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New Boland DayBrite


Gary Litwin

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Well I didn't compare it next to a transvideo or cinetronic, but I may be able to do that this week if planned right, I may just not have the time though!.

I'll try to feed the same signal outside to my Transvideo HD6 evolution sbl and the Gen 1 Cinetronic 7" and this monitor. I'll lay them on a board outside and then photograph them from different angles.

Heres my review.....Sorry, Im not a writer, so it's all over the place....

 

Hi folks....
For the last week I've been testing Bolands new 7" HD/SDI/HDMI Hi Brite Monitor while shooting the Blind Auditions for the latest installment of La Voz Kids3 at Universal. It's an indoor, studio show so in the day to day operations any monitor brightness would do, but I did get a chance to test it outside in the sharp Florida sun.
First some specs...
The Monitor I was sent is a prototype, but I believe the outer dimensions will be exactly the same. I weighed it without the optional rear mounted Anton Bauer plate at 1lb 14 ounces.
Dimensions are 8 and 1/8" wide x 5 &1/4" high x 2 & 1/4" thick.
The thickness measurement does not account for the Menu button which protrudes another 3mm or so out the front and the Din 9 connector on the back which is another 4 or 5 mm. But with the Anton Bauer plate on the back, this measurement will change.
My Thoughts,
Likes and Suggestions for the actual production model. All are very very promising....
I first turned it on and its sharp, has too many tools for me and what I do, but probably just enough for others, it would be great to use as an on board monitor just as well as a steadicam monitor.
In the menu, I assigned the MAX BRIGHTNESS to one of the front assignable buttons. I set the backlight to Zero, and brightness was standard, it was plenty bright. I then went to the menu and brought up the backlight to 100 and it was way too bright to use on stage, but I left it there for a while, then I pressed the Max Brightness button.. WOAH!!! it got even brighter, I mean quite brighter!, and not washed out, Just Brighter!. I thought I would test it for a few hours and ended up burning 20 hours onto it in 3 days. In order to test this monitor, I had to do without a few things.
No Tally, No Battery Voltage indicator, No Level, and no great Yoke to attach it to my Quattro Monitor bracket. But here are some of the forthcoming answers to those issues.
The Monitor currently has a 4 pin Mini XLR power connector. I didn't have that cable, so they sent me a Mini XLR to D Tap, which worked fine to power the monitor. When switching batteries my AC would just pull the batteries and install new ones, none of this powering off the monitor or camera stuff, it's just something I have never done and any gear that cannot take this sort of power loss and re start doesn't belong in this industry. The Monitor did perfect in that regard.
I would like to see an industry standard 8 pin Lemo to power the monitor, Feed it composite video
Tally from pins 7 and 8.,
On Screen Voltage,
I asked about a level, and to keep it at the intended price point, ( very low 2000's) it's not an option. This is why I will be looking into the stand alone level from Tiffen.
Maybe Boland can integrate a power connector for this unit to simplify things for those who want to attach that level to the top of the monitor.
The Monitor currently has a Tally light right above the screen, and it does work with a GPI connector, but to simplify things for us, it should be in the 8 pin Lemo in my opinion.
The Yoke it comes with doubles as a table stand, has a 1/4-20 threaded bracket on the bottom of the yoke plate, this is what I used to attach it to my stand by adapter for the quattro. I'm positive that side brackets can be made by either boland or another US vendor to attach to the sides of the monitor to integrate it with a Quattro yoke, or Boland can just send the monitor in production form and weight to Matthias and he'll make the proper brackets to be able to provide a yoke for this monitor quickly.
The Monitors shell is aluminum, sturdy. I did not ask about whether the screen is bonded so as to be light rain resistant which is a newly big thing among st past/current cinetronic and Transvideo users.
In the rear of the monitor are 4 BNC's, SDI 1 In, SDI 2 In, SDI Out and Composite In, then HDMI In and HDMI out.
I was feeding the monitor 1920 x 1080i at 59.94Hz from a Sony P1 camera. This week I will test it with an Amira, Alexa, F55, Epic and anything else I can get my hands on at a couple of rental shops and report the findings. This monitor cross converts in real time. so input your HD/SDI into SDI1, then output HDMI to your paralinx, etc.. HDMI transmitter.
I took the monitor outside and there was only one very small angle where I could not make out the picture on most of the screen, at this point I observed how little I had to move my head to get out of that very small angle where it was just super glare. In other words, When the sun was completely glaring out the screen, I tilted my head a few degrees to the left or right and could again see the screen fine. I tested it outside with Max brightness on and off and the Backlight at 30 and 100 without the Max Brightness. Once there is an Anton Bauer plate on it, an 8pin Lemo
which powers, feeds composite and has Tally on 7 and 8 for my Cine Live to work AND an an screen Tally, I will buy one, ship it off to Germany to get the bracket made and be happy to have a 2nd usable monitor for bright outside shoots.....
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Can I add, I think the optically bonded screens are really nice, if they can do this, it would be great

