[Videoconferencing] INFO: notes from Duocom trade show

[Andrew Daviel]

FYI

A local video/projector business held a tradeshow yesterday with some 
seminars from NEC, Epson, Smart etc. Some nuggets might be of interest.

Epson have a portable SXGA (1280x1024) document camera for about $500.
No backlit base; the camera (with light) just leans over the document.

NEC are saying that projectors are passé and flat-screen displays ar 
the way of the future. They are up to 80" (our projectors are set about 
90" and maybe 120" in the auditorium), and they have a bezel-less display 
one can tile (7mm between displays) to make big walls. Chained together 
so one can drive them all from one video card, like at the airport.

Epson are saying that projector sales are up and will increase ...

One of them is saying the e-ink product will be here soon. Monochrome I 
think - you write an image and it stays there with no power. Might 
replace posters, advertising displays etc.
One of them is saying there will be flexible LED displays that you can 
roll up.

Someone was showing wireless "presentation remotes" that use a mouse 
interface (no drivers required). Some have mouse functionality - a joypad 
you can work with your thumb. I may buy one to play with, maybe for the 
auditorium. The basic idea is you can do "next slide" without having to 
use a table.

Memory sticks and SD cards for projectors seemed popular for  road 
warriors - you can put JPEGs on a card, stick in the projector, and show 
slides without a laptop..

SMART were showing their smart whiteboard for use in a classroom. This is
a touch-sensitive screen or overlay with a magic pen tray, plus 
application software. For K-12 their software looked quite impressive - 
lots of drag-and-drop stuff. I believe there are packages for Windows, 
Mac and Linux with progressivly less functionality (works as a mouse, at 
the very least).

The screens come in various sizes for a projector (e.g short-throw 
projectors that don't cast a shadow) also as overlays for common 
flatscreen displays. They are typically smaller than our usual screen 
size and would not work well with our tiled displays. The remote 
presentation software is Windows-only and is not included in the basic 
package.
They also showed a wireless tablet, which I had not previously seen. This 
has no display, just a writing surface so you can write on the smart 
screen from a distance.

The basic functionality of the Smart board (being able to scribble on top 
of a presentation or graph, save it to a file etc.) is included in the 
tablet PC which I have available for load/evaluation, mentioned in a 
pervious post.


-- 
Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376  (Pacific Time)
Network Security Manager