Epson EB-1430Wi Meeting Mate Interactive Projector

Review:/ Stephen Dawson

IN USE

Installation might be a little fiddly, but once done it’s hard to see how using the projector could be easier.

Aside from the super short throw nature of the unit, in operation when used with an external source it is pretty much like any other Epson projector. Except that you can annotate the projected image. And then save it to the ‘whiteboard’ mode, or indeed save it to storage.

If you want improved personal interaction with your audience, you can set the projector to computer interactive mode. That way you plug the computer into the projector via USB rather than HDMI or D-sub15 and install the appropriate driver. You can then use on-screen interaction to control the computer itself.

Storage for saving material can be USB plugged directly into the projector, or more conveniently, USB plugged into the wall plate. You can also plug your computer into this for USB image connection, but have to plug directly into the projector for HDMI or D-sub15. Alternately, your storage can be a shared folder on the LAN. The projector supports both wired and wireless connectivity.

Most interesting, though, is the ‘whiteboard’ mode. For this you need no source. Your projection screen becomes a virtual whiteboard.

Actually, that’s underplaying it. It becomes a virtual flipboard because you can have multiple pages of whiteboard content and switch between them with the touch of an icon.

WHITEBOARD MODE

You can draw on the whiteboard in several colours, with different colours assigned to finger and the two styluses. Two different line thicknesses are available. There is an eraser plus a highlighter which applies translucent colour over existing material.

Applying all these was smooth and reliable. I was able to scribble fairly quickly without dropping segments of drawing. Up to six fingers can be used in addition to the styluses.

You can bring up images previously saved to your storage (USB or shared folder), annotate them and save them. This includes captures of from external sources previously made, or indeed selected sections of such images. You can print material to an Epson or other printer supporting PCL (the de facto standard derived from HP’s Printer Command Language for its ThinkJet printers).

You can also email the pages, or sections of them, directly from the projector. There’s an address book for holding contacts to make this reasonably convenient.

It is clear that the drawing software is object-oriented in design, somewhat like a vector drawing program, though without its flexibility. If you draw an X on the screen as two single strokes, then the strokes are two separate objects. A freeform selection tool (there’s also a rectangle one) allows you to select just one of the strokes and you can move it, copy and paste it, delete it, rotate it or resize it. If you resize then the line scales up smoothly, preserving clean edges to the maximum resolution available with the projector, rather than becoming jagged.

Of course, if you have opened up a graphic from USB and select and scale up a portion of it, that does become jagged because it is merely a bitmapped graphic rather than an object.

When you save you have a choice of PDF, PNG, EWF. This last appears to be a proprietary format for Epson, so you can’t really use it anywhere else. But for the projector it is extremely useful because it preserves the object oriented nature of the graphics. You can reload it in another session and be back precisely where you were, able to manipulate individual objects again.

The PNG format is the standard computer one. The pages are saved with a resolution of 1,280 by 800 pixels, matching the projector’s display resolution. The PDF format doesn’t maintain the objects as objects, except to the extent that they are vector defined within the PDF file, so they scale up smoothly. This would be the best format if you want to keep the slides you’ve created for future printing.

PICTURE QUALITY

The projector did a competent job of downscaling higher resolution images, and it was certainly very bright, with strong colours, even under significant ambient light. The brightness of the image appeared uniform to the eye across the screen and the picture geometry was undistorted. Of course, it’s generally best to set a PC’s output to match the physical resolution of the projector to achieve the best presentation of its contents. That way all material – particularly text – is generated optimally for the resolution, rather than having to be scaled.

PRACTICALITIES

The projector took just three seconds to switch off its cooling fan after being shut down, even in normal mode. Startup was relatively slow, taking 70 seconds to get going in whiteboard mode, and then another 30 seconds or so to reach full brightness.

The unit is rated to consume 365W during operation. Standby power consumption is 2.5W with the network functions idling but available, or 420mW with them off. A replacement lamp is priced at just AU$79. The rated lamp life is 4000 hours in normal mode, 6000 hours in low-output mode. Assuming electricity costs 20c/kWh, this projector would cost just 9.3c per hour running in normal mode, of which less than two cents is lamp cost.

CONCLUSION

What a wonderfully useful device the Epson EB-1430Wi projector is. All a presenter needs to do is punch the ‘whiteboard’ button on the wall plate, grab a stylus (or not, because of the finger functionality), and after a couple of minutes start writing away. No need for photos to preserve annotations, and the contents can be emailed easily to meeting participants.

It looks like it might be offering an actual new way of doing business.