 

I think they should ditch the speaker holes at the front of the casing, we don't need audio and I think that is recipe for easy water ingress even in light rain

 

It would be nicer if all connectors at the rear could be orientated horizontally like at the back of the transvideo and the cinetronic monitors, this means we're never at risk of smashing off bnc connectors or catching cables when doing extreme tilts or flying the rear of the monitor close to things:

 

http://www.transvideo.eu/CineMonitorHD-Evolution/Features

 

That way if you are going to catch anything it is always the casing first rather than a cable which is much more vulnerable to getting damaged, it also means a straighter shorter cable path between sled and monitor.

 

In addition the casing looks quite flimsy, something thicker walled and more rigid would be nice, this would also improve the rigidity of the mount between monitor and monitor yoke too.

 

I think a lot of customers here would pay a few hundred $$'s extra for these improvements.

 

Regards

 

James

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here the difference between transvideo and boland and others.

 

Transvideo designs and makes the boards, lay-outs, firm and software themselves, so they can actually make changes.at a price of course. Boland and most other monitor companies, to my knowledge, are using off the shelf boards and firmware, from companies like digital view, so whatever they offer is whats available....

 

http://www.digitalview.com/

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Hi Ozzie,

 

Thank you for taking the time to review our new DayBrite model and for posting all of your findings. I really, really appreciate it.

 

We are already working on some of the upgrades and changes that both yourself and some others have recommended. Since these are our boards, we can make any and all changes. Some of the changes that have been suggested are easy to make. Others will definitely take some more time, and could be costly, so the pros / cons have to be weighed (we'd like to provide a high quality model for everyone at a reasonable price) .

 

Once we have confirmed with certainty which additions can / will be implemented, I am going to report back to all of you with some concrete answers, and some firm ship dates.

 

Best,

Gary

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The Transvideo 7" RainbowHD 16/9 has all the goodies everybody wishes other manufacturers would put in theirs:

Zoom, flip/flop, replaceable optical front glass, no holes, no fan, great performance in the sun, digital horizon, waveform, vectorscope, histogram, Tally, Peaking and focus tools, voltage display etc... and the backlight specs published are accurate (not inflated). Weight is 1.5 lbs

$1900 shipping from Los Angeles.

Is this for the 900nits model? That's a great price! Is there a US website? I only see the EU site, and the prices seem higher than this.

 

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I also demoed the new Boland monitor. Those of you that know me know I'm not "mr tech" so my review will be more of a 'rubber meets the road' review.

 

For reference, my steadicam monitors have been: PRO Green Monitor, Boland first generation, Boland second generation and Cinetronic gen 2. I've also used for shorter periods a Transvideo Cinemonitor Hd, a Small HD DP7 Daybright, the new super bright TV Logic (I forget the model) and a few others I cant remember over the course of 22 years in the business and 16 doing steadicam.

All that being said, I still have not found the 'perfect monitor' or for that matter the 'perfect anything'. The closest thing to 'perfect' in every respect is my PRO arm which has almost nothing I can flaw.

 

So what makes a piece of gear good bad or great? In my opinion, there are a few factors, price point is one, durability is another, features is another and customer service is another. You might say there is an 'X' factor that goes above and beyond any the previously listed factors.

