Here’s a riddle: What do Infocomm 2001 and a Jenny Craig convention have in common? The answer: Everyone is trying to find new and innovative ways to shed pounds. Tired of lugging around last year’s super-light 2.9-pound projectors? This year saw the lightest-weight models fall to just two pounds. Finding your laptop a little cumbersome? Several vendors showed off ways to run a presentation from your PDA. Bothered by that pesky cable connecting your laptop to your projector? No problem – upcoming wireless technology lets you leave the cable at home. Indeed, at the audio/video and presentation industry’s largest trade show, held June 13-15 at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas this year, vendors displayed presentation gear that was smaller, brighter and more portable than ever before.

Wireless Wonders
As vendors look for ways to keep shedding ounces from presentation hardware, wireless technology is fast becoming the hottest new trend in presentations. Example: Texas Instruments (TI) ran hourly demos of a wireless component set called ProjectConnect that enables a cable-free connection between a laptop computer or PDA and a projector. TI (www.texasinstruments.com), the manufacturer of Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology, expects to begin shipping ProjectConnect component sets in the first quarter of 2002 to projector manufacturers.

The laptop-projector combination works the same wirelessly as it does with a cable. Users click the ProjectConnect icon on the laptop desktop to sync the laptop to the projector, then use the laptop as they would with a cable connection. Anything viewed on the laptop is seen projected on the screen, whether you’re creating, editing or presenting. There’s no storage capability – the laptop simply sends the image on the fly – but the technology shaves the weight and hassle of a VGA cable.

The technology could also shave the weight of the laptop itself, since users can achieve wireless connectivity just as easily with a small PDA as with a laptop. The only extra step is for presenters to first download their PowerPoint presentation into a Palm or other PDA. Again, a tap of the ProjectConnect icon on the PDA syncs the PDA with the projector. Pull up a list of your slides and you can tap on the specific slides you want displayed, or forward and reverse through them in order.

TI isn’t the only company flirting with wireless technology. Panasonic (www.panasonic.com), just as eager to shed presentation weight, rolled out a new portable projector that lets users conduct wireless presentations with any laptop computer equipped with an 802.1-pound wireless networking transmission protocol standard. To work, the PC just needs to be within 125 feet of the new PT-L711XNTU projector. Not only does the technology eliminate the need for a VGA cable, but it also can receive data from several PCs at the same time without the need to switch input settings. So if you have multiple presenters, you won’t need to go through the acrobatics of unplugging one PC, plugging in the next one and waiting for the computer to run through its warm-up sequence.

There’s one catch: the projector can receive only JPEG files, which means the animation in your PowerPoint slides won’t come through. Other programs and still PowerPoint slides aren’t a problem, however. The PT-L711XNTU comes with a CD-ROM that includes a JPEG converter, which does just that – converts PowerPoint slides, Microsoft Word and Excel files and other programs to JPEG images that can then be projected. Preliminary specifications put the native-XGA projector at 8.8 pounds, with 1600 ANSI lumens and a 400:1 contrast ratio. It will be available sometime this fall.

Even the whiteboard community is hopping aboard the wireless bandwagon. Electronics For Imaging (EFI), the makers of eBeam, were showcasing a new product called ImagePort that lets you beam your whiteboard notes and images directly to your Palm PDA. The Palm must be within three feet of the ImagePort but it will it retain all the information, colors included, captured from the whiteboard. For now, ImagePort will work only with a Palm-brand PDA, although Rafi Holtzman, general manager at eBeam products, said EFI (www.efi.com) is talking with other PDA manufacturers to expand that list.

ImagePort is roughly four inches square and connects directly to any eBeam-enabled whiteboard. And even without a PDA, there’s no need to cart around a laptop, because ImagePort lets you send whiteboard images directly to a printer.

A company called Margi Systems (www.margi.com) also found a way to lighten your load by enabling you to ditch your laptop, although its solution isn’t wireless. Margi’s Presenter-to-Go SpringBoard Presentation Module uses a Handspring Visor handheld (with Palm OS 3.1 or higher) and VGA cable connection to deliver a full-resolution color presentation. The initial set-up is a two-step process: first, use the Margi plug-in to transform any PC application into mobile presentation slides; second, put the Visor in its cradle and capture the new mobile presentation. Prior to giving a presentation, you’ll need to insert the Presenter-to-Go SpringBoard module into the Visor handheld and connect the cable to a projector. Then tap the Presenter-to-Go icon on the Visor to start the presentation. Want to roam the room while you’re talking? Just use the remote control to advance your slides.

