Buying Advice

Are you seeing the bigger picture?

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When it comes to choosing a new projector, businesses are faced with a bewildering array of options. So, which types of projectors suit which types of business application? How best should business customers go about evaluating projectors? Which functions are most important for businesses? And what are likely to be…

Make sure you’re not a soft touch when buying

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I used to work with a programmer who, whenever he felt driven to headbutt his screen in sheer frustration, maintained that computers should be given the capacity to feel pain. We aren’t quite there yet (although who knows what time may bring?). But we have reached the point where poking,…

Create an engaging digital experience

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Peruse while you pee sounds like one of the AV industry’s less promising slogans. But if you pop into the gents in Switzerland you might find yourself confronted with anything from the latest car ad to a public information film. Yes, Swiss manufacturer Urimat has started building display screens into…

Audio that should be heard, not seen

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There aren’t many lines of business where the aim is to spend a lot of money and hope nobody notices (unless you’re an embezzler, of course). But corporate audio is an exception. “‘Unheard’ audio systems are often the best,” explains Elliot Foulton-Langley, solutions architect at CDEC. “If listeners don’t know…

Stream if you want to go faster

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Like any stock-in-trade, AV content poses two questions that are familiar to any logistics professional. Where do you keep it? And how do you deliver it to the people who need it? There are essentially two ways of storing AV content – locally on your own disks, tapes, or in…

Projection pros and cons

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What puts the “pro” into projectors? Rob Meakin, European product manager at Sony Professional Solutions Europe, has no doubt. “One of the biggest pros of projectors is the fact that there isn’t much they can’t do, making them a solid choice for almost every need and environment. Even extremely large,…

Format and function in a jumbo size

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Big ideas need a big canvas, and in order to reach an audience you need to display your content over a much larger area than a standard computer screen. For many that means a large-format display (LFD) or videowall. Traditionally an LFD was what it said on the tin –…

Networking opportunities

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AV devices often appear to sprout wires from every orifice, so it’s easy to imagine that they’re already ‘networked’. But cabling two devices together – a so-called point-to-point or circuit-switched connection – isn’t really networking. In fact, one of the joys of true networking is a reduction in all those…

‘Taking part’ technology reaches out to users

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It’s lonely up there on the wall. Talking to people who don’t talk back. Showing endless videos without even knowing if anyone’s watching. So now AV systems are reaching out. They want us to interact with them. And each other. It’s all rather exciting. “In the classroom, interactive touch screens…

Dynamic displays are the poster ROI

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What difference does a dynamic, electronic poster make compared with conventional marketing media? About 30 per cent in sales, according to upmarket tailor Hardy Amies. On Black Friday 2016 the retailer used a 70in digital signage display in the window of its Savile Row store to run a promotion on…