Taking all of that into account, here are my thoughts on the Boland.... It's a great monitor. It is super bright, super day light viewable and super off angle viewable and super sharp. How bright? Well it's in the same league as my Cinetronic which as of say a year ago was the brightest monitor I'd ever seen. We are at (in my opinion) a point with monitors where many of them are brighter than they need to be. By that I mean, we were all using monitors 5 years ago that were no where near as daylight viewable as the current generation of monitors. I'm sure the stuff available 5 years from now will be mind blowing as well. So in terms of functionality, if your monitor is more than 3 years old, the Boland blows it out of the water. If your monitor is less than 3 years old the Boland is at the very least as good. You can do all the daylight shoot outs you want but you can pay your mortgage with the Boland.

In terms of cost, at around 2 grand it's at a price point that is more than reasonable. I paid close to 7000 for my Cinetronic and I don't regret the purchase (had this generation of Boland existed when I mad the purchase I would likely have bought it instead). The Cinetronic is a very high quality monitor and so far has proved super durable. I have not had any negative customer service experiences with them and the fact that the image doesn't flip has yet to be an issue for me (I bought mine at the end of 2013). Every time I've gone to low mode I just flipped the entire rig over. The camera is upside down and so is the monitor so I don't require an image flip. I worked close to 300 days in 2014 so I went to low mode a fair few times. The newest build of Alexa has image flip so on the show I'm on now, if we ever go low mode, we will push the image flip button on the Alexa and then video assist will not have to turn monitors up side down. In this situation, I will have to flip the monitor over which is a bit of a pain in the ass I suppose but we are half way through the show and we haven't gone low mode yet. In the grand scheme of things it's not that big of a deal. Okay so that was off topic a bit but to my greater point, having every single 'perfect' function is not that big of a deal in my opinion. If I thought it was worth it, I'd pay 20 grand for a monitor, and I did think the Cinetronic was worth 7 (that was with bracket and level). Any how, if you are doing this for a living, a few thousand bucks for the thing that lets you see is beyond fair.

 

In terms of durability, I did not have the new Boland long enough to comment but I can say (from having owned both the first and second generation Boland and two of their 19" field monitors) that they make a very durable product. I've beat the ever loving shit out of their gen 2 monitor and as I said above, it's still working today (I'm using it as my security camera monitor in my garage).

 

Perhaps the biggest one for me (right after 'can I see the picture in bright sun') is customer service. I've had nothing but excellent customer service from Gary at Boland. That includes multiple monitor purchases and a few emergency 'OMG' moments. He has time and again gone out of his way to take care of me as a customer. I would rate there customer service on the same level as PRO's.

 

To summarize, if you had an unlimited budget to buy your monitor, the Boland would be a great choice. At the price point of around 2 grand it continues to be a great choice.

 

I had the prototype not the production model so how many 'X factor' points it gets is up in the air but If your in the market for a monitor you could make the case that it's one of the best options available today.

 

My 2 cents...

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Hey Mike, seeing as you seem to be the man in the know when it comes to Boland, do you know if this monitor is in production yet?

Have they made any of the changes they consulted people about on here and if so will it debut at NAB?

 

Cheers

 

James

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Hi everyone,

 

First, I just wanted to again thank Mike, Ozzie, and all of the others that have contributed to making this new 7" model a success.

 

A number of weeks ago, I had posted on the blog that as soon as I had more concrete information on the final build specs of the BVB07, I would come back to all of you with the info and ship dates. Today, I wanted to let you know that I should have the first two production models in my hands next week. We will be showing these at NAB (of course). And, shipping is still on track to commence in April.

 

We have made a lot of changes to the monitor in the last 5 weeks. Some are minor software adjustments, based on feedback, that were changed/added to make operability easier for you when using the monitors in the field. Some of the changes are major additions that have been requested and now added.

 

 

As soon as I have had the chance to check and verify these changes and the new additions (next week), I will again give you an up-to- date post on everything.

 

Thank you....

 

Best,

Gary

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