Video monitor

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Rack mounted video monitor for broadcasters.

A video monitor also called a Broadcast Monitor, is a device similar to a television, used to monitor the output of a video generating device, such as a media playout server, IRD, video camera, VCR, or DVD player. It may or may not have audio monitoring capability. Unlike a television, a video monitor has no tuner and, as such, is unable to independently tune into an over-the-air broadcast. One common use of video monitors is in Television stations and Outside broadcast vehicles, where broadcast engineers use them for confidence checking of signals throughout the system. Video monitors are used extensively in the security industry with Closed-circuit television cameras and recording devices.

Another important reason why broadcast monitors must be used for video compliance at television or production facilities is they don’t do any kind of video post processing such as up-scaling, line doubling or pixel enhancement on their video signals. To find any faults or anomalies with content it’s crucial that video content is viewed in its raw state, to make any color corrections or to minimize and adjust for aliasing issues.

Professional video broadcast monitors also display on screen, the current video signal format, they might be receiving i.e.: standard definition formats like 576i, 480i or high definition formats like 720p or 1080p. They also have buttons to toggle common aspect ratios like (4:3 or 16:9), and underscaning or overscaning a picture to see lines in the vertical blanking interval (VBI) of video, and check if subtitles in VBI were inserted properly or not. Modern broadcast grade professional monitors also have safe area grid generators, to help position television graphics, lower thirds, within their respective areas i.e. graphics safe, title safe or action safe.