Business Power Point Projector Basics
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009For someone who is not tech minded, purchasing a presentation projector can be overwhelming with all the current choices. With it’s focus on your needs, this article was written with the beginner in mind. With all the buzz words and projector jargon out there, your knowing the basics will be a great help to you in your projector search.
Tiny dots of light called pixels make up the image you see on your laptop computer screen as well as the image shown by a modern projector. Your laptop or video source determines the resolution and if you are going to upgrade soon, you may wish to pick an LCD projector with a high resolution.
Amazingly, not long ago the common resolution used to be rather crude VGA (640 x 480), this was later replaced by SVGA (800 x 600) and the more modern quality XGA (1,024 x 768). You may even hear about SXGA (1,280×1, 024) that will give you even greater resolution, but tends to run on the expensive side. Many projectors can operate at numerous resolutions but they always have a default or native resolution.
Brightness is one of the most important parameters when it comes to making presentations on the go, the projector bulb that will come with your projector will be graded by something called lumens. The brightness of a projector in lumens is a very important specification to consider when doing power point presentations on the go or even in a conference room with the lights on. Large sized venues or semi-lit screening areas require a very bright projector, something over 4000 lumens would not be unheard of in this situation. With a much smaller screening room that can get completely dark, you could make a clear, crisp presentation with a projector that puts out only 1,000 lumens. You often see lumens expressed as Ansi lumens in projector literature, ANSI is just a uniform standard of measuring lumens, by having a standard you can be sure you are comparing “apples to apples” as the saying goes.
“Throw distance” is another term of interest, it refers to the distance you can have the projector from the screen with a focused picture. If your projector needs to be far from the screen, it will usually be equipped with a large throw lens. With a short throw presentation projector, your can make a presentation with the projector behind you, close to the screen and not have to worry about casting a shadow over your wonderful power point graphics.
Also important when using projectors for power point and similar presentations is interface connectivity and resolution, your computer needs to be compatible with your projector. You should obtain your computers native resolution and write this down, note if it’s SVGA or XGA, also you’ll need to know the connection standard by which you can connect computer and projector, many projectors have a computer in port and with the common standards in place, this isn’t much of a worry. None the less, be sure that regardless what kind of projector you purchase that it has all the cords and other port attachments that you’ll need.
When you look at a variety of projectors with your needs in mind, you can make an informed decision. Believe it or not, you can find some of the best deals on power point projectors on ebay through projectorselect.com, see it for yourself. Good luck in finding presentation projector that meets your needs. With just some basic knowledge, you’ll find that it’s not as difficult as you imagined.