Despite the absence of a laptop, you have some remarkable flexibility with your presentation while it’s stored in the Visor. Using the stylus, you can selectively hide or show specific slides and re-sort those slides using the drag-and-drop method. So even if you’re doing presentations to six different clients on a road trip next week, you can still customize a presentation for each of them. The system also allows you to store multiple presentations (the 2MB module memory holds up to 100 slides), view slide notes on each slide in the system and run your presentation in automatic or manual mode.

Light and Powerful
PLUS Corp. (www.plus-america.com), like Texas Instruments, displayed its own prototype of a wireless presentation system using a PDA and a projector; however, the projector manufacturer’s real Infocomm coup was the unveiling of a two-pound projector, the lightest-weight projector to hit the market. Last year, the big news was the breaking of the three-pound barrier, which PLUS and Sharp both did with 2.9-pound projectors. This year, Sharp (www.sharp-usa.com) opted to add a half-pound in order to tack on 300 more ANSI lumens to its Notevision series. PLUS, however, went the other direction, managing to pack 800 lumens into a package almost a whole pound lighter than last year’s ultralightweight models.

PLUS’s new two-pound, 800-lumen projector is the native-XGA V-1080SF. Its SVGA counterpart is the V-807SF, rated at 700 ANSI lumens. Both versions are nearly pocket-size at 1.8 inches high, 7 inches wide and 5.6 inches deep. They’re scheduled to hit shelves sometime this fall, and at the show PLUS had not yet set a price on them.

If it’s lumens you need and are willing to carry a few extra pounds to get them, there’s good news here, too. InFocus (www.infocus.com) and Optoma (www.optoma.com) both released the first truly portable projectors to put out 2000 ANSI lumens, a number that should enable a salesperson presenting in multiple light conditions to handle just about any situation. InFocus’ LP530 weighs 5.7 pounds, or 6.5 pounds with an “advanced connectivity module,” which attaches to the back of the unit to give it dual computer input, video input and RS-232. You can leave the module at home and carry just the 5.7 pounds if you only need to hook up one computer to the projector. InFocus estimates the street price on the LP530 will be $4,999.

Optoma’s EzPro 755, also rated at 2000 lumens, is slightly heavier (6.8 pounds) and more expensive (MSRP is $7,995, although it will sell on the street for less) than the LP530 but you’ll get two additional key benefits: a quieter projector – the EzPro is 32dB versus 39dB on the LP530 – and an 800:1 contrast ratio on the EzPro versus 400:1 on the LP530. Either way, the fact that you can get 2000 lumens in such a lightweight package is big news for mobile presenters.

In Living Color
Beyond the weight-and-lumens evolution in projectors this year, the other significant development was the release of sRGB-compliant projectors by Epson (www.epson.com) and Mitsubishi (www.mitsubishi-usa.com). SRGB, which stands for Standard Red, Green and Blue (the basis of color reproduction in CRT monitors, LCD panels, projectors, printers and other devices) is a Microsoft-devised standard for managing color for natural-looking, uniform color reproduction. The significance of sRGB is that the color you see on your monitor or projected on a screen is the exact, real-life color of the object being viewed. Salespeople who need to project exact colors now can get the projectors to do it.

Mitsubishi’s XL1 (XGA) and SL1 (SVGA) each put out 1,000 lumens, have a 300:1 contrast ratio and weigh 6.5 pounds. Each also includes Mitsubishi’s IRIS, an intelligent room illumination sensor that automatically adjusts the brightness of the projector to the light level in the room.

Epson’s new sRGB-compliant projectors are the PowerLite 810p (2000 lumens, native XGA), 800p (1500 lumens, native XGA) and 600p (1700 lumens, native SGVA). All three projectors weigh 9.6 pounds. In addition to sRGB compliance, all three Epson products are the first to offer horizontal as well as vertical keystone correction. With the new PowerLite series, you can offset your projector to the side of the screen by up to 10 degrees and still get an image that looks as though the projector were sitting directly in front.