boland lcd monitors free sample

For almost Twenty Years, Boland has been creating high quality, professional broadcast monitors for film, television, aviation, and specialty needs. We are constantly pushing the LCD / monitor boundaries in new technology, outfitting our LCD monitors with the widest color gamut and ultra deep blacks. Red, green, and blue stability is guaranteed by All-Digital 12-bit Processing. Whether you are in need of a field monitor that is color critical, a low cost SDI monitor for simple confidence monitoring, or a broadcast monitor with built-in waveform, vector scope, and audio meters, Boland is proud to offer all of these options (and more).

One of the most searched for and hotly debated topics on colour grading forums, websites, podcasts and tech shows is that of “Affordable Colour Grading Monitors”.

The monitors are listed by brand in alphabetical order but be sure not to miss the final section on LG OLED TVs and their new 32 inch OLED computer monitor.

Unsurprisingly, I haven’t personally purchased all 14+ monitors in this post to compare them side by side after extensive testing, but I hope this comparison of the listed specification and detailed information on the things to consider when buying an affordable colour grading monitor, leaves you better informed to make your own decision.

TLDR: When you put ‘affordable’ in front of colour grading monitor, this is like saying ‘affordable luxury car’, the real deal is expensive for a reason. Professional reference monitors cost many (tens of) thousands and can be calibrated to a fine degree with an equally expensive specialised probe by a fully qualified technician, for a reason.

But that is not what you are looking for when you Google “Affordable colour grading monitors” so with that in mind check out the ASUS Pro Art PA329Cor the LG 32BN67U-B for 32″, true 10 bit, UHD monitors with solid colour accuracy at an ‘affordable’ price.

You may also find it helpful to read these two other posts: How to use an OLED in Post Production and a detailed round up of 4K Video Editing Monitors.

That said, colour-critical monitors which can be accurately calibrated and will get you most of the way there, are now very ‘affordable’, for example $1000-$3000 instead of $6000 – $30,000.

The Flanders Scientific DM170 drops down to a bargain price of $3,495 for a 17″ 1920 x 1080 10bit LCD display. For comparison the cheapest FSI monitor is the 2021 AM211, a 21.5″ HD 8bit monitor for $1,995.

One benefit of buying a cheaper model from a more expensive brand is the trickle-down tech effect, where the AM211 features a “new backlight uses a very similar LED element to that found in our higher-end DM170, DM240, and XM310K monitors.“

Watching a colorist and a calibration technician judge a collection of different monitors whilst sat directly in front of them, is another really helpful place to start.

In the course of about 50 minutes Colorist Warren Eagles and Stuart Pointon cover the monitors listed below as well as five ‘monitor myths’ such “It’s just for the internet so I’ll colour grade it on my laptop…”

Contrast Ratio – This will probably make the biggest difference to your perception of the images on display. Glossy displays tend to have a higher contrast ratio than matte displays. According to chapter 2 of Alexis Van Hurkman’s Color Correction Handbook 2nd Ed. (paraphrasing here) for an LCD display 1400:1 (glossy) or 1100:1 (matte) or better, is a good ball park. For OLED 5000:1 is a good ball park.

Black Levels – Having deep blacks is what colorists are always looking for, not muddy grey ones. Deep gorgeous blacks with plenty of detail still in them. Partly this impacts on your perceived contrast and partly it’s a sign of a good display panel. OLED panels beat LCD in this and the contrast department.

Brightness – SDR (Standard Definition) is mastered to a 100 nit brightness range. HDR is usually mastered to 1000 or 4000 nits. True HDR reference monitors are incredibly expensive. My focus in this post is on SDR use-cases.

1D vs 3D LUT – Even if your display can be calibrated the precision with which that can be achieved will be dictated in part by the complexity of the calibration LUT, which bridges the gap between the colours the display is receiving and what it should be sending. A 3D LUT is preferable for colour accurate calibration.But only a few monitors make this user accessible.

Colorist David Torcivia has a really helpful explanation of some of these key terms in the first of his two-part post on Colour Grading Monitors. He also offers some practical suggestions on how monitors of different capabilities will alter your image, according to their specification.

In part 2 of his post David considers several professional monitors that he thinks you should be saving up for including brands such as Flanders Scientific, Dolby, Panasonic, Sony, HD2Line and a few others. All in all, very much well worth listening to what a professional colorist has to say on the matter.

In all of my research of the ‘best colour grading monitors’ or the best ‘video editing monitors for 2021’ most sites are still recommending monitors which are not true 10-bit, but rather 8bit +FRC.

At long last we have come to the point where I round up a few potential high-end computer monitors and suggest that you use these as a pretty good way of viewing your images.

