View from Infocomm: Nick Rogers

From my interest in displays, the themes from the show were 3D, video conferencing and a few new display technologies. There was plenty going on with projectors - long life lamps, LED and laser illumination, extreme short throw, and built in interactivity.

Nearly all the projector manufacturers were looking at the installation market and most had introduced new higher end products (5000 + lumens). This market accounts for less than 2% of total units and around 20% by value but is not growing so fast. There is a danger of prices being squeezed as this part of the market becomes over crowded. 

At the real high end Panasonic launched 3 models in the PT-8000 series - 3 chip 10,000 lumen monsters. projectiondesign showed a remote light source projector – FR12RLS, where the lamps and colour wheel can be up to 30 metres from the projector and the light channelled through a liquid light guide. The projector is totally maintenance free and silent.

There were several LED lamp products being shown from Samsung, Vivitek and NEC who showed a 2000 lumen prototype with excellent picture quality along with the hybrid LED/laser from Casio. However, the Holy Grail is expected to be laser illumination that offers greater lumens per watt than LED technologies and of course UHP lamps. The advantage of solid-state lamps is improved picture quality, instant on/off and no degradation in brightness suffered in the early life of UHP lamps. Philips responded with "Imagecare" - an initiative to preserve the lamp even longer, which involved the projector going into "deep dim" – 30% of normal power during periods of inactivity, resulting in a lamp life of 6000+ hours. Aside from the performance advantages there seemed little economic reason to use LEDs or lasers. Bill Coggshall of PMA summed this up and demonstrated that on purely cost grounds the new technologies could only be justified economically for very high use applications.

More than 50% of the European projector market is now education – short throw projectors are becoming popular in schools especially for use with interactive boards. Sanyo and Vivitek showed new "extreme short throw" products with throw ratios of less than 0.2, meaning they can be bolted onto the wall above or below the screen. Both were DLP and 3D ready with excellent picture quality.

Interactive Whiteboard sales are approaching 1 million units WW and until recently there have been no significant challenges to this technology. Interactive flat panels have been around for some years but have had little impact on the projector and IWB so far. There were 2 major developments on show at Infocomm, building interactivity into the projector. One from TI with "DLP Interactive Technology" and the other from Epson with their EB450Wi, interactive projector.

Epson’s EB450Wi is an ultra short throw projector with built in interactivity using an infrared detector. The performance is as good as using a conventional pen based (as opposed to finger-touch) IWB and the feel of use is similar. The main reason to choose one is cost savings – these products cost around 50% - 60% of the cost of an equivalent projector plus IWB.

The other product concept on show was from TI - "DLP interactive projector technology".  This technology, coupled with the DLP imaging device projects a unique pattern, invisible to the eye onto the screen, which is detected by a camera integrated into a pointing device (pen). A number of DLP projector brands – InFocus, BenQ, Dell, Vivitek, Viewsonic etc are producing products based on this technology but calling the feature different names such as "Pointblank",  "Point draw" or "Lightboard"  - the functionality is similar just the name is different. This technology has some advantages over conventional IWBs – it does not require any set up, the screen size has no limits and can be onto any surface and the pen can be used several metres away from the screen or from within the audience. However, users report that the tracking is not so fast or accurate and it is very difficult to draw from a distance.

Will these alternative technologies impact IWB sales? In the mature markets, where Smart and Promethean have up to 75% market share, hardware purchasing decisions are based on the choice of software. In these markets conventional IWBs are unlikely to be displaced – it is reported that it is "difficult" and "uneconomical" to purchase a license for one of the major manufacturer’s software without purchasing their hardware. However, in the newer markets, or outside education, interactive projectors are making good inroads into the market. Some large interactive contracts in the Middle East have already chosen an interactive projector solution in place of a conventional IWB.

Finally, 2 interesting new products – Teliris were showing 3D video conferencing which was a little spooky looking at someone floating outside the screen. Prysm were showing a new display technology LPD – laser phosphor display, which used a laser beam scanning over coloured phosphors. Prysm claimed to use conventional everyday products to produce a number large bright signage display that uses 75% lower power than any alternative display.