Fowler went to Infocomm last week, and the show floor was pretty exciting this year. I saw quite a few very innovative products. Here’s a quick recap of what we did and saw, and a few of the more exciting new products:

After a few less than exciting stops, we made our way to the Volante booth. They feature the DiVAS Controller, which streams several channels of HD video through a gigabit network to any number of displays. They also have a DVR unit which allows you to time-shift your broadcast. Very cool stuff. Several booths later we found ourselves in the Elite Screens booth. They make a very wide variety of video screens. The one we found most interesting was the EZ Cinema, which is a “portable” manual ascender type screen. I say “portable” because they come in sizes up to 12’ wide.

At Panasonic’s dealer meeting room, we saw some really nice professional LCD displays, the new 20 series plasmas, and some great new projectors. After that, we somehow found an integration company that was dressed up like the Pirates of the Caribbean. Weird…

We wrapped up the day with Elmo, who introduced a new cool writing tablet with software, that will also control their document cameras.

We started our second day with an appointment with Mitsubishi. They are rolling out a brand new series of dual lamp DLP projectors. The WD8200U has 6500 lumens and the XD8100U has 7000 lumens, and they have a new extra long-throw lens as well. Their booth also featured a new 65” LCD (MDT651S) at a great price point. I am also very excited by a product from Magenta Research called the Voyager VG-RX. They are doing amazing things with signal extenders. The Voyager VG-RX is a high performance receiver for short or long haul transmission of uncompressed hi-definition video and audio signals. It also carries USB, IR and RS-232 control signals, and it does it all over fiber optic cabling. Additionally, they have found a way to capture and store HDCP protocol. This will make it possible to display sources that have HDCP imbedded without a limitation on the number of displays. (For more on HDCP, check out our podcast.)

At the Panasonic booth, I finally got to put my hands on the new AG-H100 and AW-H550 video mixers; both little brothers to the AV-HS450N. The AG-H100 is a fantastic small format HD video mixer with the highly sought-after multiview. It is housed in the same chassis as the old AG-MX70, which means that it carries and switches audio in addition to the video signals. This unit will be a perfect fit for the budget-conscious church that  wants to get into more advanced video mixing and IMAG. There was no way we could get out of the booth without seeing the new 152” plasma monitor (TH-152UX1). I’m already drawing up blueprints to remove a wall in my living room and replace it with this plasma.

There was quite a bit more live sound and stage equipment this year than in the past. Soundcraft had a truck there as well as Yamaha. Martin Lighting has a brand new truck featuring all of their new luminaires.

I stopped by Shure to check out their new SE-115M earbuds (yeah, I missed them last year), and the rep actually put them in my ears. Although the experience was a little creepy, the fantastic sound was worth the very uncomfortable 30 seconds of close proximity to a complete stranger. I checked out both the SE115M and the SE425, and both were superb.

In summary, this was the best Infocomm in 3 years. We saw a lot of things that made our trip worthwhile. Manufacturers in the industry continue to put out products that put the most advanced media ideas within reach of most churches. Make sure you ask your Fowler Church Consultant about how these products will help you accomplish your mission. And when we come to visit, we promise we won’t be in pirate costumes.

Come check out our new application shots from Crosspoint Church. They can be found in the Contemporary Churchs in the gallery, or you can click here and it will send you on the path you need. If you would like to send us some pictures of your church so we can put it on our website then send them our way. You can email you representative or email areid@fowlerinc.com.

The debate rages on. Which display technology is better, LCD or plasma? The answer, as is true so often, is not really a clear cut one, but depends on several factors. How is the display going to be used, what content is going to be on the display the most, will there be a lot of ambient light in the room? The answers to these questions and more will have an impact on the selection of a display.

Let’s start with a very basic primer on how these two competing technologies produce an image. LCD panels use a light source that is behind the display, usually fluorescent, that for each pixel or picture element passes through a series of glass plates, a liquid crystal layer and a color filter layer to achieve an image. It’s in the liquid crystal and the color filter layers that the magic really happens. The liquid crystals (which is the LC in LCD) when an electric current is applied to them, can chemically “twist” either block light or allow light to come through. The speed at which this twisting occurs is what generates different intensities of light. In the color filter layer the intensity of light goes through red, green or blue filters depending on the color that needs to come from that particular pixel. By changing intensity and color, many different shades can be created. This gives us the image that we look at on the panel.

Plasma technology is a little different. Rather than a light source behind all those layers, a plasma has individual gas-filled cells or sub-pixels, one each for red, green and blue. When an electric current is applied the gas in the cells goes to work. It emits UV rays which make the cells phosphors glow the required color.

So what difference does all that make? A lot! Because of how the images are produced and the limitations of the technologies, each different type of display lends itself to certain applications.

Plasmas are not generally manufactured at smaller sizes. So for a display that is less than 32” diagonal LCD is the way to go. For example, let’s say that we want a set of monitors mounted in a rack for a camera application. LCD is the only option for this type of application because they are manufactured down to sizes of 1 and 2 inches. For most applications larger than 32” we tend to lean towards plasma displays for several reasons. The plasma displays that we use are professional grade units that are far more durable than most LCD displays. Also, color reproduction on plasmas tends to be more realistic, with a greater saturation and “black level.” Higher black levels really make an image jump off the screen. And very importantly, plasma displays have much better off-axis viewing than LCD panels. This means that for viewers standing to one side or the other of the panel, the viewing experience is going to be greatly improved over that of an LCD.

