Mr_K

interesting... how robust is the capacitive touch screen? Thinking how easy ipad screens etc are to break. Loads of touchscreen brands on the market. Prices vary widely but if you have money to spend then prices of 70-80" screens have comedown a lot. You can pick up a 79" 4K screen for about the price of a 65" screen a few years ago. Try smarter solutions in wakefield as they specialise is this type of kit.

Just worth noting as they were mentioned above that Mitsubishi have I believe pulled out of the projector market. Anything you do find is likely to be old-stock and not IMO worth looking at unless you can get a very good deal. You have the screen size but not the distance from screen to the projector lens. That's needed to properly calculate the throw ratio. I would look at as bright a projector as you can afford. 4000ansi will reduce to 3000ansi over a couple of years. Also might not look so good on a bright summers day as it does mid-October.

Does it use the windows OS to calibrate like you are calibrating a tablet PC? Or does it do its own calibration within some Elmo software? Do you have an option for “tablet PC settings” in the control panel? Possibly it just doesn't support an extended desktop?

I’d check with the manufacturer but potentially light reflecting off the board will confuse the sensors. I’m pretty sure that all the major brands use some-kind of laser curtain technology to track the finger touch points. I’d go with what the manufacturer/supplier recommends because at least you have some comeback if it doesn’t work. Certain brands also have limitations on the flatness of the surface, thickness of the board and edge-border if mounting the sensors off the board. This link shows the surface recommendations for a SMART interactive projector as an example: http://touch-smartboards.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/slr60wisurfaceselectionguide13dec12.pdf

Still not convinced the maths works out. You can buy modern lamp projectors with 10'000hr lamplife for around the £300.00 mark. It's also possible to get a 5yr hardware warranty. These tend to offer higher brightness and IMO better image quality than lamp-free models. Wouldn't want to buy an expensive projector that’s potentially going to be replaced with a touch-screen in a few years anyway. Would definitely consider lamp-free for school-halls etc where changing lamps is a real issue.

Sudden colour shift or has this happened over time? These projectors use a hybrid light source - LED for red and laser diode for blue / green. Possibly over time the red colour has become prominent over the blue/green? Other than that I’d just do some basic tests; swap the cables and play with the settings before speaking to Casio.

PW9620 with a short-throw lens, would fill that screen from 3.2m. Thats 6700ansi but I normally think it's better to go brighter initially to compensate for loss of brightness over time. That's a 0.80 throw ratio, ideally you need a 0.65 throw ratio to achieve 2.6m. Whatever brand you go for you are going to need a specialist short-throw lens. Cost will be in the several thousands. Request a price from a supplier rather than go off the on-line pricing as normally the on-line price wont be competitive on these low volume items.

There are still considerable cost savings over a traditional projector / IWB set-up. I wouldn't dismiss it, although this particular report seems fairly unscientific. Still need to factor in expected product life compared to a projector, bulb replacement, filter cleaning on non-DLP projectors. Roughly - Projector life; 5 years Panel life; 10yrs+ New bulb every three yrs? LED projectors use less power than a traditional projector and I would guess they are benchmarking against a traditional projector. I would also argue to get anywhere close to the brightness of a panel you would need a very bright projector, again increasing power consumption. Personally I don’t think a typical 2000ansi XGA projector vs a Full HD LED Panel is a fair fight. It’s not really comparing like for like in terms of clarity and brightness for a classroom. Projector still wins in terms of image size. Price needs to comedown on the larger size panels still.

I'm not sure if Iiyama supports ChromeOS but i've used the benq range with a chrome book. I dont think its a common feature but I would imagine more will start to support as chrome keeps growing in education. Only issue was the chromebook didnt have a HDMI output, so we had to purchase a HDMI / micro USB convertor. Worked really nicely though, didnt have any issues other than a bit of fiddling to get the settings right (from memory you need to extend the desktop rather than mirror)

yep well if size is a concern then projectors still have the advantage there at the moment. 65" / 70" touch-screens are becoming very common and the price is coming down considerably. At the moment there is nothing afforable larger than 70" for the average school but thats likley to change as panel manufactuers are looking at serious replacements for 78" IWBs. Longterm solution / complete replacement - I'd go for a panel. Short-term solution / blown projector - I'd replace with a projector to last until I want to replace the whole IWB set-up

This might answer your question somewhat. Taken from SMARTs pre-BETT marketing in the AV trade press: SMART Technologies – no more IWBs at BETT Stand F228 “There will be no IWBs on the SMART stand at BETT. The future is all about panels,” said David Lapides, SMART’s Director of Software and Channels, in a pre-show interview with AV News. To underline the point, SMART will show two new IFPDs to accompany the existing SMART Board 6065"

IMO if you go for an interactive display you can go slightly smaller than an IWB because of the enhanced clarity. I would go for 70" for most classrooms if you were replacing a 77" smartboard. Also consider that you are likley swapping a 4:3 screen for a 16:9 screen. Width will be very similar but not as high. As Ric_ says "bigger is better" but once you get above 70" the cost skyrockets. Theres not much difference in cost between 65" and 70" really. If you really need bigger than 70" a projector is still your only real option.

Found the throw ratio from the projector manual. Its a ratio of 0.49. BenQ MW820ST will fit nicely with the replacement mount mentioned before. Might need some small adjustments but its about spot-on for throw.

Hi, Are these mounted on a round tube boom arm or the newer square type boom arm about 1m away from the board? Either way you will need a new mount to retro-fit a projector on to the same boom arm. RA technologies seem to offer a mounting solution that works. Do you know the throw ratio of the PRM-20 as I cant find it on-line? WXGA short-throw projectors are fairly common and i'm aware of manufactuers offering upto 5yrs hardware warranty and lamp-life can hit 10'000hrs even with non LED/Laser projectors. Just need to be careful of the throw distance.

What sort of screen size are you looking at? That's a fairly serious projector. Lots of classroom projectors are now capable of 3d as a fairly standard feature, so you could be looking £300ish upwards. Depends on what you are trying to achieve, brightness, resolution etc.