement you entered on the photodon site for the DP7 HB for the screen cuts? And thanks for the recommendation, BTW.

 

:)

[William Demeritt]

Brett,

 

I just ordered the ones for the AC7, and it fit perfectly.

[Charles Cowper]

Hey Nicholas, what was the exact measurement you entered on the photodon site for the DP7 HB for the screen cuts? And thanks for the recommendation, BTW.

 

:)