Epson America Inc. BrightLink Pro 1410Wi Image: Epson America Inc.
Meeting room technology used to display and share content can rattle the confidence of any legal professional. Even if you master the collaboration technology one day, you may forget it the next. Epson America Inc. aims to make putting on a meeting as easy as using a whiteboard with its new BrightLink Pro 1410Wi projector, a new productivity tool that brings collaboration to any flat surface in a meeting room.
Epson, the U.S. affiliate of Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation, designed the BrightLink Pro 1410Wi projector to display content in 3100 lumens onto a 100-inch (diagonal) widescreen display. The BrightLink Pro can turn traditional whiteboards and walls into digital whiteboards where content can be viewed, marked up, annotated, and shared as well as saved, printed, or emailed to others — no computer necessary.
WRITING ON THE WALL
Without more, you can turn on the BrightLink Pro, walk up to the projector's native WXGA (1280 x 800) resolution display on a flat surface such as a table or wall, and start writing and drawing in up to 50 pages. An interactive pen, which needs to touch the surface of the display, communicates with the projector to create new content and annotate existing or imported content, move from page to page, and insert basic shapes and images on demand. When you are done, your presentation can be printed or saved as a single .pdf file or multiple .png images onto a USB drive or network share.
The BrightLink Pro projector works with a Control Pad, which supports a USB hub that can be used to connect a variety of devices including tablets, smart phones, cameras, and DVD players, all of which can be used to import content into a presentation. The Pad supports operational modes such as Whiteboard Mode and Source Search (to find content on a USB device or network share) as well as modes to capture, print, and save presentations. Together, the projector and Control Pad form an appliance to create and control collaborative presentations without the aid of a computer.
In addition to its walk-up potential, BrightLink Pro presenters can command and annotate presentations or other content displays (e.g., a document or video review) from a mobile device. Epson's free iProjection App lets you connect iOS (4.2 or later) or Android (2.3 or later) devices to the projector via a local area network. Instead of using the interactive pen, mobile device content is displayed and annotated on the projector using fingers, gestures, or the mobile device's keyboard.
You can interface a PC with the BrightLink Pro using HDMI, VGA, or USB interconnections. Once your PC connects to the projector, the interactive pen becomes a wireless mouse and you can run any PC application, access the web, or edit a document using the BrightLink Pro display.
Epson's EasyMP Network Projection Utility is free software to output a computer's display to the BrightLink projector over the network. In addition to displaying a PC's applications or content, the EasyMP Network Projection software (v2.81 or higher) allows you to share content or a presentation over the network with up to four remote BrightLink Pro projectors. All projectors accept input and annotations from all users that accrete to one display, which is visible on all four locations as well as on the enabling computer. The projector also supports a split screen to provide local or individual content next to the networked, collaborative display.
The BrightLink Pro starts out at $2,999 for a projector and mount (educational price is $2,499). Epson has joined with Chief Milestone AV Technology to offer an all-in-one projector and whiteboard (Da-Lite Projection Screen technology) mounted in a cherry or teak for $4,599 and aluminium for $4,199.
Sean Gunduz, product manager for corporate projectors at Epson America, showed LTN research from Futuresource Consulting Ltd that claimed there are approximately 67 million meeting rooms worldwide, but no adoption of any staple product to display, present, and collaborate around content. This poses a significant opportunity for Epson's BrightLink Pro, said Gunduz. And if the projector is as easy as it appeared in an online demonstration powered by Apple Facebook, it will also have a bright future (pun intended) in courts and law firm meeting rooms, especially with its reasonable base price.
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Attorney Sean Doherty is LTN's technology editor.You must be signed in to comment on an articleSign In or Subscribe">
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