So to summarize, for smaller applications where plasma displays simply aren’t manufactured, LCDs are a great option. For large displays, the greater durability, color correctness and off axis viewing- plasmas make a better choice.

Many of our churches have extremely talented people in the areas of construction and carpentry. These blessed individuals are some of the most giving, servant-like people in your congregations and they can make a simple projection system installation into a smooth running, wonderful experience that can enhance the synergy and togetherness of your media team or staff. And then there are the rest of us, the ones that don’t have those skilled, experienced or servant-hearted people to help us in our endeavors! For this very eventuality, Fowler Productions has put together a staff of some of the most talented installers in our industry. These dedicated teams can make the most difficult installations go smoothly and end with a polished finished product that is pleasing to the eyes, ears and aesthetic values that we all hold dear.

Known for their serving hearts and technical knowledge, these installation professionals are able to take your vision for your media system and turn it into a reality in your worship environment. They take great pride in a clean and effective installation with the utmost care taken to ensure that you will be satisfied with the eventual outcome. They act as liaison between the church and Fowler’s office and engineering staff to make sure any changes that need to be made can be made without affecting the overall goals and functionality that was originally designed into the system.

When the installation is done, they will give you a functional training including how to turn on and off your equipment, how to use the major components of the system and how to best maintain the equipment over time.

If your church simply doesn’t have the manpower or wants to invest in a professional installation crew, the guys from Fowler Productions Install Services are definitely the way to go!

The competition between flat panel manufacturers has become fierce over the last few years. It seems that the market has been flooded by consumer level, low cost, low quality, displays to the extent that it becomes difficult to sort through the quagmire and find units that will work in a church or ministry application.

The industry leader for plasma flat panel displays is undoubtedly Panasonic. Everything about their professional units is tailor made for the demanding, high intensity kind of usage that is common is the house of worship market. With their 100,000 hour service life and 2 year on-site warranty for parts and labor, these units are the industry standard for reliability and durability. Also providing a custom plug-in architecture for interchangeable input flexibility, the Panasonic 11 series plasmas give your church the ability to expand and grow with their display system.

The biggest reason to choose plasma displays is the picture quality and the Panasonic units certainly don’t disappoint in this regard. Many manufacturers regard resolution as the end all be all of image quality, but in truth it is only one part of the whole “picture.” Just as important as resolution is how a display responds to fast motion video. Other technologies may lose up to 50-70% of their clarity and perceived resolution because of latency (delay) in the response time of the display. Panasonic professional plasmas will maintain a much higher perceived resolution because of the ultra fast 1/600th of a second response time of each individual pixel. Add to this the high contrast ratio and incredible level of black detail, and you have a series of flat panel displays that are ready to give your church the highest image quality possible.

Robert Reed from Roland reviews the M-400 Digital Mixing Console, the V-8 video mixer, the VC 300 & VC 200 multi format video converter box, the R-44 field recorder and the P-10 video Play back device.

Craig Yanagi from JVC reviews the GY-HD250 and GY-HD200 cameras using Fujinon’s box lens, JVC’s MR HD200 Hard Disk recorder and Vintens System 8 Tripod.

Do you have high definition cameras? Are you looking for some? To get the full benefit of HD cameras you need an HD video mixer and Panasonic has answered the call. With the introduction of the Panasonic AV-HS400 video mixer we now have a cost effective way to do HD production at full broadcast quality.

As high definition becomes a reality for more and more churches we’ve found that although camera technology has continued to improve and drop in price, the rest of the equipment in the high definition chain remains out of reach for all but a select few customers. That leads us to using HD cameras in their standard definition mode with SD switchers and monitors or something like a presentation switcher that will switch camera sources but was not intended to do so in a full video production environment.

There have been “multi-definition” video mixers on the market for a few years now by companies such as Ross, Echo Lab, and Grass Valley but once you get these switchers fully configured with the inputs and outputs you need you’re looking at an entry price of $40,000 or more. Then on top of this price you will need HD monitors so you can keep an eye on all of your video sources. In case you haven’t noticed, true HD monitors can be very pricey.

With the introduction of the AV-HS400, Panasonic has brought HD video production “to the masses.” A fully equipped video mixing system based on this mixer runs between $15k and $20k including monitoring. Obviously there are other pieces to a system like recording and distribution but the core functionality of the video mixer has come down in price dramatically.

This mixer features several high-end features such as HD-SDI inputs and outputs, both Program and Aux outputs, a Down Stream Keyer, chroma and luminance keying, and optional DVI inputs and outputs. All of this is in addition to a brand new feature Panasonic calls MultiView. This saves a lot of money when it comes to monitoring. By using a single HD monitor you can view Program, Preview, and up to 8 input sources on this single display. This saves money since you don’t have to have a separate monitor per signal, saves space because you are using a single monitor versus several, and saves energy since, again, you’re only using a single monitor.

Features like these are what make this mixer a real winner for the church market. Cost efficient, compact, and packed full of features are characteristics that every church can benefit from.

Neil Wittering from Christie reviews the HD+30K projector, the LW600 projector, the CP2000-M DLP cinema projector and Vista’s video processing systems.