Professional displays display professional results

The majority of professional technical personnel involved in choosing displays for their broadcast projects are expecting consistent professional results, as their job security most likely depends on it plus you want to ensure that your budget is spent on the best possible product for your project dollars.

Also beware of bundled “design” packages from set designers or consultants that can sometimes be designed with the “I can rob from Peter to pay Paul” mentality.

Moving budgeted funds from one aspect of the project to another without regard of the impact to the overall visual quality results in subpar AV tech results for your project. Even though the project budget may meet the client’s budget expectation, the overall final visual result is very much diminished from where it should be with regard to AV tech quality.

Expectations are diminished or sometimes completely disregarded. If compromised, it usually moves funding from a highly visual piece to a less visible visual aspect or even more disappointing to the advice/consulting services column in the budget.

It all boils down to the following list of questions which need to be asked of the adviser or consultant when the advice wants to use consumer grade instead of professional grade displays:

• Who is recommending consumer over professional, are they technically qualified to make that recommendation?
• Why use a consumer display instead of a professional one other than the initial economics?
• Where and how did they evaluate the consumer displays of choice?(not just based on size and price)
• What is their confidence level that this will meet the quality requirements over the lifetime of need?
• What is their motivation behind the decision?
• How will it impact the end result/user? (Will you need a color corrector in the signal path?)
• How will it impact the quality of the content being visualized, will it add positive or negative value?
• Who needs to live with the day to day end results and have to answer for it?

In many cases anyone saying consumer, usually has no long term skin in the decision making game, after all is said and done it sometimes feels more like a hit and run situation than a consultation, leaving the end user with nowhere to turn.

These types of scenarios have become more and more common lately and have prompted several clients and customers to start changing their buying policies.

Many of our national broadcasters have instituted new mandates stating; “Nothing below the professional product level can be used within their technical equipment environments,” including the sometimes chosen “prosumer” quality product will not be accepted anymore, as many technical managers’ reputations have been burned during live productions.

At the end of the day, they are the ones that will have to live with the end results of the product choice decision. Many years ago, there was a saying of why so many people chose a certain well known tube type manufacturer’s displays in a broadcast use environment over others.

The answer usually went something like this, “No one ever got fired for choosing s***.”

Although not many making the purchase decisions get the praises they should when their choice of products to use in professional applications are solid and show solid professional results, if these same choices result with failure or quality issues, the decisions can turn into what are commonly called, ‘career ending moves’, it’s an expensive mistake not to be taken lightly.