Late in posting here but I just got my S500HD. Great customer service I'll give them that. Really enjoying this monitor. No It's not the end-all be-all of monitors but that said, for $200.00 I'm extremely happy with it. Good brightness, contrast and user color adjusting. Great for pulling focus and framing shots. Great proprietary sun hood. Works flawlessly with my GH2. Overall I'm thrilled with this little guy.

Recevied my Ruige 480 which came with a car 12V power adapter. Why do they include that? While it was kind of fun to shoot from inside the car with my rig for awhile, I need to get a battery plate and batteries. Is there any reason not to get a plate for Panasonic batteries? I know zip about batteries. Are the Panny batteries interchangeable with the Sony batteries that Vitality suggested in an earlier comment? Does anyone know if there;s a battery plate that would let me use the batteries that came with the 312A LED light panel?

Thanks for any help, Kevin
(@VK- they didn't list a plate and it now makes sense to me that they wouldn't include one. Including the car charge was an extra, although I'm not sure how I would use it except for a car shoot which is common enough for a lot of people I guess. I'll follow up in the Power Solutions topic. Thanks, Kevin)

:-( Darn! Maybe you should ask them if you could fix it (with SDK). Possibly a Chinese company would be more interested in selling units than controlling firmware? Im sure many guys would love to have at least a functional menu! ;-P

@VK any new developments on the Ruige Firmware front? How did the discussion with Ruige go? I have the 7 inch and have noticed a USB plug at the bottom- so its at least 'intended' for some firmware update in the future, (as opposed to internal USB port etc). And apart from the firmware its AMAZING! Love the zoom button. And it really is FAST to zoom in and out, unlike many other 'high end' brand names...

I believe its only the smaller one that has a significantly better panel (brightness etc), so would go for the 7" one every time. Just to get the scale and the increased resolution.

The delivery problems were just down to DHL being a bit of a pain. I got the customs charge call on Friday last week, which i paid, expecting delivery Monday. I then noticed it didn't look like it was going to arrive Monday so called. The payment ID hadn't passed through their system properly, but did now. I requested delivery Wednesday when there'd be someone in to receive it. Only for them to try and fail to deliver on Tuesday. Another call, bit frustrated and then thankfully i managed to get it delivered Wednesday, even though the depot was closed. DHL were helpful, their systems were a bit broke. I don't think there's anything you can do, i was probably just a bit unlucky.

@km1

Glad someone found something helpful from my crappy little video. Know plans to really do a bigger review of it just yet, but i'll gladly answer any questions if i can. It's going to be a few weeks till i get to use it properly on the next "job".

Regarding your question of the focus in, sadly this is only fixed in the very centre of the display. I posted a review of an older similar model somewhere on here, which ironically DID have the ability to move the zoomed in segment into 9 equal quadrants. Having said that the resolution of the 7" model is fairly high so the centre crop does include a larger amount of the full 1080p frame. I'm sort of hopeful (but realistic) that the hack may be able to reenable the GH2's crop mode when not recording, as then we'd get all the flexibility back.

I do sort of wish that you could get the focus peaking effect without being zoomed in as well, i think it'd be nice and helpful with the full framing, as well as with the zoomed in mode. With such a large screen an a bit more resolution than the EVF it becomes a lot more easier to read where in the scene you have focus, making these aids less essential.

I do wonder how to use these HDMI clamps, do i screw them in after plugging in the cable, can I leave them screwed in and still be able to take the HDMI lead out with some special technique?

So far though, very happy!

Finally (after one month) I got my S480 last Monday
I thought there was peaking mode but there isn't, ore I cant find it.....
The build quality is ok

Compared it with the Sony V55 and these are my findings:
- Colours are more accurate then the Sony V55.
- S480 has a nice mate screen whereas the V55 is glossy
- S480 screen is about 3 mm smaller
- V55 is a bit smaller/slimmer and some 90 grams lighter
- V55 has a peaking mode but I find it useless, S480 has an zoom mode with oversharpening
- Brightness is the same

Because I like the colours more of the S480 I'm selling my V55

I couldn't find another topic discussing these monitors so thought perhaps this may be the best place to put this. I didn't end up getting one of these monitors on the deal, it ended before i could get it going. But i did order one of the 7" models and it arrived today after a lot of courier faff, in the UK, nothing to do with the seller.

I've put a quick little video together showing it working to show some friends but thought some folks on here may be interested to see it



Not quite sure how to work the HDMI clamps yet, perhaps we should startup a new thread just on the Ruige monitors nothing to do with this now defunct special deal?

Just ordered the S480HD. Having it shipped to South Korea though, that's where I'm working right now. Hope that doesn't cause a problem. Will post after I've banged it around a bit. I have a block battery I bought off Ebay for my Liiliput, hope to use it instead of the DV battery pack.

>Perhaps you could change the description text,

I do not plan to change anything.
But i'll talk with Ruige guys about this connector issue.

>Do you remember telling me it was a normal 12 v input, and that I didn't need to bother with a battery plate? :-)

I can write something harsh here, but won't.
Just understand, I am not Ruige salesman, end even not affilated with them.
I saw backs of monitors, saw normal power connector.
As it happens, 701HDA uses other connector.

@Retina

I suggest to ask Ruige.
As for monitor, it can be much more easy to get Sony battery plate.