Projectors

Summer is not a quiet time for the audiovisual market. Vendors have unveiled their latest offerings that incorporate growing trends and meet needs ranging from digital signage to lecture recording to equipment management. Here is a sample of AV products announced at this year's EduComm and InfoComm conferences, held in Las Vegas in June.

InFocus has released five new entry-level-priced projectors in the IN2100 and IN3100 series that provide high brightness and rich features.

VUKUNET web platform by NEC Display Solutions of America can turn a digital signage display into a source for vendor advertising—and revenue for an institution—in public spaces with much foot traffic. Campus officials can register their institution's network and include demographics about the location and how much ad time is available, and then use the web platform for approving offers from agencies for ad placements. The web platform enables ad content to be uploaded and displayed as needed on the network.

A short distance from EduComm, THE expo floor at InfoComm offered plenty of ways to spend stimulus dollars.

Twenty years ago, projectors had three "guns," weighed between 80-120 pounds, were the size of a coffee table, and took a crew of technicians a couple of days to install and converge. They were dim, expensive, and finicky machines, but the one advantage they had over today's bright, ultra-portable, and inexpensive projectors was that you could come into the classroom or lecture theater and pretty much count on still finding them, on the ceiling, where they were yesterday. Theft wasn't an issue.

The Epson PowerLite G5000 multimedia projector is designed for easy installation and use with many applications and content-based devices.

The E-Z Cinema Floor Pull-Up Projection Screen by Elite Screens may seem cumbersome at first due to its large size, but this portable screen weighs around 20 pounds.

SmartDraw 2009 has new features for incorporating more visuals in presentation charts and graphics, such as automatically sequencing or animating diagrams into PowerPoint presentations.

Lexmark has two new lines of printers designed with the environment in mind. Both have built-in two-sided printing to reduce paper waste and allow for instant warm-up for incoming print jobs while cutting down on power when idle.