It goes without saying that there are likely plenty of other excellent monitors out there but I’ve chosen to focus on the main brands and models that I would most likely choose from, when selecting a new monitor, to use for editing and grading on my Mac Pro.

It’s worth noting that very few displays these days offer the 4096 x 2160 true 4K resolution, but the price bump to monitors that do, doesn’t seem to be worth it.

Having considered the spec of all the monitors in this list the ASUS Pro Art PA329C (2019) is my top pick for the specification it delivers at an affordable price for a colour accurate monitor.

There are a couple of BenQ monitors that look like they would be good contenders for our needs; the BenQ PV270 (2016) that Warren and Stuart mention in the monitor shootout (above) stating that it “Calibrates really well“, which was replaced by the SW271C in 2020, as well as the larger SW321C (2020), the PD3220U (2018) and the newer PD2725U (2021).

Although it doesn’t have a Thunderbolt 3.0 port to help connect multiple monitors, this isn’t a big problem for me as a 32″ display is all I can fit on my desk!

The BenQ monitors I have included now come with a ‘Verified by Calman’ certificate, which you would hope means that they stand a chance of being colour accurate in the real world.

Eizo monitors have always seemed like a premium option to me, whenever I ran into one at a post house or client edit suite. They always looked great and had professional calibration features and options at hand.

Then we get onto the sensors, with the CGs having a self-calibration sensor allowing the monitor to be calibrated without the need of an external device, whereas the CS monitors can be calibrated, but only using an external device such as a Spyder or iOne Display.

HP offer a wide range of monitors creative professionals might be interested in under their Z Displays series, a subset of which are (more well known) Dream Color monitors.

I’m writing this on my (now discontinued) LG 31MU97B 10bit 4K (4096 x 2160) monitor, which I have loved using for the past few years. From my experience, LG monitors and OLED TVs are superb.

In this last but not least section of the post, I’m going to cover LG’s OLED TVs, their brand new OLED monitor and some of their ‘regular’ computer monitors too.

The LG 55″ OLED TVs are incredibly popular with editors and colorists as client monitors, and suffer less from uniformity issues than the larger 65-88″ screens. You can also calibrate them to a professional standard and each year LG seems to add further functionality to assist with this.

LG are launching two new OLED Monitors in 2021, the 32″ EP950 and the 27″ EP950. If they have essentially the same spec other than the screen size it will be:

I wanted to include them here as a potential nod to the future and it will be interesting to see how they compare to other similarly priced mini-LED monitors designed for professional HDR use. (See next section below)

Some high end computer monitors feature in-built calibration devices, although one would (safely?) assume that a dedicated probe will deliver far better results. The two main industry standards are Light Illusion’s ColourSpace and Portrait Display’s Calman.

The X-Rite i1 Display Pro Plus is the most recommended low-cost probe, and some of the HDR monitors above, for example the ASUS ProArt ships with one included. Warren and Stuart discuss working with the X-rite probe and how to ‘hack’ it here. But the safest bet is to buy a Rev.B OEM version from LightIllusion. I would recommend reading this entire thread on LiftGammaGain to discover the ins and outs of that.

Most ‘lower-end’ monitors can only leverage 3x1D LUTs instead of the more comprehensive 3D LUTs, some of these are only accessible to the internal (own-brand) calibration software, as opposed to accessible to something like ColourSpace or Calman.

Colorist Patrick Inhofer from Tao of Color.com, recently interviewed Bram Desmet, CEO of Flanders Scientific, on the detailed technical ins and outs of calibrating a monitor. If you want a lot more details than I’ve included in this post, and to learn a tremendous amount about the current state of grading monitors and calibrating, you should definitely take the time to listen to both interviews.

Could someone hate herself so much because society is pushing her to the brink of self-destruction? In this time and age where a beautiful woman is defined by modern media, we seldom chance upon a plump girl seductively posing on top of that sleek car in television commercials. More often, it is those girls with sucked-in cheeks and reed-thin figures that dominate our television screens and magazine covers. This is why, women, especially young girls, are very obsessed about their bodies that they are resorting to the most ridiculous things just to attain that “ideal” desirable body most people would love to see. Even if it means depriving herself of food and self-dignity, some girls would even risk their lives just to duplicate that Kate Moss supermodel figure. This is essentially what Eavan Boland’s poem “Anorexic” is imparting to its readers. In this poem, Boland brought to life vivid images and metaphors to reveal an accusing finger that points upon society, which supports a culture where females are forced to exist with undue expectations about their physical appearance.

