Update, for anyone considering the D740 units with the Photonis tube.
The first thing to say is that the pictures this thread honestly don't come close. In the pictures from TNVC you see edge distortion, but that's because the rubber eye piece prevents you from getting a camera really close to the viewing lens (ocular).
The ocular lens on the D740 is actually quite nice. I especially like the rubber eye piece on the ocular as it's quite comfortable to use.
In so far as the quality of the image: The unit I received had a S/N ratio of 20:1 and 67lp/mm. The visual quality was outstanding, in all seriousness, it's doesn't "rival a Gen 3" device, between the white / slight blueish phosphor and the very high resolution it's looks as good to the eye as my best spec'ed tube, an ITT Pinnicle OMNI VII era 30:1 S/N, 72lp/mm tube.
The interesting part is that you'd assume that the lower Signal to Noise ratio would be a big deal, as at least on paper it appears to be... However, in reality, as you turn the up the gain, with ANY sort of light source, the image doesn't get a ton of noise. The only time it displays a decent amount of noise (scintillation) is when it very near completely dark.
However, this is no different than my Gen 3 devices. Even my best Gen 3 device will show a TON of scintillation (screen noise) in low light without an illuminator. Though, the interesting part is green seems to make the noise stand out more, whereas the white phosphorous tube on the Gen 2 device, to my eyes, seems to be lessened.
I REALLY like the D740 with Photonis Gen 2 tube.
Areas that the D740 WP Gen 2 Photonis shines:
1) The picture is actually REALLY good. (Frankly, I'd like to get two of these in a dual setup, both with high SN and lp/mm specs, a single manual gain, and try a dual helmet mount system.)
2) The manual focus on the D740 is great, and the clarity of the Photonis tube can really be used
3) The Photonis tube seems to work insanely well in mixed light environments. For example, if you have star/moonlight coming through tree canopies, you can see the area in front (which is dark) and into the lit area pretty well.* The place where its outstanding is when you are in an semi-urban environment and you have high light sources in front, and what appears to your eyes as total darkness behind, and then you look trough the scope and can see (literally) everything without distortion or noise. (In the later case the manual gain is turned to about 1/3 of the way up...)
4) With the white phosphor tube, the amber reticle really seems to work the best. Of course, the reticle brightness is fully adjustable, which is great. With the amber you can look right through the reticle without your eye being overly drawn to it.
5) The halo effects seen with this tube are really nice... there basically isn't any. When looking at the same extremely lit area with a ton of ground illumination, a Gen3 device with a halo of .52 and an autogating power supply has nice bright halos around all of the lights. (Don't get me wrong, it's a night vision scope, to be used in dark environments, but it was a very striking difference.)
Areas of Interest / Points Related to the D740 WP Gen2 Photonis
1) *The device IS a Gen2 intensifier, and it's a REALLY good Gen2 intensifier. However, if you want to use this device in near total darkness / very low light at distance, you NEED an illuminator. Where a Gen3 device edges it out is that in VERY low light a HIGH spec Gen3 will give you a noisy image, but you will see something unless it's complete darkness. In contrast, these Gen2 tubes will give a lot of noise, and not a awesome image... but I'm talking DARK (aka nearly pitch black), so you can't expect any intensifier to work great. (If you want a good idea of the difference take a look at this thread, but remember that the white/blue aspect of this tube really seems to work with the human eye:
Gen2 vs Gen3 Fine Difference on AR15.com - Keep in mind that the Photonis tube seemed to have better definition than Gen2 device in the link.)
2) If you look at the pictures in the link directly above, that's actually the fine difference between the Gen2 and a Gen3 devices, but the D740 WP is a little more in between the two due to its higher resolution. I suspect that only the current top of the line Gen3 Filmless devices are going to be a fair bit better. My question is: Is it worth the $3000 extra for a top of the line Gen3 device? Nope, I really doubt it.
3) I doubt enough can be said about the finer point of the white phosphor image tube. Everyone has an opinion. The green does work, but the white image, for whatever reason, especially for me, allowed my brain to ignore the few times when there was scintillation. You just don't actively notice it when it's actually present like you do with the green phosphor. (...and in any lit conditions, just like Gen3, scintillation doesn't exist with the Photonis XD-4 Gen2 tube, which is what I believe this unit uses - the datasheet is a little unclear on that.)
4) I've used a 155mm object lens based AN/TVS-5 Gen2 device extensively in the past. When I compare the images in my mind between the two, it's very clear that this version of the D740 is damn nice. 100mm lens with a 17.5mm tube (compared to the TVS-5s 25mm tube and massive objective lens) does a very respectable job. The image quality is certainly better then the Gen3 TVS-5 I also had a one point, though the D740 doesn't track aircraft as well; but it doesn't weigh 7.5lbs either and is actually portable. -grin-
5) One interesting thing I noticed was that when looking at blue and red objects intermixed at distance, if the blue (internally lit) object was in focus, then the red object next to it was out of focus, and the opposite was true well. So that tells me that the tube is amplifying parts of the blue spectrum and the red spectrum... and there is a slight difference in the timing of the amplification of those photons. I'm sure it's not important, as you're extremely unlikely to be hunting 3 foot internally lit store signs... -grin-