A woman’s head and shoulders as she stands in the middle of a brightly coloured projection of leaves and shapes in pink, red, purple and blue.

The future is bright, light, smart and 16K

ISE is the largest audio-visual technologies show in the world and every year its stands are jam-packed with the future tech you’ll see in in the world of AV. As you might imagine, the big news for 2020 was 8K-everything, and our groundbreaking 8K projector solution was a must-see for the thousands of visitors. But the sky is blue, and looking to the future is what we do best, so we thought we’d take a moment to ask ourselves: what might come next?

 

The race to 16K is on!

It’s not news that consumers want the biggest, best and most advanced tech and 16K represents that because, in theory, it’s the highest resolution you can get close to at the moment in terms of a graphics card or even an output solution. In just ten years we’ve gone from 1080p HD to 8K – far less time than that from 1080p to 4K. TV channels are now streaming 4K live, a development that’s taken just six years, plus there are plenty of other ways to get hold of 4K content. Going on this trend, you’d have to say that 16K is where the market is headed. Watch this space.

Close up of a Canon projector
Will the future mean simple connectivity, power and portability all in one projector?

A projector in your hand luggage?

Lightweight and portable projection is the future. Today, a really bright 6000-lumen projector (which is powerful enough and bright enough to fill a lecture theatre screen in a typical low-light) is only 7 kilos and compact enough to fit into a suitcase. And you’d still have allowance left! But by 2030 it’s likely that we will see a 10,000-lumen projector that’s not substantially heavier.

Excitingly, the corresponding shrink in size/increase in power means that projectors can be more cost effectively transported and installed for travelling live events, such as concerts, performances or even art exhibitions. Currently, a lot of these kind of projectors weigh over 100 kilos, which represents a lot of labour for lifting and carrying.The laser technology means that they’re quieter and cooler too, which is great for the shows and the environment.

These benefits translate to smaller settings too. For businesses, it also means that laser projectors can be installed into venues or meeting rooms with the minimum of fuss, with no need for costly lamp replacements. And once they’re installed, you have a consistently brilliant, bright result with little noise to interrupt that big presentation.

Hey Canon! Power on and switch to input 2

Smart and simple

Smart TVs are all the rage and there is no reason why this shouldn’t be the case in professional AV. After all, wouldn’t it be great to be able to wake up your projector with a voice command, rather than searching for the remote? In home set-ups, we’re already at the point where you can turn your projector on, connect it to your WIFI and it’s ready to go without having to connect any cables. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t see business users being able to immediately share screens on a smart projector via their phones on a WIFI hotspot. After all, so much meeting time is wasted through connecting cables, so having a single integrated solution within a projector that connects to WIFI would be a productivity win – meetings start on time and troubleshooting is through a single point of contact. This is certainly something we all want to see in our meeting rooms in the near future.

Written by Matthew Koshy


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