Denny Smith wrote:No monitor is going to be completely color accurate, unless it can be color calibrated, which the VAs can not.
Respectfully, I have to disagree about that latter bit there. They can be color calibrated.
The 12G Video Assist can be calibrated using the same method as my FSI reference monitor that I use for color grading. Every year I send that monitor to FSI for re-calibration. FSI profiles the monitor and creates a 3D LUT which accounts for the exact inaccuracies of the panel and puts the panel in line (as close as possible) with BT1886. The LUT is loaded into the monitor and, in fact, every time I turn on the monitor I can see what its uncalibrated state looks like for a moment or two before the LUT kicks in. And guess what? For that split second, in an uncalibrated state before the LUT, my FSI monitor is actually really, really magenta. Then, the LUT kicks in and the display looks like perfect BT1886.
Because the 12G Video Assists can load LUTs, they can be calibrated in exactly the same way as an expensive FSI monitor — Profile the display, create the LUT, load the LUT and BOOM, you've now got a calibrated display.
Personally, I haven't bothered to take the time to do that on my 7" 12G Video Assist because it came out the box looking pretty damn good. But for those who are unhappy with the temp or tint, just profile the display and create your own calibration LUT. With BMD cinema cameras this works fine because the cameras themselves can add a 3D LUT to the monitoring output so when shooting BMD film you don't have to see a flat image on the monitor. For cameras that can't load custom LUTs on their monitoring outputs, you could concatenate the monitoring LUT + the display calibration LUT to load as a single LUT on the Video Assist.
It would be cool if BMD added the ability to load a calibration LUT separate from the monitoring LUTs, but it is somewhat unlikely that the device has enough processing power to run two separate 3D LUTs simultaneously.