digital projector selection for businesses

EPSON BYLINED ARTICLE
DIGITAL PROJECTOR
SELECTION FOR
BUSINESSES
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Digital projector colour brightness: Can you see me at the
back? What to look for in a digital projector for business
and why colour brightness shouldn’t be overlooked...
Hans Dummer
Projector business unit owner,
Epson Europe
Business projector selection
criteria: what’s important to you?
Top 4 digital projector buying
As with any IT purchase, a good way of
narrowing down projector choices is to
formulate and prioritise a list of features
you see as important.
According to a TFCInfo study these
are some of the most important
factors in the decision-making
process for businesses considering
a digital projector purchase:
1. Picture quality
2. Brightness or lumens
3. Price
4. Reliability
Picture quality is always at the top of
1
the list, according to a recent survey ,
swiftly followed by brightness or
projector lumens.
Digital projector brightness is
unsurprisingly still a key issue
for businesses today, despite all
the advances in modern
technology. Getting people to
crowd around a notebook or
tablet to watch a business
presentation can be both
awkward and unprofessional,
even with a relatively small
audience – especially when you
want to show off your
multimedia, high-resolution
content. Far better to plug in a
modern digital projector, such
as a 3LCD projector, to convey
your ideas.
But how do you go about
choosing the right projector
when there are, literally,
hundreds on the market?
The first is difficult to gauge from the
specs, unless you see the projector in
action but the second (brightness) is
easier. We’ll come on to the topic of
high brightness in more detail later, as
it’s a bigger and more complex issue
than it appears.
According to the same study, price and
reliability then follow close behind, as
the third and fourth factors respectively
that are taken into account when
considering a purchase.
And other factors also come into play –
particularly around the intended usage.
How will you use the digital
projector?
If you travel a lot, being portable is a
big concern too, alongside the above.
Luckily there are some ultra-light and
slim models on the market today which
fit into a laptop bag and have been
designed for mobile use, taking away
any concerns about portability. This
means you can give professional
presentations on the move; even if your
meeting room doesn’t have its own
digital projector. And you can easily get
an ultra-portable projector screen to go
with it, to be totally prepared.
1
TFCInfo, projector brand study, 2012
Epson® is a registered trademark of Seiko Epson® Corporation. All other product names and other company names used herein
are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Errors and
omissions excepted, all specifications are subject to change without notice.
criteria
Equally, you need to think carefully
about image resolution. Don’t just go
for the highest possible resolution,
choose something to match the
capabilities of whatever PC or notebook
you will be using – if you don’t have a
device capable of displaying
widescreen content then you won’t
need a widescreen projector – and do
be realistic about what you will be
displaying.
HD-quality output is all very well, but
will you really be watching 1080p
movies, or spending all your time inside
PowerPoint? But if you are indeed a
multimedia junkie then, by all means,
select the highest possible resolution.
Then where will the projector be used?
If it’s in a fixed location you may want a
ceiling mount model and use a remote
control to operate it. For presentations
in confined spaces, short-throw and
ultra-short-throw digital projectors are
the ones to go for – some can offer
large image sizes from as little as a few
centimetres away from the surface
being projected on to.
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Then there’s the connectivity. Cables
are fine, but wireless capability or WiFi
is quicker to set up. And there are all
sorts of useful apps to help – make
sure your projector is compatible with
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Epson’s iProjection app. With it you
can easily connect your smartphone or
3
tablet to display documents or images,
remotely control your digital projector or
display files through it from your email
or cloud storage.
Digital projector colour
brightness and image quality
That’s a lot to think about so where
should you start? Out of all the factors
above, you will want to check out image
quality first. A demo will help here, but
to be sure you really need to try a
projector in the environment in which it
will be used, and that isn’t always
practical. Which leaves you reliant on
the technical information published by
the manufacturer, such as the levels of
brightness or lumens and resolution, to
base your decision on.
Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier,
these figures don’t always give you the
whole story. Particularly when it comes
to colour brightness as, believe it or
not, the projector lumens figures
normally quoted are only for white light,
not colour. And when you consider that
just about everything is projected in
colour these days, this can be a real
issue.
Different projector technologies deliver
colour in different ways, so to find out a
digital projector’s colour brightness,
simply check the brightness of the
component colours of red, green and
blue. This gives you the Colour Light
Output figure (called CLO for short).
And, to gauge whether your colours will
be vivid and bright, just make sure the
lumens for your colour brightness or
CLO match those for the white light
output or brightness.
When the projector lumens for white
and colour brightness don’t match, you
get drab presentations with dull colours
that are much less engaging and
harder to view compared to those
where colour brightness matches the
white. And that’s a real concern as, in
reality, you’re not getting what you think
you’re paying for – high brightness and
clear images with vivid colours.
Consequently, when comparing
projectors with the same quoted
lumens in white brightness, this study
found that Epson projectors delivered
6
three times brighter colours .
Compelling.
Measuring colour brightness;
digital projector lumens
Fortunately there is a way to address
this issue. While, for some
manufacturers such as Epson, colour
brightness or CLO information has
been around for some time, there
wasn’t a consensus on how to measure
it. A new methodology for testing the
colour brightness or CLO produced by
a digital projector was ratified in 2012.
For ease of comparison this also uses
the same lumens measurement scale
as traditional white light brightness, and
understanding this information benefits
projector buyers significantly.
3LCD projectors for three times
brighter colours
Ideally the two figures – colour
brightness and white brightness –
should be the same, which is what
you’ll get with a projector based on
3LCD technology, originally developed
by Epson, which combines the three
component colours to create the
projected image.
As the standard is fairly new, colour
brightness or CLO information isn’t, as
yet, published by every digital projector
manufacturer. However, that looks set
to change. Demanding this data allows
you, the user, to make an effective
choice on your digital projector,
ensuring that you get value for money
and receive every single lumen – both
white and colour light – that you are
paying for.
In the meantime, you can learn more
about colour brightness by visiting the
CLO website at: www.epson.eu/CLO.
Here you will find detailed information
on why matching the lumens for colour
brightness and white light brightness is
so important, plus those test results,
which tell you about the brightness of
the digital projectors on your shopping
list.
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On comparable single-chip DLP
projectors with the same quoted
lumens, however, its technology
limitations result in colour brightness
which is a lot lower than the published
white light brightness figure. Indeed, in
recent tests of models from leading
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DLP projector vendors , it was common
to find colour levels that were a third of
the white brightness figure or, in some
cases, even lower.
For more information
visit:
www.epson.eu/CLO
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2
Available on the Apple App Store
Check device compatibility at
www.epson.eu/iprojection
3
4
DLP™ (Digital Light Processing™) is a trademark
of Texas Instruments Incorporated
5
1-chip DLP models only
Epson® is a registered trademark of Seiko Epson® Corporation. All other product names and other company names used herein
are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Errors and
omissions excepted, all specifications are subject to change without notice.
Compared to leading 1-chip DLP business and
education projectors based on NPD data, July
2011 through June 2012. Colour brightness
(Colour Light Output) measured in accordance with
IDMS 15.4. Colour brightness will vary depending
on usage conditions. For more information please
visit www.epson.eu/CLO