JPOwens wrote:There is a *square law* in effect for discrete element count -- twice as big means 4x the area, but after manufacturing considerations, (defect attrition -- around 10%) manufacturers still have to deliver +10% dividend to their shareholders. A-Level grade monitors have to achieve performance specifications that are meaningless to consumers. Corner-to-corner linearity (not the built-in vignette that most home screens deliver) and sustained fidelity over prolonged use. Resistance to burn-in (not many home consumers leave a still image parked for an hour so that they can finagle a tracked, multi-shape power window while refining an overlay key) and of course strict conformance with colorspace and every frame rate and resolution under the sun.
My old pal Gordon Holt, founder of
Stereophile magazine, used to say that once you get to a certain point in sound quality, you wind up spending about 90% more money for (at best) a 10% improvement. I think a similar principle applies to video displays.
As far as color-correction panels go: I'm on record elsewhere as saying that I've come to the conclusion that the Advanced Panels save me somewhere between an hour and 90 minutes per day in an average color correction session. That may not sound like much, but in a 6-day week (very standard for me), that's like getting finished
a day early, or getting an extra day's work at no extra expense. Unless and until you've sat with an advanced panel and actually used one for two or three months, you can't appreciate the difference. In a busy facility, the panel will pay for itself in less than six months.
Resolve is absolutely optimized for best performance on this control surface, and anything else is a compromise. It still works, but you're not going to be nearly as fast... at least in my opinion. And I've used anything: the old Tangent CP100, the CP200, the original Wave, the Elements, the Avid MC Color, the little Tangent Ripple, the small BMD Micro, the medium-sized BMD Mini, and the advanced panel. And I've used 10 other control panels for the original Topsy, Amigo, Dubner, Pogle, Arcas, daVinci 888, Renaissance, Lustre, Blackboard 1, you name it. The DaVinci Advanced Panel is -- hands-down -- the best color panel I've ever used in more than 30 years of post. It's a brilliant design in many ways.
Having said that: I have yet to use the Blackboard 2 with Baselight, and that looks like an amazing, well-designed control surface. But it's not cheap, nor is Baselight.
Which is all a roundabout way of saying: the big panels are expensive because it's a limited market, they take time and a lot of thought to design, good things cost money,
and because they're worth it.