Infocomm 2000, the audiovisual and presentation industry’s largest trade show, was a study in contrasts. Small, lightweight and portable vied for center stage with large, loud and immobile. Below movie theater-size screens where Keanu Reeves dodged bullets in The Matrix to surround-sound orchestras, manufacturers unveiled new lightweight projectors, each smaller and brighter than their previous versions. If you were in the market for any type of presentation equipment, particularly portable projectors, this was the place to be.

Hosted by the International Communications Industries Association (ICIA), Infocomm was held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA, June 15–17. On the first day alone, the show drew a record-breaking crowd of more than 22,700 from all over the world. Couldn’t make it? No problem. Selling Power was there to walk the floor, test-drive the new technologies and witness the new projectors in action. Here we offer a roundup of key developments.

Light and Color
Like Alice down the rabbit hole, portable projectors everywhere are shrinking, and Infocomm had them all. Remember the days when “portable” meant 20- to 30-pound projectors? Believe it or not, now they’re one-tenth that weight. In fact, Infocomm’s single most significant development for traveling salespeople was probably the debut of the first-ever under-three-pound projectors. At 2.9 pounds, Sharp’s Notevision M10 and Plus Corp.’s U3-1080/-880 aren’t much heavier than the latest Tom Clancy novel and are about the same size. Picking them up is almost as effortless as lifting a sandwich.

What makes this engineering feat even more remarkable is that both manufacturers pack a respectable 800 ANSI lumens into these featherweight products – more lumens than some of their heavier competition. Sure, you’ll pay for it. The SVGA versions of both projectors run about $4,000, and the XGA versions cost about $7,000. But for salespeople who spend a lot of time lugging projectors through airports and in and out of cars, it’s probably worth it.

Don’t be surprised to see something even lighter by next year. Although companies just debuted these first under-three-pound projectors, you can bet the people who developed them are back in the lab packing equal brightness into an even smaller, lighter package. And the manufacturers who have not yet come out with anything under three pounds will no doubt be scrambling to get there.

According to studies by Texas Instruments, ultraportable and microportable projectors are the fastest-growing segment of the video projector industry. A walk through the Infocomm booths makes that easy to believe. Not only are current manufacturers coming out with new products at breakneck speed, but more and more businesses are jumping into the competition, anxious to reap the benefits of this hot market. V-Tek Displays, for instance, was just three months old at Infocomm but already the Taipei and Rockaway, New Jersey-based company had one of its first products on display – a six-pound, 800-ANSI lumen DLP projector.

Barco Projection Systems, best known for its large-scale displays, made its first foray into the portable market as well. Although its BarcoGraphics 4000 at 20 pounds is not what most salespeople would consider comfortably portable, it is nonetheless a significant step for a company that until now has focused on fixed projection systems.

“This is breaking new ground for us. It’s the smallest product we’ve ever introduced,” said Kevin Barlow, Barco’s market manager, Church & Worship. Barlow said the BarcoGraphics 4000, with 2,200 ANSI lumens, is a cross-over product between traveling sales and rental units that is likely to appeal to that small percentage of salespeople for whom lighter and less bright won’t work. “We want to find that 10 to 15 percent who need something more than what’s available now.”

Add these manufacturers to the 20 or so already producing multiple portable products and the lightweight projector business quickly becomes very crowded. This is good news for salespeople, because in order to survive, companies are having to be creative in their projectors and their support.

Not happy with your one-year warranty? Such manufacturers as Mitsubishi and Sony are offering three-year warranties now, and Dukane is offering a whopping five-year warranty on its projectors.

Not satisfied with your picture quality? Kodak’s EctaPro projectors allow you to create some impressive effects with slides. Canon came up with something called Turbo Bright that bumps up its lumens 25 percent. And JVC says it is developing a QXGA chip that will produce film-quality images (available in April 2001). Though it initially will be used in large-venue projectors, portable projectors eventually will follow.

Want a projector that does more than just project? With Toshiba’s new TLP-451 (SVGA) and TLP-671 (XGA) you can add a built-in digital camera to project charts, demo a product or overlay notes on a slide.

Feeling whimsical? Toshiba and Panasonic both rolled out lightweight projectors that no longer limit your exterior color choices to battleship gray and steel gray. Choose Toshiba’s 5.8-pound, native XGA, 1,000-ANSI lumen TLP-B2 and you’ll also have to agonize over whether to get it in gold, silver, blue, green or rose. Prefer Panasonic’s 8.4-pound, native SGVA, 1,100-lumen PT-L501U? No problem. Would you like that in dusty rose, metallic green or silver?

These splashes of color are among the first in a projector industry that has long clung to shades of gray. At last, if you’re selling a product that’s lighthearted and fun you can get a projector to match. Unveil a dusty metallic rose projector at your next presentation and you’ve not only revealed a potential conversation piece, you’ve also set the tone for the meeting. Make sure that’s the tone you want to set, however. If you’re bidding on a high-stakes engineering project, you might want to stick with the silver.