From the beginning of Boland’s “Anorexic”, readers can vicariously feel the self-loathing the speaker is trying to emulate with regards to her body. She mentions the sinfulness of her being; that her own flesh “is a heretic” and her body “is a witch.” Using these metaphors, we could relate to the events that happened in 17th century America where witches and heretics are scoffed at by everyone in society. The people accused of heresy and witchcraft were burned at the stake. Apart from using Puritan metaphors the speaker about her body, she moves on enumerating the specific body parts she considers most heretic, the sensual “curves and paps, and wiles.” Readers would wonder why the poem’s speaker would single out these intimate features of her body for “torching”. Why didn’t she choose her hair, knees, tongue, or arms? The speaker of the poem goes on by chiding herself calling her body “curveless” after she has “vomited / her hunger”. This is the point where she announced that “the bitch is burning”. In the second half of the poem, the speaker revealed that hating her body was bought about by a man, “who plays the dual role of savior and destroyer in the woman’s life” (Hill, 2001).

Towards the end of Boland’s poem, readers would now hear that the speaker is Eve. She is now more and more obsessed with her quest to return to Adam’s body. With her intention, she would be more than willing to sacrifice the intimate parts of her own body, even to the point of suffering. Hill (2001) reasoned out the end part of the poem alludes to the man’s sex organ to praise and to imitate. Back inside his ribcage, she “will grow / angular and holy.” Here, sexual imagery is directly associated with religious imagery. The phallic symbol, characterized as “angular,” is sacred, and the thinner, the more “curveless” she becomes, the more she will resemble it. Eve’s need to lose herself inside the male body is evidence of how drastically social pressure has affected her. Her independence as a woman is so weakened that she wants to forfeit her existence altogether. It is that existence that she refers to as “pain” in saying that she can grow “past pain” by sleeping next to Adam’s heart in the form of a rib. She hopes that by doing so she can “forget / in a small space / the fall” from her secure, yet questionable, sanctuary.

Although the metaphor of the “fall” of humankind from the grace of God had become commonplace in some writings, its usage in Boland’s “Anorexic” emulates the mixture of creation mythology and sexual imagery, which provides an interesting twist to an otherwise stale idea. Eve wants to forget that she was ever tempted by a snake, gave in, and, thereby plunged the human race into sin and suffering. She carries the guilt of introducing greed into the world, and her only salvation is to give up her “evil” womanhood and become a safe, benign bone in Adam’s body again. According to Hill (2001), the poem’s metaphors “forked dark” and “python needs” conjure up frightening images of snakes and devils and people falling into bottomless pits. But, the final three lines of the poem give new meaning to forked dark and needful pythons. With the sexually charged description of “heaving to hips and breasts / and lips and heat / and sweat,” the “forked dark” and “python” now become symbols of female and male genitalia. Once again, Boland reverts to sensuous imagery to emphasize the desire to destroy what is most womanly, what is prominently female.

Despite the strong sexual imagery of the poem, where we see a woman is surrendering to a male dominator, we are reminded that this is a poem recited by a woman suffering anorexia in the final two adjectives “fat and greed”. We could almost relate to the voice that speaks in the poems because the language used is vivid, the sentiment is palpable, and the actions of the speaker are unbelievable. But all these are intentional because women and girls suffering the disorder of anorexia experiences depression about their looks and Boland made the poem sound that she is indeed taking things too far. On one level, the poem aptly depicts the distorted mindset of an anorexic woman and does a good job portraying the emaciated effects of starvation. On a deeper level, however, the placement of blame on a society dominated by males appears overdone in the references to sexuality and the destruction of the physical features most commonly associated with sexual behavior.

When translated, anorexia nervosa means “not eating because of nervous causes.” Indeed, most women suffer from anorexia because of their intense fear of gaining weight or being fat, even though underweight. They experience related body image distortion or denial of the seriousness of current low body weight. Generally, there is no actual significant loss of appetite in anorectics. Their fear of gaining weight persists and may even increase despite simultaneous weight loss. It is a deadly disorder with unknown causes, but we all know that the perception of society is contributory to the rise of anorexia nervosa cases. Boland’s poem uses sarcasm in all her vivid descriptions of the destruction of the female body and the praise of the male body. It is about time that society should cease expecting what an ideal woman should look like. As media has the most powerful influence over society, change has to be made in representing women as sex objects and obliging them to look like the reed-thin models that parade almost all commodities available in the market. Women themselves should learn how to stop obsessing about their looks because that’s how their man would want them to look. Young girls should be educated and empowered that they can also be beautiful, despite all their imperfections. Ultimately, Boland’s poem serves to become a clarion call for everyone, not just for women, that we all should not give in to pressures that society dictates. The pain and suffering of anorexia is real and we all need to understand that society needs to change its perception to halt this disorder from eating up young girls to their annihilation.