Imagine the inducements to visit SmallHD in Cary, North Carolina. Haute cuisine and haute technology, not in that order. For sure, we’re here to explore the high technology of SmallHD.

It’s an easy 2-hour flight from New York’s newly renovated La Guardia Airport to Raleigh-Durham. You’re in Research Triangle territory and the campuses of Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC State University. Apple, Google, Toyota, IBM, Cisco, Amazon, Epic Games, Qualcomm and Red Hat are among the many high-tech companies neighboring high-tech SmallHD.

A bit of backstory. Once upon a time, Greg Smokler was a camera assistant and DP. Tim Malooly was a producer and production manager. With that practical experience, they built Paralinx—the wireless video company beloved for its tiny transmitters and reliable receivers—into a major player on set. Paralinx was quickly acquired by Teradek, one of the Vitec—now Videndum—companies, and folded into what is now known as the Creative Solutions division. 

Today, Greg Smokler is Director of Cine for Creative Solutions and Tim Malooly is General Manager of SmallHD. They are both part of the reasons why SmallHD monitors are so popular with cinematographers, camera assistants, DITs, directors and crews—practical experience on set and an understanding of the customer. When an AC asks for a Hirth-tooth mounting bracket for their Cine 7, these characters know the vocabulary.

SmallHD has grown into a formidable company that makes monitors you see everywhere, from affordable 5-inch displays that sit atop hybrid mirrorless cameras to large reference monitors in grading suites. There’s hardly a camera assistant anywhere who is not focused on a SmallHD monitor. They float on Steadicams, sit on DIT carts, stand in video villages and are, by now, pretty much standards of the industry. 

Download the 20-page PDF of the SmallHD Tour and Special Report.

It first appeared as the cover story from March 2023 FDTimes Issue 119.