Hi-Tech Rentals Creates an Eye-Opening Experience with Barco XLM Projectors and the Folsom Encore Presentation System
When D.J. Lyons, project manager of Hi-Tech Rentals of Atlanta, first made the decision to create a widescreen presentation for a trade show booth using brand new technology, he did so with the expectation that the final result would yield a bright, eye-catching, ultra-high-resolution image.
On that score, he was correct. What he didn’t expect was to see an image that was so perfectly seamless that it would challenge his own rules about what was and wasn’t possible in widescreen imagery.
The two products responsible for Lyons’ eye-opening experience were Barco’s newest high-end projector, the XLM H25, and Folsom’s next-generation video processing and control system, Encore. Lyons employed the two products in Chicago in October at the Graph Expo 2004 show to create a blended, widescreen presentation that would form the centerpiece of a mammoth 152x280 trade show. The booth belonged to Hi-Tech’s longtime customer, Heidelberg, a manufacturer of printing and prepress machinery.
“The thing that amazed me about the system was the blended area,” says Lyons. “It was virtually impossible to tell where one projector started and the other one ended. For years, even with Folsom’s BlendPro, we’d been telling people that you can’t do blends with solid colors, or black backgrounds, and you can’t do white frames and fields. But one of the first things that came up when we blended the image was a 10x32-foot gray background for a PowerPoint slide and you couldn’t see the seam. Right there I knew the power of that blending technology and how much they had put into it. It was really spectacular.”
Lyons and his team created a theater-like presentation area that consisted of a 10x30-foot screen that was hung 15 feet above the floor in the center of Heidelberg’s enormous booth. Bleacher seating capable of accommodating upwards of 80 people was set up in front of the screen. Periodically throughout the conference, Heidelberg would run a 10-minute show highlighting the company’s products, with many of the showings drawing a standing room-only crowd. Before and after the formal shows, the screen was used to display constantly changing imagery that served to attract attention and highlight the company’s key messages.
To run the show, Lyons and his team hung two XLM projectors side-by-side from the ceiling in front of the screen, and connected them via fiber optic cable to two Encore video processing systems located at the top of the bleachers. A single Encore console was used to run the shows.
“The screen image sizes that are possible are kind of out of this world,” he says excitedly, “especially when you think about combining it with a product like a 25,000 lumen projector. So we’ll continue to push the envelope of Encore in terms of what it’s capable of. With this technology, we are no longer locked into a shape, or a resolution, or an aspect ratio, or even a limited set of background colors. The rules have changed. Imagination and budget are now your only limitations.”
For more information, please contact
Christine
Morris
Marketing Communications Manager - US
Barco Media & Entertainment
Telephone
+1 916 859 2500
christine.morris@barco.com
