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.

Freeze has been standard for a while on all the major brands. Looking at the new BenQ 70" currently and has freeze / blank on the remote and on the screen. As far as i'm aware there’s no affordable 3rd party option to add freeze functionality, so you would be reliant on the manufacturer releasing a firmware upgrade.

With 1yr of updates it's around £299 With 3yr of updates it's around £349 There are limitations using on 3rd party products and not all seem to play nicely. Would advise speaking with Steljes and seeing what they advise.

Yes common issue that a lot of schools are sticking with 1024 x 768 resolution which was the common 4:3 resolution for old smartboards. Shame to spend £3000 on a fancy touch screen and limit the resolution. I would run at 1080p if possible as icons can be enlarged in the windows settings. The newest SMART panel is 4 x the resolution of 1080p, which is getting overkill IMO. Again if you are spending £3000 on the touch-screens is probably worth the extra £100 to get a matching widescreen monitor if required. Another touch-screen brand (one of Jon-Pauls recommendations on another thread) is also a major monitor manufacturer and I know they include 1080p desktop monitors free of charge as part of the package.

There are plenty of companies that sell clip-on Anti-glare filters for monitors. That might do the job. Also worth looking into low blue light monitors. Blue-light can be a cause of head-aches, fatigue, sleep problems and if one study is to be believed it makes you eat more as well! Interesting stuff. I was given the heads up by my optician.

If you have tl650 screens there's a firmware upgrade to freeze. The new screens have freeze as well.

Looks like you are changing from a standard throw projector to a short-throw projector. If you don't need to worry about matching the right throw distance you can go for any projector you want. How have you narrowed it down to those two? Also yes you are correct that the promethean projector will be a rebadged version of a specialist projector manufacturer.

Get the students to set up their own dropbox accounts. Share the workload out.

There's gallery rooms upstairs. Invitation only. Top secret squirrel stuff that's not launched yet. Smart had a whole second stand up there full of Canadians

Interested why you are going for a video rather than a data projector in a classroom? What’s your reasoning? If it’s based on the fact its HD Ready (720p) a WXGA data projector is also capable of matching this and is more suited to classroom use. I would also argue that Casio fails on all three of your criteria above. Why? Traditional projectors still over superior brightness and image quality over LED/Laser projectors. No lamps to replace may appear to offer a saving in the long run but when you factor in traditional projector manufacturers have hit back with 10’000hr lamps at lower upfront costs it doesn’t add up. Agree Casio and other lamp-free projectors still have advantages with lower maintenance. DLP projectors have no filters but still require lamp maintenance unfortunately.

SMART are changing strategy and are going down the software route. Personally I think it’s still the best software available for white-boarding but SMARTs hardware has been lagging behind for several years. Makes sense to me that they are starting to work with other hardware manufacturers. Steljes don't seem to fully understand the licening changes themselves, so I wouldn't read too much into anything said at BETT. All the staff on the SMART stand actually work for Steljes so I wouldn't expect them to be fully briefed on any changes. Worth noting BenQ also work with Steljes in the UK and can also provide touch screens with a legal version of SMART Notebook. Prices are in the clever-touch range. They were hidden upstairs at BETT, so likely missed by most people.