Presentations to Go
We know what you’re thinking. Lighter, brighter, more gadgetry and more color are all very fine, but you still have to tote around that pesky laptop. Not anymore. Both Epson and Sanyo trotted out projectors in which users can insert a card preloaded with their presentations – no laptop required. Epson’s new PowerLite 715c, for instance, is a 5.8-pound, 1,000-ANSI lumen projector that incorporates what Epson calls EasyMP (for “easy meetings and presentations”). This new technology lets users transfer their presentation files to a PC card using Epson’s conversion software, then insert the card into a slot on the projector and run the presentation. JPEG or bitmap images can be advanced automatically or with a mouse-click. Special effects, including slide transitions in such programs as PowerPoint, are preserved. Not happy with the order of your slides? Simply rearrange or edit them using the remote control.

Sanyo’s new PLC-XU22N (XGA) and PLC-SU22N (SVGA) work in much the same way. Load your presentation onto a PC card, insert the card into the projector and voila! No PC needed. At 8.8 pounds, Sanyo’s projectors weigh a little more than the Epson product but they’ll give you 200 more ANSI lumens, for a total of 1,200.

This new PC-free technology offers a glimpse into a future where salespeople can at last travel unencumbered. With projectors getting smaller and lighter every day, and other manufacturers likely to come up with their own laptop-free projectors, the day is not far off when all you’ll need to cart around with you is your 2.9-pound projector. Look farther downstream, and that projector may be cordless. Sanyo just debuted a cordless large-venue LCD projector using Bluetooth wireless communications technology. Though only the first step in the move toward cordless presentations, that technology will no doubt be coming to the portable market within the next few years.

Ready, Aim, Project
Sure, this new crop of portables looks great on paper, but the numbers alone can never tell the whole story when it comes to projectors. That’s why anyone overwhelmed by all those lumens, contrast ratios, aspect ratios and throw distances could head over to Infocomm’s projector Shoot-Out to see what kind of image those figures translated into. Hailed by ICIA as its “marquee event,” the Shoot-Out put same-category projectors side by side, projecting the same images at the same time and under the exact same lighting conditions, so potential buyers could judge for themselves which projectors they thought produced the best images.

Eleven years ago, when the Shoot-Out first started, mostly dealers came by to check out the different models of projectors. In recent years, however, there has been a surge in end-user attendance. After all, no other venue offers such a fair side-by-side comparison of the newest projectors. In fact, 89 percent of the people who visited the Shoot-Out in 1999 said they made a purchase decision based on what they saw there. It has become such an attraction that there were 14,000 visits to the Shoot-Out this year, up 75 percent over 1999. (Most visitors stop by two or three times, so it’s impossible to know the exact number of people who went through.)

These trends have prompted ICIA to make some changes. Rick Harris, ICIA vice president of marketing, said the show’s organizers did a couple things this year to make the Shoot-Out easier for attendees, particularly the growing numbers of end-user visitors. One of the biggest changes was made in the large room where the Shoot-Out was held, using ambient light to make conditions more realistic. In the past, the Shoot-Out was done in total darkness. Another major difference this year was how the projectors were organized. Rather than arranging them by brightness or resolution, as was done in previous years, Shoot-Out organizers grouped them by function – ultraportable, fixed, large audience, etc. Finally, organizers allowed manufacturers to distribute literature about their products in the Shoot-Out room so that users wanting more information could access it immediately. In the past, they had to traipse to the different booths on the show floor.

White Away
There was another portable tool that stopped us in our tracks. It’s called mimio, and it’s produced by a Boston-based company called Virtual Ink Corporation that had a small booth in a back corner of the hall. Blink, and you might have walked past it. That would have been too bad because the product is remarkable. In the din of all the nonportable electronic whiteboard prototypes and improvements rolled out at Infocomm, mimio really stood out.

What is it? It’s a durable plastic arm that, when attached via suction cups to any regular whiteboard, turns it into an electronic whiteboard. Hook up your computer and flip on your projector, and the whiteboard basically becomes a large computer screen where you can run a PowerPoint presentation, access the Internet or take notes that are automatically saved onto your computer. Need to do a couple of computations for your clients? Pull up an Excel spreadsheet, tap on an empty cell, scribble a number on the board and the moment you stop writing the number will pop into the cell as if you’ve just typed it there.

A new add-on feature called boardCast, released shortly before Infocomm, synchronizes and records voice and ink on any mimio-equipped board so that presentations can be saved, archived and played back later using RealPlayer. The possibilities here are endless. BoardCast is retailing for $249 and the basic mimio system costs $499, so it won’t bust your budget.

In the rapidly changing world of presentation technology, one thing is certain: Portable projectors will continue getting lighter and brighter, and gadgets such as mimio will continue to expand their capabilities.

If you don’t want to miss what’s coming next, don’t miss Infocomm 2001 to be held next year, June 13–15, at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas. See you there!